Powerful, Different, Equal- A timely Discussion on the US and China
Reposting an article written on Feb 14, 2020
A discussion comparing a top-down system in China vs a bottom-up system in the US hardly gets this relevant today given the coronavirus outbreak in China. However, in the discussion of the merits and legitimacy of both systems — both of which have had huge successes achieving each country’s own goals the recent decades — few have delved into their respective mindsets grounded in history and culture.
This week Stanford PACs hosted Peter Walker, author of <Powerful, Different, Equal: Overcoming the Misconceptions and Differences Between China and the US>. Peter shared his views informed by four decades dealing with China as a McKinsey senior partner, 80 trips back and forth to the country and led by his intellectual curiosity in the cultural contexts of institutions inspired by a passion for Lao Tzu philosophy.
His book talk drew an intellectual and collaborative-minded crowd from the Stanford community. It sparked a lively discussion among Stanford scholars, students, silicon valley philanthropists, investors, and international civil society organization executives.
Author Peter Walker was in discussion with a top Stanford sociologist and China scholar Prof. Xueguang Zhou and a Baidu venture investor Fang yuan, moderated by Stanford PACS executive director Kim Meredith.
It came at a relevant time as the global public health emergency coronavirus outbreak from China has changed the perception of an almost invincible Chinese system among the public in China and outside China alike. (Parallel to that, the opening chapters of the US 2020 election — and the past four years following the 2016 election of Donald Trump- also have done their portions to urge Americans to reflect on its system.)
The discussion on stage was stimulating, but the exuberant questions from the audience after the panel was even more interesting.
Here I want to share some highlights, observations, and questions as I came out of the discussion.
They also emerge recently from my observations devouring the myriad wechat messages and news reports and social media discussions out of China the past few weeks. Triggered by the virus outbreak, most pointed back to this broader system discussion Peter brought up. However I wish all questions had apparent answers, many don’t.
To be clear, these are my personal views, which are not representing Stanford PACS — I am sharing the following as a Chinese native who spends her formative years in China in the Chinese system, a former journalist working for both western and Chinese news organizations in China, a former social startup founder straddle both China and US and an individual that is deeply concerned about the collective future of both countries and our world (the China where I grew up and the US where I got married and chose to raise my kids)
1) When comparing the two very different governance systems and judging who did what right or wrong, we have to take a holistic view. As measuring advancements in individual human rights, collective level social human welfare, or the effectiveness of public governance, efficiency of economic development and business operations, technology innovations, and their adoptions are in very different domains. They call for entirely different metrics, lenses, and data points to look at. Take individual rights vs. collective advancement, for example, one confusion frequently contributed to an unproductive debate on this system questions, the advantages, and disadvantages of a particular SYSTEM, can only be measured and compared when both sides are applying the same lens. Whereas the Chinese tend to prioritize the collective level metrics over individual rights level metrics, which is preferred by the US and the western world. For many in China, the aggregate “stability” is such an overarching concern deeply rooted in historic context compared to the religious and racial justice concerns that make it impossible to start a conversation with a well educated Chinese on almost any type of mass protests.
2) Recent news coming out of the coronavirus outbreak in China revealed the built-in severe flaws in the strong state control system. Apparent local government mismanagement and suppression on whistleblowing and free speech during the critical window at the beginning phase of the virus outbreak were to blame. See more from one of the sharpest commentary pieces on Coronavirus and the Fundamental Tensions in Governing China by Prof. Xueguang Zhou’s analysis. The post was translated to Chinese and was posted and reposted by many netizens in China, ultimately did not survive censorships and had short shelve lives on each blog.
3) However, the narrative of an effective top-down system in China is still compelling. Defenders from WHO experts to Americans living in China and upper-middle-class Chinese citizens in cities that are further away from the epicenter of the outbreak, praised the Chines “system for its immediate measures of massive quarantines and lockdowns of cities. The ability to make quick trade-off calculations, and to mobilize resources and to intervene into day to day lives of citizens to contain the further spread of the virus on all levels is unparalleled — once the goal of containing the virus outbreak was set from top-down.
Some however questioned if a lot of those efforts could be spared if in an alternative system such widespread outbreak would ever get wildly out of control to begin with, in this case, if the whistleblowers’ voices got heard and taken seriously, millions of people from Wuhan wouldn’t have left Wuhan during the Chinese New Year migration and spread the virus all over China. Many point to the lives lost in the epicenter Wuhan city of 11 million people. The values of individuals’ lives vs. the collective benefit of the majority is something that is a significant difference behind the two systems.
5) The perceptions of the Chinese top-down centralized system went through dramatic changes from HK protests to coronavirus outbreak over just a matter of a month, both externally and internally. I have witnessed this changing sentiment through my peer WeChat groups, and tons of posts on Chinese social media, many educated (or even western trained) mainland Chinese who used to be strong defenders of the system within China when comes to the Chinese government’s handling of HK protest had gone through awakening moments, as they watch the outbreak develop and going through quarantines themselves or losing loved ones back home. Faith in the system waned as the systemic risks feel more real and personal.
