Lying tantalizingly close, less than 100 miles from the mainland, this isolated landmass has long been perched within the mainland’s sphere of influence. And yet, it remains separate, a mocking presence over the decades. Governed by a regime anathema to the mainland government, the island is labeled an existential, foreign threat. Seeking control is visceral. The mainland government enforces broad economic sanctions. Its military conducts provocative tests. Travel between the two is restricted. Multifaceted pressure is on the increase.

This is The China Chronicle, so of course, I am referring to Taiwan. However, I first wrote the opening above after reading several recent articles about the policies, statements, and actions of the American government towards Cuba since the beginning of the second Trump Administration. Though there are distinct historical, practical, and rhetorical differences, the parallels are nonetheless striking.

Why does the P.R.C. want Taiwan so badly? After all, Communist China has never ruled the island. There are both dry strategic reasons as well as heart and soul passions surrounding what China is and aspires to become.

What follows is not about the views and idealism of either America or Taiwan. It is, rather, a look at what Eric Hendriks of the Danube Institute labels “strategic empathy.” The goal is to understand “politico-cultural Others,” in this case the Chinese, in order to bring a clearer mind to the world of international relations.

STRATEGY

The strategic reasons for P.R.C. control of Taiwan are two-fold, one more manifest than the other:

1. Taiwan is part of the so-called First Island Chain, a line of islands running from Japan through Taiwan and into the South China Sea bordering the Philippines, Malaysian Borneo, and Vietnam. The Chain represents China’s front door into the Pacific Ocean to the east and the Malacca Strait to the southwest. China considers control of this area to be critical to safeguarding its sovereignty as well as projecting economic and military power.

2. Taiwan is home to the world’s preeminent semiconductor and microchip factories, chief among them TSMC. The modern world literally runs through Taiwan. If (maybe a Big if) China can take over Taiwan without destroying its infrastructure and hi-tech industry, oh what a tremendous, additional coup.

PASSION

Now, to the heart and soul.

China does not speak of conquering Taiwan. The Chinese Communist Party and leading thinkers in the country speak with profound reverence of reunifying with Taiwan. They zealously defend their position that there is and has always been only one China and Taiwan is an integral part of the whole.

This land of aboriginal people was first sighted by the Portuguese and named Ilha Formosa (Beautiful Island) in the mid-sixteenth century. During the long seventeenth century, parts of the island were first colonized by the Dutch and Spanish, respectively; subsequently conquered by a former Ming general, Koxinga, fleeing the new Qing Dynasty; and finally annexed (though not fully inhabited) by the new Qing empire. Japan controlled the island from 1895-1945. The Republic of China assumed control of Taiwan at the end of World War II, and the Nationalist ROC government fled there in 1949 after the Communist Party won mainland China.

Taiwan’s history is everything and nothing in this context. Everything because it has been molded by CCP narrative with fervent flourish. Nothing because the details and the island’s past importance, or lack thereof, are irrelevant in the toolbox of greater political purpose.

Share The China Chronicle

The Chinese political system does not just think about Taiwan a lot. It is borderline obsessive. Reunification with Taiwan sits on a pedestal as a moral justification for continued Communist Party rule. Without reunification, China’s success is impossible. Without the Party, reunification will not happen.

Intellectuals have developed a powerful narrative supporting the political arguments. Professor Jiang Shigong, then at Peking University Law School, wrote more than twenty years ago (and republished four years ago),

“At this critical moment, mainland China must take up the heavy obligation of national reunification with utmost tenacity and will, viewing it as a fateful test of ‘heaven’s investiture of responsibility [Mencius],’ achieving national reunification with the political ambition of civilizational renewal and superior political wisdom.”1

Eric Hendriks writes of how “an entire field of legitimising narratives propagates...that the very future of humanity--global harmony itself--depends on the CPC establishing control over Taiwan….In General Secretary Xi’s words, ‘China’s development is itself the greatest contribution to the world.’’’2

This is a true believer situation. Those at the top proclaim, thinkers provide support, and the people by and large agree with the general sentiment of national unity and self-determination.3 United, China will finally escape the “Century of Humiliation” by Western imperialists. The political, intellectual, and philosophical arenas in China are aligned. This is an issue of righteousness, of justice. It is thus worth fighting over.

One risk for China (and the world) is that this idealism could jump off the millenarian cliff. Ma Jian, a Chinese writer-in-exile, captures this potential in a satirical novel criticizing China under Communism:

Taiwan is a taut, red line in an exceptionalist world. It is one of the few areas where an opaque Chinese government has been the most direct. Government officials have messaged both through oral and written communications as well as action that America needs to stay out!

