The word soft power pisses me off. It pisses me off not only because we use this as if this is a value-free concept, but also, at the same time, it pisses me off because the dominant forces use this word as if it's not enough to defeat and conquer the world with their hard power. They also need something else in their arsenal to freeze, to shackle our imagination, and our way of formulating this world.
In recent years, particularly in recent months, the concept of soft power has been hardened than ever before. We have all been witnessing the dominant forces using the so-called soft power to achieve hard power intentions. However, how do we use the word? How do we describe the world that entails soft power or is implied by soft power and hard power? I think in our vocabulary there is another long-forgotten word that has shown up here: hegemony. The word hegemony needs not only its current sense but also its historical connotation, which was used by Gramsci and Lenin. To achieve that, we need coercion and consensus. It is impossible to imagine hegemony without hard power, coercion. It is also impossible to imagine a true hegemony without combining the hearts and minds of the people. The problem is, who has hegemony? Here comes the importance of Lenin. Lenin told us there is hegemony of the capitalists, but there is also hegemony of the people. Nowadays we shy away from talking about the hegemony of the people, that the people need our state.
I'm not going to speak to a house full of ladies and gentlemen; I'm going to speak to a house full of comrades. The "comrades" implies it is time for us to achieve the hegemony of the people. The word of comrades in Chinese is pronounced Tongzhi (同志). It has, at least in my interpretation, twofold meaning: one, common will, common goal; second, a common vocation. Now it is the second one that excites me the most, because it implies the journey has not yet been completed. It is an ongoing process to achieve what we want, not as the individual, not as ladies and gentlemen, not in the leadership of certain dominant countries, but as a consolidated people. From that point on I begin my talk today, dear comrades.
How do we achieve consensus as the people? I think one of the lessons that I am constantly reminded of is the importance of history. The general narrative of world politics focuses on universalism. Universalism has taken the people out of their contexts. It implies there is a normative approach to the world. It denies the fact that history, as a matter of fact, is the foundation for our consensus. In 2014, when Xi Jinping visited Tanzania, he visited a place where all the Chinese workers were buried. They held a commemoration there. The commemoration is held, as a matter of fact, every year in Tanzania, right about the time of the Qingming Festival. The Qingming Festival is a Chinese festival to commemorate the deceased. Interestingly, just before the Qingming Festival of 2023, Kamala Harris also visited Tanzania, and she also hosted a commemoration at a very special site that witnessed the 1998 bombing of the American Embassy in Dar es Salaam. She sent flowers to the deceased all by herself.
The story I presented here implies two completely different attitudes towards the world. The attitude implies different ways of commemorating history. To commemorate major events entails not only historical narratives, but also it helps us to imagine a future. It is of significant historical and philosophical value. In the Harris visit, she commemorated a significant event that implies the domination of the world coming from a hegemonic-centered worldview. This hegemonic-centered view implies that the world is in a Hobbesian state, and the only way to exercise power or to provide order in this Hobbesian state is for one state to rise up and dominate the rest of the world. The argument is, of course, that the role should go to those Lockean states, which have democratic principles, law, and order within their own borders. But, as a matter of fact, that narrative ignores the fact that, to the majority of the states, to the majority of the people, the world is not at all Hobbesian. The world is, in fact, under law and order. Law and order are being given by the powerful states. And, in fact, domestic circumstances, in those places among those peoples, are Hobbesian. There is no law and order; there are constant disruptions thanks to interventionism coming from the powerful states.
Now I would like to advocate the importance of the state, particularly in reference to the comments I made at the beginning, the state of the people. The modern state has been formed based on material. It is impossible to imagine modernity without acknowledging that modernization is above all about economic and material transformation. We cannot deny the fact that a hundred years ago, both the Chinese and other people who were under the oppression of the imperialists were also longing for the same material changes. Here I want to present a journey that happened over a hundred years ago. In 1889, a gentleman from China traveled from Tokyo to America, crossing the Pacific Ocean. Over that journey, he imagined that the world was now changing. The changing world was manifested in the fact that the sea boats and railways could carry people thousands of miles away and connect the world together. He longed for that transformation.