6) It also became clear that bottom-up volunteer-based civil society organizations in China hold a unique place in a society’s immune system during the public health crisis, just like what the 2008 Sichuan earthquake has done what people witnessed as an awakening of the entire sector.. I’ve been talking to a core volunteer team member of Wuhan 2020, a collaborative crowdsourcing platform trying to put global donations mostly medical resources and supplies pouring into China to more productive use, by consolidating and verifying medical supplies data and streamlining processes to better match supply and demand. What I learned was quite concerning: 1) out of the two million masks donated from across the country, reportedly only around 10% or 200k had actually been delivered to the front line hospital doctors and nurses.. trust deficit and inability of civic organizations as a whole (due to both constraints by the government as well as the nascent nature of the sector because of that) takes a HUGE toll. 2) as Wuhan 2020 showed initial success, tensions, and fears from within the organization arise as it deals with its relationship with the government.
7) The young generation of Chinese changemakers esp. those educated outside China with a passion for bringing positive changes back to China is a group to be closely watched and supported and groomed, an area I was previously involved as a social entrepreneur myself. These young people have given me hope and reasons to stay in this field. I was delighted to hear stories from young social innovators I know in the area playing instrumental roles in organizing disaster relief efforts in Wuhan, Hangzhou, and around China.
8) The one-way information street and extreme imbalance of learning/info flow between the US and China need to change. Chinese officials, intellectuals, and average people on the road know way more about America than the other way around. The intellectual curiosity toward a different system is much higher in China than the other way around.
The apparent reason is people in the US might not have felt a compelling need to do so for the past decades as they live in the most affluent country in the world already, but this does not help a productive relationship and works against US’s interests in remaining competitive in the longer term. The learning exchange should not be limited to knowledge and facts that appeal to our brain, things appeal to our heart and allow people to grow compassion and understanding i.e. an appreciation of art, cultures, philosophies and spiritual practices with deep roots in the Chinese/Eastern philosophy (esp Lao Tzu and Tao Te Ching ) that promotes unity between lives and beings and harmony of human and nature, can be helpful.
(Right after I wrote this, I had a long conversation with LA-based Berrugen Institute’s China director Bing Song, she and her organization are working along this line.. bringing the non-western thinking into the equation as humanity enters into this significant transition with environmental crisis and technology transformations. Some other philanthropists I know who straddle both eastern and western worlds are also working on this. The growing “wellbeing technology” community, folks who go to conferences like Wisdom 2.0 may be a good place to start. )
9) The distinction between people and the system they come from: throughout the recent tensions between China and the US on all fronts, I kept thinking about how we should make a distinction between Chinese people and the Chinese political system and institution? As we discuss the merits and flaws of the system and what worked and what didn’t, shouldn’t we let the average hard-working men and women on the streets of China, the entrepreneurs and innovators with fire in their bellies, take more credit for the China success stories rather than the system? Could it be a success story “despite” the system? China is so complicated, it is like a 100k pieces puzzle, trying to understand it is like having blind men feeling an elephant in the dark…Collective level and individual level narratives can be vastly different, given the huge base of population, regional differences, and multifaceted social life. A development economist like Scott Rozzelle at Stanford REAP, who has done tremendous field work in rural and lower tiers cities in China, can have a complete different view than Peter Walker, who mostly dealt with the best and brightest regulators and technocrats in the finance industry in China and might have stayed mostly in the first-tier Chinese cities during his travels.
When discussing China, stereotyping and generalization won’t work, let’s get to the nuance level and get to the specific groups and regions and issues.
10) Aside from influence on the role of civil society, Chinese technology innovations and their largescale adoptions that empower and perpetuate the centralized control model is also to be closely watched and debated.
The collectivist top-down system makes much faster decisions on large scale tech adoptions — without having to go through open and transparent information disclosure and open public debate, think about the application of AI in driverless car.. with the health industry.. and the surveillance state that catches crimes and dissidents equally fast… this is boon for economic and business efficiency, but what price are people paying when they have no say in the trade-off decisions? How do the two countries balance security and freedom? Are the right people thinking through the consequences?
11) With all that in mind, what is the role of international civil society and CSOs in balancing their efforts in engagement and advocacy? Should international civil society organizations have more than just a country strategy but a global China strategy like Bertram Lang mentioned in this article?
In this context, where I work for now Stanford PACS as an interdisciplinary research center at Stanford with capacity to bring together scholars and practitioners from different domains from sociologists studying organizations, political scientists and philosophers, development economists, legal scholars to business and investment leaders, social entrepreneurs and nonprofit leaders, — and more importantly a community of optimistic collaborative minded problem solvers and global citizens who want to solve problems more than winning a race, the center is uniquely positioned to host and inspire dialogues and conversations among open-minded folks with multiple lenses applied, to further understandings and facilitate dialogues, engagement and collaborations between China and the US today (or shall we say the eastern and western world), something I personally believe in.
This position is especially valuable as a government to government dialogues, and engagements are being shut down, learning exchange among changemakers matter — see PACS annual China conference at SCPKU and education programs and events on Stanford campus.
Given that it’s Valentine’s day today, I am inclined to make an analogy, to me, US and China relationship isn’t that much different from a couple in a love relationship that was drawn to each other initially because of the vast differences they have, and gradually as they move in together the romance went away, and daily conflicts emerge. In some cases, often in China, most people, as I observe, admire the US openly or secretively, but the admiration can turn sour as they felt they did not get the reciprocal respect they deserve.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