We do not have to accept China’s idealism and political imperative on Taiwan. This is not about comparing us and them. Rather, strategic empathy can help us escape being blinded by our own idealism. Strategic empathy can open our eyes to what is real for the Chinese Communist Party, the leadership of China, and ultimately the Chinese people. From their perspective, Taiwan is not a prize; it is fundamental.

Leave a comment

Follow Andrew Singer on Instagram, Facebook, and Linkedin.

The Politburo meeting set priorities for China’s economic policy and political focus for the balance of the year. Interpreting the meeting communique tells us that China’s leaders are increasingly worried about the domestic economy and want to see greater action at all levels of government throughout the country in righting the listing economic ship. Consumption (goods and services) is anemic. Youth unemployment is soaring. The crashed property sector remains mired in the doldrums. Government debt is uncomfortably high. The stock market is volatile.

For purposes of U.S.-China relations, the issue is that digesting the communique and trying to determine what is probably happening inside the veil that is Chinese governance requires an advanced degree in Chinese official-speak. This is a degree that too few Americans (and even fewer politicians) possess. As a result, the nuance and much of the underlying meaning of what China does and why escapes us. This weakens our ability to work with and respond to China and needs to be remedied.

Official Chinese CCP pronouncements, no matter the subject matter, are painstakingly crafted, turgid, and abstruse. Nothing is straightforward. In a nutshell, official China speaks in code, and we do not have an easy-to-use decoder. For a culture like America’s where we are overtly direct, this leads to further misperception and misunderstanding, which in turn lead to angst and then suspicion.

As Zichen Wang wrote in the Pekingnology, “Economy-focused readouts should be parsed with more care than given to a Federal Reserve statement and the Fed chair’s post-meeting remarks: changes in verbs, modifiers and omissions can carry substantive meaning.“

On their face, what are we to make of the meeting’s calls to “intensify countercyclical adjustment” and “promptly plan and roll out pragmatic and effective incremental policies” or statements that “macroeconomic policies must be more forceful and effective, accelerating the pace of fiscal expenditure and the use of bond funds” (Inside China)?

We must look for direction. “Under the conventions of Chinese official reporting, formulations such as ‘the meeting emphasized’ and ‘the meeting pointed out’ are generally understood to derive primarily from the remarks and judgments of the highest-ranking participant. They are then issued in the name of the meeting, turning those judgments into its collective consensus and institutional outcome.”

Adjectives can be momentous. “In official Chinese language, the addition of gaodu, or ‘highly,’ is not merely rhetorical decoration. It raises the political weight assigned to a problem and tells officials that it requires closer attention. The April Politburo meeting acknowledged ‘some difficulties and challenges’; July instructed the Party-state to pay ‘great attention’ to them. The tone has plainly changed.”

I am a lawyer. I know that words matter. But this level of opacity is mind-blowingly muddy. Even in English translation, we need a glossary, a flowchart comparing new statements to those prior, and better yet, a good codebook to help us interpret official China. And we need more people who dig through the code and more people to listen to what they say in order to help us understand how China speaks and what it means.

This favorite quote from James Carter, Professor of modern Chinese history, has weighty implications for society and governance broadly. It also arises in less flashy, if not less important, venues. The questions raised are the same no matter the context. What is the past? Who gets to document this past in our histories for today and tomorrow?

Share The China Chronicle

One of the less flashy triggers of these questions crossed my path recently when I read an article by Professor Misha Tadd breaking down why and how Wang Bi, a man who died almost 1,800 years ago at the tender age of 23, is today credited with being the seminal commentator on the foundation text of Daoism.1

For most of the previous two millennia, Wang Bi was just one in a crowded ocean of commentators arguing a cornucopia of different interpretations on Daoism. In terms of importance and impact, Wang was for the longest time effectively a rowboat in a harbor of yachts. Historical change, however, was in the air.

A few, lonely seeds were planted during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). These blossomed and spread in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and first half of the twentieth century when Wang’s text was reprinted, re-assessed, and increasingly highlighted, promoted, and accepted by influential people as authoritative and ultimately dispositive.

Thus, the most definitive version of Daoism, what is read and studied, the basis from which people regularly ponder and philosophize this great tradition, that which is historically accepted, comes down to us as a result of a concerted effort over centuries that emphasized this and downplayed or ignored that. This is ironic given Daoism’s emphasis on natural flow, non-action, and following the Way. In this case as in so many more, the past, whatever it was, didn’t and couldn’t change. What did evolve was the history that curated this past.