I would also remind you about a similar journey that happened ten years before Liang Qichao took his journey at the end of the century. A journey taken by a person who was born in India, but traveled back to the U.K., Rudyard Kipling. In his journey in 1889, he met with a couple of businesspersons in Hong Kong. He mentioned to those businesspersons the danger of bringing all the opium coming from the Western side, the opium of railways, electric cars, and material things like that. He said, by injecting opium, those modernization materials, into an empire like China, what if China really wakes up? As we all know, Kipling was the person who famously advocated "The White Man's Burden." He would remind us that modernization comes with derogatory values. But can we really deny that modernization is the same thing that both the colonizers and the oppressed are longing for? I think in order to understand this transformation, it is important for us to save the ideal of material change and economy from the hands of imperialism.
Here is another story about a journey that happened roughly at the same time when Liang Qichao made his travel. In 1904, 10,000 Chinese workers were shipped on a French ship to South Africa. When they landed, the South African and British media were very excited to report their arrival. They said these Chinese people under the governance of the British authority were very organized. Photographs were taken; those pictures showed that they were very well-behaved and they were very well treated, and it was under British governance.
The modern workers in those British factories were made out of those Chinese. And they specifically made the point that this information needed to be heard by the British people. So, there were postcards and newspaper reports showing the image of well-behaved and well-trained Chinese. All those stories were talking about the modern transformation of material changes on the people of China. The stories are obviously similar to the narrative "civilizing mission."
But is it really the case? If we take a step back and look at the historical archaeological discoveries, we will realize, no. The workers under the capitalist governance in South Africa were completely used as tools. Those people were constantly punished under very harsh conditions and were treated as if they were a replacement for slavery. And, interestingly, the story of China, of Asia and Africa, was connected at this point. The point of being subjects of modern capitalism. The transformation of both continents really started with the movement of labor across the world under capitalist governance. But it was also the story of these workers who were linked together and pushed forward by the historically transformational capitalist globalization that was largely forgotten. We cannot deny the fact that the story coming from those people needs to be told.
It is not only the Chinese and the Africans who were exposed to this transformation; the Indians, who at the time were connected by the colonial expansion, also noticed these historical changes. Gandhi, who once worked as a young lawyer, reported the story of those Chinese. To his impression, the Chinese in South Africa were very organized. They were organized through countrymen's associations. They could work among themselves; they could govern themselves. To him this really implied a civilized nation. However, the self-organized Chinese could never achieve their own goals. The self-organized Chinese were trying, through legal ways, to appeal to the colonizer, the U.K., arguing that they needed to be treated fairly. What happened to their request with the help of Gandhi as a lawyer? It was ignored.
To Liang Qichao, during his journey to America, he also put strong confidence in a self-organized group of Chinese people among themselves: they can self-govern; they can achieve transformation by their own consciousness. But twenty years after that journey, he came to the realization that it was nearly impossible for individuals to achieve such a transformation without the help of a strong state. The reason behind that is that the opponent was simply too powerful. So, to him, after he returned from Europe in 1920, he wrote, very conflicted, "We cannot understand the country without acknowledging the importance of individuals, but at the same time, we cannot understand the country without understanding that there is a world to be connected out there." He didn't really come up with any solutions regarding how to transform the status of the oppressed people. He died in confusion.
Excitingly, right after the return of Liang in 1920, a young man who once was inspired by Liang's work started to change. He said, "In that year I changed both ideologically and practically to Marxism." This young man was Mao Zedong. He believed that a strong state of the people needed to be made, and that strong state of the people needed to work for the common goal of modernization and transformation.
To conclude my talk, I would end with a reference. A couple of decades ago, Bill Clinton made the phrase popular, "It's the economy, stupid." He said that as if he is the gentleman speaking to the commoners. Today I think it is time for us to turn our backs and say to him, "It's the people, stupid."
(Transcribed from recording and edited.)