School of International Relations & Public Affairs, Fudan University
Yin Zhiguang, Professor
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 dominating 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 to formulate this world.
In recent years, particularly in recent months, the concept of soft power has been hardened ever before. We have all been witnessing the dominating forces has using the so-called soft powers to achieve the hard power intentions. However, how do we use the word, how do we describe the world that entails soft power or implies by the soft power and hard power? I think in our vocabulary there is another long-forgotten word that has showed over 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 heart and mind of the people. The problem is who has the hegemony? Here comes the importance of Lenin. Linin told us there is hegemony of the capitalists, but there is also hegemony of the people. Nowadays we'll be shying away from talking about the hegemony of the people, that 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 the time for us to achieve the hegemony of the people. The word of comrades in Chinese pronounces Tongzhi (同志).It has at least, in my interpretation, two folded meaning: one, common will, common goal; secondly a common vocation. Now it is the second one that excites me the most, because it implies the journey has not yet 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 dominating 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 the world politics focuses on universalism. Universalism has taken the people out of its contexts. It implies there is a normative approach towards 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 hold a commemoration there. The commemoration is held, as a matter of fact, every year in Tanzania, right about the time of Qing Ming Festival. Qing Ming Festival is a Chinese festival to commemorate the deceased. Interestingly, just before Qing Ming Festival of 2023, Kamala Harris also visited Tanzania, and she also hosted a commemoration on a very special site which witnessed the 1998 bombarding of the American embassy in Dar es Salaam. She sent flowers to those 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. 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 applies that the world is in a Hobbesian State, and the only way to inflict 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, the role should go to those Lockean States, which have democratic principles, law and order within their own border. 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 in law and order. Law and order 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 is constant disruptions thanks to the interventionism coming from the powerful states.
Now I would like to advocate importance of state, particularly in reflecting to the comments I made at the beginning, the state of the people. The modern state has formed based on material. It is impossible to imagine modernity without acknowledging that the modernization is for 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 can 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 happening ten years before Liang Qichao took his journey at the end of the century. A journey took by a person who was born in India, but traveled back to the UK, 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’s coming from the western side, the opium of railways, electric cars and material things like that. He said, by injecting opium, those modernization materials, on the empire like China, what if China really wakes up? As we all know, Kipling was the person who famously advocating “the white men's burden”. He would remind us that modernization comes with derogative values. But can we really deny that modernization is the same thing that both the colonizers and the oppress 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 happens roughly at the same time when Liang Qichao made his travel. In 1904, a boat full of 10,000 Chinese workers were shipped by 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 was very organized. They were taking pictures; those pictures showed that they were very well behaved and they were very well treated, and it is under the British governance. Those British factories’ modern workers 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, they 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 archaeology discoveries, we will realize, no. The workers under the capitalist governance in South Africa were completely used as tools. Those people were constantly punished on the very harsh condition and were treated as if there were replacement of slavery. And interestingly the story of China, of Asia and Africa were connected at this point. The point of being a subject of modern capitalism. The transformation of both continents was really started from the movement of labors across the world under the capitalist governance. But it was also the story of these workers who were linked together and pushed forward by the historical 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 were 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 association. They could work among themselves; they can govern themselves. To him this really implies a civilized nation. However, the self-organized Chinese could never achieve their own goals. The self-organized Chinese were trying through legal ways to report to the colonizer, the UK, arguing that they needed to be treated fairly. What happened to their request under the help of Gandhi as a lawyer? They were ignored.
To Liang Qichao, during his journey to America, he also put a strong confidence into a self-organized group of people of Chinese 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 conflictingly, “we cannot understand 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 with regarding how to transform the status of the oppressed people. He died in confuse.
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 economy, stupid.' He said that as if he's the gentleman speaking to the commoners. Today I think it is time for us to turn our back and say to him “it's the people, stupid”.