Back to the more flashy. China is both debated and touted as being a civilization state. From China’s perspective, such a label lends gravitas to the country’s re-emergence on the global stage, to reclaiming its rightful place as ancient world leader. The effort also serves implicitly to contrast China with other polities, mere nation states, that boast more anemic timelines. How did this narrative arise?

Authoritarian governments and would-be authoritarians around the world want to tell their own story, to highlight this and erase that. Hiding, shaping, and warping the past by deflating and inflating traumas and glories, respectively, promotes and justifies visions of the present and foreshadows desired futures. The tradeoff is that controlling narratives often takes place at the expense of accuracy and truth.

Knowledge is power. The first Emperor of China knew this. The great Qing Dynasty Emperors knew this. So too did Mao Zedong and now Xi Jinping, though the former wanted to erase the past while the latter wants to deify it. President Xi has indeed proven adept at repackaging and promulgating China’s past for maximum domestic and increasingly international effect.

The people knowingly and unknowingly play a role in this, whether by coercion, conditioning, consent or a combination thereof. They star in a corollary of the above, clamming up. Professor Margaret Hillenbrand has written,

Share The China Chronicle

Americans’ (and before that Europeans’) views of China and the Chinese have similarly been shaped by a centuries-long process of manufacturing, of presenting China for popular consumption. These views have generationally swung hot and cold under the weight of ideas, impulses, and biases promoted over time in the fields of politics, economics, philosophy, and academia.

In the words of Ho-fung Hung, these views seesaw between “the archetypes of the two poles of Western representation of China [over the prior eight centuries]—simplistic idealization and disdainful fear.”3 There is a common theme in these two poles. Otherness. China and the Chinese are alien. They are different. Whether welcoming or repelling in turn, this is the message.

American Statesman Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) was an admirer and proponent of Confucius’ moral philosophy as a model for society. In a 1749 letter to George Whitfield, he wrote “[o]n this principle [leading a good and exemplary life] Confucius, the famous eastern reformer, proceeded. When he saw his country sunk in vice, and wickedness of all kinds triumphant, he applied himself first to the grandees; and having by his doctrine won them to the cause of virtue, the commons followed in multitudes.”

More than a century later, American writer and poet Bret Harte (1836-1902) wrote a poem in 1870 titled “Plain Language from Truthful James.” It was intended to be satire, but lives on instead as “The Heathen Chinee” in the annals of anti-Chinese racism. Over ten stanzas, Harte laments the “not understanding,” “pensive and childlike” Ah Sin who outcheats the cheat at cards. The poem opens with “Which I wish to remark,/And my language is plain,/That for ways that are dark/And for tricks that are vain,/The heathen Chinee is peculiar,/Which the same I would rise to explain.”

A short decade plus after this poem, the Chinese Exclusion Act was adopted. In the almost century-and-a-half since, Americans’ views of China have continued to be swayed between Sinophilia and Sinophobia. The Chinese, whether paradigms of virtue or harbingers of inscrutable evil, are not like us. This has never wavered.

Who documents the past and affirms what we remember? As we read histories, this is the question we must continually ask. No history can be necessarily unimpeachable. They are the survivors or new entrants over shifting time, deserving and demanding critical analysis because some are more worthy than others.

Leave a comment

Follow Andrew Singer on Instagram, Facebook, and Linkedin.

Share The China Chronicle

America epitomizes this truth. The United States of America is fast becoming an oxymoron. We just celebrated a tense, politicized 250th anniversary. Society has suffered a collapse in civics. In this environment, Liberal, Conservative, Capitalist, Socialist, and Communist are pejoratives. They are linguistic daggers wielded in an amped-up fight between alleged good and evil.

Where does China fit in here? It is Villain No. 1 in America’s Label War. In this framing, the People’s Republic of China is Socialist (bad), Communist (really bad), alien and unscrupulous (scary bad), and committed to dominating the world and us (bad bad). The Chinese Communist Party is the government; the government is the nation; the nation is its people. This is a civilizational clash, and the Rubicon fast approaches. It is existential.

National security is the label used to defend attempts to combat this threat. From bans on Chinese buying land to restricting domestic companies from licensing Chinese tech to blocking Chinese students from studying in our universities to now elevating birthright citizenship as ghoulish specter. There is even a Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party carrying out wide-ranging investigations in the U.S. House of Representatives.

If everyone other is nefarious, then common ground will be impossible, discrimination will continue to grow, and a retreat to the seductiveness of label certitude will deepen.

All of the above is enough to keep one up at night, a society on edge, and a nation at risk.

Ok. Wait.

Deep breath.

This misses the boat. The true threat is more insidious.

The threat, domestically as well as globally, is the descent to label warfare itself. It has led to silos, absolutes, contempt, and apathy. If there is no understanding, there can be no respect. If there is no respect, there can be no compromise. If there is no compromise, there can be no meeting of the minds. And if there is no meeting of the minds, there can be no harmony.

In such event, Mao Zedong may ultimately be proven prescient when noting long ago that “political power [and social order] grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

Share The China Chronicle

Here’s an academic exercise. For a moment, strip away politics and the desperate craving of leaders and elites everywhere to protect their exalted positions, power, and privilege. Instead, ask what the -isms, liberalism/conservatism, socialism, and communism, promote at their cores, not how they govern to get there. The goal is to re-inflate what the labels have flattened, to seek a possible thread of commonality.

Each ‘ism is a response to what its proponents see as a grave ill, either a) oppression of individuals by monarchs, b) oppression of society by individuals or c) oppression of everyone else by the wealthy. None of the three have proven capable of prevailing over the others, though not for want of effort. Thus, compromise, or as a 2025 RAND Corporation Report on “Stabilizing the U.S.-China Rivalry” terms it, collaborative coexistence, is a must. There is room to maneuver here, but it will require a willingness to jettison at least some label rigidity.

Liberalism/Conservatism – America’s Democracy

America’s raison d’etre has traditionally been individual freedom, liberty, and people power, i.e., no oppression by monarchs.

Socialism

Socialism fears the overbearingness of individual rights at the expense of social welfare, i.e., no oppression by individuals.

Communism – China’s Socialism with Chinese Characteristics

Communism was a direct response to the human horrors attendant to the Industrial Revolution, i.e., no oppression of everyone else by the wealthy.

Share The China Chronicle

What gets lost in the dissonance of label politics, and therefore governance, is the symbiotic relationship between individuals and society. You can’t have one without the other. Ignoring this, cloaking ourselves in code words, is a trap that the governments of both America and China fall into, albeit from different ideological poles.

Back to de Tocqueville. What makes a society? “Without common ideas, there is no common action, and without common action men still exist, but a social body does not. Thus in order that there be society, and all the more, that this society prosper, it is necessary that all the minds of the citizens always be brought together and held together by some principle ideas.”

This is as true for China as it is for America. Without it, union becomes disunion and prosperity a phantom. Behind the labels, promoting the welfare of individuals to benefit the society made up of those individuals is common among and within the -isms. We need to escape labels to be able to see this humanity. There is no substitute that will end well.

Leave a comment

Follow Andrew Singer on Instagram, Facebook, and Linkedin.

Photographs of the untamed and ruined beauty in this remote part of the world and additional narrative connected with several stanzas touching on history, fascinating facts, and a whole lot of personal story are available by clicking on the hyperlinks below. -- Andrew

Share The China Chronicle

Ode to Vast Chinese Walls

***

Oh vast soaring walls of ten-thousand li

Bold dragons defending Cathay bravely,

Span ridges, valleys, arid desert laid

Innovative methods thine makers made.

***

Clarion calling me since a mere boy

At bottom of deep hole I dug with joy,

At one score did first I glimpse your rise

Two score on you almost broke me suchwise.

***

Meng Jiangnu wailing for dear husband lost

Built and maintained at exorbitant cost,

Raw, ragged, revealing all humbly told

What stories and meaning within you hold!

***

Hordes on horseback, soldiers on stone roads tread

Anxious moments, kill zones flow dusty red,

Surviving harsh conditions with aplomb

Impregnable ‘til human frailty harm.

***

Follow goat herd up slick Yin Mountain spall

Espy hidden Qin, your earliest wall,

Quarried rocks guard o’er Mongolian plain

Two millennia toiled yet you remain.

***

Darkness reigns in pre-twilight Gobi dust

Chasing rare organic Han wall a must,

Dawn’s orb brightens layered tamarisk stacks

Built to protect traders on Silk Road tracks.

***

Western Regions live beyond Jiayuguan

The Williams trekked east from Ming Beacon Tower one,

Rammed earth wall stooped in shadow of today

Buddhist karma’s blessing beckons not far away.

***

Crowning rugged mountains north of Beijing

Feral Ming walls through verdant Jiankou sing,

Qi Jiguang’s kilned brick restoration drive

White-knuckle dares to breathe, repeat, and thrive.

***

A north-south spur in Laiyuan’s a keeper

A Ming counter-flank three valleys steeper,

Hardscrabble stone and brick, watchtower dream

Knees thrashed by harsh plunges, where’s camp, don’t scream.

***

Walls of wonder, testaments to the past

Far from tourist crowds, grateful to the last,

Rich landscapes of rock, desert, and forest

Voices of history so well chorused.

Leave a comment

Follow Andrew Singer on Instagram, Facebook, and Linkedin.

Share The China Chronicle

David Hockney on Inspiration, Looking Forward, and China (June 2023)

“Inspiration. She never visits the lazy.”

This was then 72-year-old David Hockney’s response to a question posed by a reader during a TateShots on Twitter 2009 video.

This nugget of wisdom gave Christine Merser pause and that pause led to her “The Voice Inside My Head” blog post on inspiration: “Sometimes my pauses can be mistaken for laziness. I can pause all afternoon, and if it happens to be in front of Turner Home Movie’s thirty-thousandth showing of Pretty Woman, all the better. I’m a short distance runner. I go at high speed and then crash for whatever time, and then start up at high speed again. I struggle with the term lazy, as it’s something I really have always considered as an adjective that does in fact describe me.” Her post goes on to tackle inspiration, the seeking thereof, and the not infrequent inability to quite capture the same (at least in a particular moment).

So far this has nothing to do with China. But wait. Somehow most things in my life have a way of coming around to China. It’s my version of the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

Stimulated (I will not use the word, inspired) by Christine’s post, I went into my living room and pulled my copy of China Diary from the overflowing shelves. This 1982 book by Stephen Spender (the words) and, you guessed it, David Hockney (the paintings and photographs) documents their 1981 visit to a recently re-opened China. It was one of the earlier books I collected on China back when I was in high school.

The publisher blurb of the book reads that “Stephen Spender and David Hockney's illustrated diary of the trip they took together to China takes in not just the famous sites - the Great Wall, the Temple of the jade Buddha, the magical landscape of Kweilin but the unexpected incidents of everyday Chinese life. And both discuss their meetings with contemporary Chinese poets and painters. Hockney's photographs, drawings and watercolours are a unique revelation of China, while Spender discourses in rich prose. Together they provide a glimpse of this ever-mysterious land.”

In an epilogue of extracts from a conversation between the two men shortly after the trip, they ponder experiences, emotions, motivations, memories, and presentation.

Hockney:  “Often artists choose to go to places because they think it will interest them, or they know it will interest them….I had no notion at all about China. What I have to do now is to sit back and think quietly….We went through a giant country that we knew very little about. So we can’t make pronouncements on it….” (Pages 189 and 191)

Spender:  “Each of us has a separate personality. I think about China in my own way. I forget about you, and you as David Hockney think about it and illustrate it and have a picture in your mind which is unique to you, your sort of unique vision which is beyond me.” (Page 191)

They intersected with a number of Chinese people during their journey--guides, drivers, artists, and other locals. These were the faces and relaters of China’s past and present.

Finally, in sharing their views of China’s politics and governance, concepts of heroism, and life since the 1949 revolution, Hockney opines,

“It’s not normal for ordinary people to want a big adventure. Most people would be happy just with the quiet ‘adventure’ of life, and to them all life is an adventure in that sense, but they want it quietly; other people do not, they want it heroically, they join up in armies, they are prepared to face violence in life….But it’s no good dismissing the idea of adventure as though it were a sin. The whole history of the world is made up of people who set out on adventures and did things.” (Pages 198 and 200)

The two discuss important questions. About what China was and is and may become. About how we should look at and understand (or not) China. I clicked on the video link in Christine’s blog post and watched Hockney answer half a dozen more reader questions.

I was struck by, and will end here, with his answer to a question about regrets:

“I don’t brood about past work too much. I am much too keen on what I’m going to do next week.”

Leave a comment

Follow Andrew Singer on Instagram, Facebook, and Linkedin.

Share The China Chronicle

There are two explicit targets inside the new regulations and one under the surface. As for the first two, the Chinese government is concerned about ongoing capital flight and at the same time it is increasingly worried about the export of sensitive technologies, products, and services. As for the latter, the government is setting a framework that will give it geopolitical flexibility in the ongoing rift between East and West.

Capital Flight. Capital flight is a real issue. The numbers from 2025 alone reportedly approached one trillion in assets leaving China. This resource drain can be dangerous for an economy if unchecked. Individual Chinese are legally prohibited from moving more than USD $50,000 offshore each year. And yet, bypassing this limit has been relatively straightforward for the wealthy and tech-savvy for many years.

Chinese with means and ability use brokerages outside of China, including Futu, Tiger Brokers, and Longbridge, to access the NYSE and NASDAQ (and elsewhere abroad). What has captured the recent headlines is that these firms were hit with huge penalties at the end of May for running unauthorized, cross-border securities businesses in China, and their China business models upended. Under the new rules to take effect July 1, 2026, existing investors will be able to sell holdings and withdraw funds on these platforms for the next two years, but will no longer be able to open new trading positions nor buy new securities or transfer money in.

This has already begun to complicate matters as some Chinese banks and the brokerages themselves are questioning and limiting new mainland accounts that could have offshore implications. The new rules will interfere with existing investments of millions of retail investors and will significantly impact outbound investment. Yet, while NikkeiAsia is not wrong in writing that “the tightening of the country’s already prohibitive capital controls has rattled the U.S.-listed shares of brokers and sown anxiety among Chinese users of the platforms,” this is not a blanket call to divest from America. It is a matter of control. The government wants it.

Export Restrictions. The new regulations also take aim at the Chinese government’s more recent concern with controlling and restricting the export of cutting-edge technologies, products, and services. There are provisions that require pre-approval for certain assets to move offshore, legal and financial accountability for companies, and potential penalties for those living and working in China who violate the rules. This is part of the tit-for-tat between America and China.

Reading Between the Lines. As with anything official Chinese, the regulatory language is dense, relies on Communist Party-approved code words and phrases, and takes pains to justify itself. In essence, it is very government: defensive and open to interpretation. Protection of national security, national interests, and national image are top of mind throughout the regulations.

Article 24 gives the government authority to “take corresponding measures to protect the safety and legitimate rights and interests of investors and their outbound investments, and to protect the State’s overseas interests from threat and infringement” when it perceives that a foreign country or organization is violating Chinese sovereignty or the rules of the global road (translated by Manoj Kewalramani/Tracking People’s Daily).

In response to reporters’ questions, Chinese Ministry of Justice and other officials noted that the regulations are designed to respond to “an urgent need” to “effectively protect the lawful rights and interests of investors and their outbound investments, safeguard national sovereignty, security, and development interests, and advance high-quality outbound investment development on the track of the rule of law.”

Overall, the new regulations give the government more levers to pull in the future if they have financial concerns or feel they are being discriminated against. The new regulations set a framework and provide legal justifications for future actions. They do not, however, set in stone how they will be interpreted and enforced, particularly since domestic and international politics will always play a role in each.

Here’s the rub: The Chinese government’s desire to both better control how Chinese money is invested and deployed and restrict export of that which it deems sensitive will ever run up against those who want to find workarounds and have the wherewithal and ability to do so. Like the flowing water of the Dao, individuals and companies in the end will generally find their way. The business and financial worlds are nothing if not creative.

Leave a comment

Follow The China Chronicle and Andrew Singer on Social Media: LinkedIn and Instagram.

Share The China Chronicle

Macro

The fact that the Presidential get-together happened mattered if for no other reason than the leaders of the two, most powerful nations in the world were meeting, talking, and sharing meals. Détente, truce, competitive breather, call it what you will, the parties were at least playing at being civil. This being said, each side believes it achieved what it wanted because each was playing a different game with different rules and goals. Not ideal, dangerous even long term, but it was the best that could be hoped for in this age of distrust and exceptionalism.

There were actually multiple, parallel summits that took place in China’s capital last week. Though interrelated, each had its own agenda and respective audience:

1. There was the Substance v. Fantasy Summit:

• President Xi welcomed President Trump to Beijing with Kingly pomp. The latter lapped it up and was pacified and effusive in his praise as it played out. While doing so, China pronounced a new framework to govern U.S.-China relations of “building a constructive China-U.S. relationship of strategic stability.” Language matters in China, and this phraseology is new and consequential in the minds of the Chinese. It was an announcement. A declaration. The world saw a China in charge, equal in political and military standing to a deferential America, playing host to the other world superpower and setting the table for future relations.

• For his part, President Trump interpreted the elaborate reception and statecraft as acknowledgment of America’s greatness and power. In his world (and that of his acolytes and governmental enablers), everything America touches is golden and others bend to our will because of our historic strength and righteousness. The subsequent White House announcement accepting the new “vison” added an additional phrase, that of “constructive relationship of strategic stability on the basis of fairness and reciprocity.” As for this new governing framework, the printouts from the respective governments differ in scope and emphasis and thus meaning and intent.

2. There was the Behind-The-Scenes Economics Summit:

• Other than the few announcements trickling out thus far around aircraft, possible agriculture purchases, and an agreement to further talk on tariffs, nothing overly substantial happened in Beijing on the financial front. However, the American entourage did not include almost twenty of America’s leading business leaders for nothing. They went (word is that many for more than just the two nights Air Force One was on the ground) for meetings, dialogue, and dealmaking. If there is economic meat that comes to fruition from these contacts (and there will be), it will be subsequent and quiet. The choice of American accompaniment to Beijing confirms officially that any concepts of decoupling, deleveraging, and de-risking are dead, not just dormant. America and China need each other.

3. There was the Domestic Audiences Summit:

• Each side needed to project confidence, power, and effectiveness to its core supporters in the public. China’s effectiveness at this messaging was a relatively easy lift. Overall, the country is strong, powerful, and a leading player on the world stage. There was no need to make significant concessions, certainly not publicly, when they have the upper hand in so many areas. They are back, baby.

• On the other side of the ledger, if one accepts President Trump’s recap of what was said, how it was said, and what it means, then Americans should be proud of our nation and its leadership. We are Number 1. We are respected, feared, and get results. We are back, baby.

Micro

Do these macro geopolitical outcomes, important as they can be, translate to the micro daily lives of the citizens? Based on my experiences during this trip, my answer is generally no. Yes, the Chinese are justifiably proud of China’s rise. Yes, China’s economy is humming by several significant metrics, e.g., infrastructure, exports, hi-tech, and domestic travel. And yet, what I saw and heard supports the argument that all is far from peaches and cream in China.

In fact, family and individual pressures; wage and cost struggles; unemployment, underemployment, and overemployment; and angst over future opportunities are rife on the ground. I saw vacant storefronts and the silent hulks of unfinished residential towers. I walked past the weedy overgrowth of previously-occupied, now abandoned residential and commercial developments. I heard the quiet pleas and whispers in too many venues from too many people as part of casual conversation for these concerns to not exponentially be a significant weight on the country. The government appears to recognize this problem, but effective solutions remain elusive.

China’s middle class, a cohort ranging anywhere from 300 to 700 million people (numbers larger than the total U.S. and E.U. populations, respectively), is anxious. Parents worry about cost of living, education, childcare, and job prospects for themselves and their children. Credit card and loan debts are real. The young are scared. Employment is increasingly a choice among nothing, gig or 996 (the latter for the lucky).

Many restaurants are begging for customers. Many small businesses are suffering, losing money, not paying rent, and failing. People who borrowed money from friends, relatives, and contacts in the go-go years to invest and develop businesses are delaying and defaulting in droves. People are hustling, trying to make ends meet, and too often coming up short.

In the still depressed real estate market, owners who bought too much too quickly as encouraged by the then market and savings model are selling properties at fire sale prices or abandoning them altogether to avoid ongoing costs and losses. This is true even though they remain on the hook legally for institutional loans if the lenders want to go after them (think blood from a stone). The knock-on effects among contractors and subcontractors, furniture sellers and decorators, and other tangential businesses are cascading.

Against this backdrop of local cares and worries, the State Dinner at the end of the Summit, the private presidential tour of the Temple of Heaven (unprecedentedly closed to the public for three days), and even a new political framework for governing U.S.-China contacts pale by comparison. The Beijing Summit mattered, and it didn’t.

Leave a comment

Follow The China Chronicle and Andrew Singer on Social Media: LinkedIn and Instagram.

Share The China Chronicle

Returning to live in China after almost two decades requires regular recalibration of nostalgia. So much of the once familiar is now novel. Beijing has lost the half-built, half-demolished look that was its architectural vibe in the first decade of the millennium. Erstwhile models in the capital city’s Urban Planning Museum are now corporeal creatures, glistening in improbable shapes. From the two metro lines that used to serve selected parts of central Beijing, the city subway system now boasts 30 lines connecting 524 stations. The six, multi-lane, ring roads that encircle the capital are flooded with electric vehicles so modern they look on the cusp of levitating.

All this being true, Beijing 2026 is not just Beijing 2006 with fancier buildings and better infrastructure. It is that, but the upgraded hardware has also boosted the software, aka, civic behaviour. China is led by engineers; impressive constructions have been its forte for decades. In the oughties, the tougher ask had been improving what was domestically dubbed as the “civilizational levels” (文明水平 or wénmíng shuǐpíng ) of the average Zhou. In preparation for the Chinese capital hosting the 2008 Olympic Games, the authorities had identified five lacunae in Beijing’s social etiquette: Beijing-style name-calling, casual spitting, littering, disorderly queuing and a lack of smiling. To create “courteous communities,” the city government had instituted a “civilization-evaluation index” that ranked neighbourhoods according to their levels of refinement. Sharing housework, speaking a foreign language, large book-collections and balconies displaying potted plants boosted a neighbourhood’s score on the index, while spitting, alcohol abuse, raising pigeons, rearing livestock at home and noisiness were black marks.

As an Indian, the country’s feel in those days had been unexpectedly familiar. Before moving to Beijing, I’d imagined China to be inscrutable—both chopsticks and characters beyond me. But once I’d begun walking the city’s crisscrossing warren of hutong alleyways, what I’d noticed was the familiar cadence of itinerant vendors—selling everything from goldfish in plastic bags to candied hawthorn fruit and coal briquettes—as they slowly bicycled past the faded glory of courtyard-style homes. I’d delighted in the sizzle of street food and noted how strangers addressed each other as family: auntie, grandmother, older brother. There was full throated spitting by the flâneurs who ambled along the streets, often with caged songbirds in hand. Queues existed more on a theoretical plane than in physical form. Taxi interiors were dusted with cigarette ash, locals hitched their vests over their bellies when the weather was warm, sewage was a scent, conversations on the phone were loud, demonstrating scant awareness of the existence of the ears of other people in the vicinity. It wasn’t rare to spot a child dressed in kaidangku, (literally open-crotch pants that were slit around the buttocks), a choice that combined maximum convenience, with minimum coverage. Children thus outfitted were able to answer the call of nature anywhere on the streets without the fuss of actually having to pull their trousers down.

Chinese cities at the time, even the poshest like Beijing and Shanghai, still had much of the village about them. Migrant workers flooded the constructionscapes that were building the cities anew. Their mannerisms were of the village: less hush, less sophistication. People squatted on top of western style toilet seats. Transgressions of aural and personal space were the norm rather than the exception.

Westerners found it all remarkable. To Indian me, it was a comforting normality. A little bit of home in a foreign land. Twenty years later, in 2026, it is the upgrade in civic software rather than the long-impressive hardware that asks for unpacking.

Share

Behaviour is notoriously harder to engineer than buildings. A recent trip to the Fragrant Hills in western Beijing on a newly constructed metro line, had me marveling at the improved crowd-management. Despite massive groups of domestic tourists from around the country thronging the area, in what would not-so-long-ago have been a scenario for a potential stampede, the crowds moved in relative order. The park environs were spick and span with no litter in sight; not a single old codger sneaking a cigarette. There was some amount of strident rule-announcing on loudspeakers: stay on the designated tracks, no smoking etc., but overall, it was possible to enjoy the natural beauty, notwithstanding the hordes of day-trippers. The toilets were not fragrant, despite the nomenclature of the spot itself, but they were clean, and the seats were free of the tell-tale footprints that indicate squatting rather than sitting. Barely anyone gave me, an obvious foreigner, a second glance. In contrast, there was a time in 2002 when a cyclist fell off his bike in his shock at having spotted dark-skinned me walking along a road in the outskirts of Beijing.

So how had the Chinese been pacified/disciplined/habituated to ways of behaviour that went so against their until-very-recent, loophole-finding, chaos-shuffling, phlegm-expectorating deportment in public spaces?

The answer, as answers to sociological questions invariably are, is multipronged.

Some of it is more money. As people become richer, their etiquette “upgrades” to match their material circumstances. The per capita income of Beijingers in 2025, was approximately USD 13,000. Twenty years earlier, in 2005, it had been five times less at USD2,600. There is a classic progression from survival norms as the de facto setting of people’s psyches, towards bourgeois self-regulation, as incomes increase and a new middle class with reputational stakes is formed. At certain income levels people start to care about more than just getting by in a dog-eat-dog world. Concerns like refinement and the social scrutiny of others begin to takes their place in the ontology of the city dweller.

What has unfolded over the last two decades in the larger Chinese cities is a temporally compressed process of urbanization. This is not just about the mass movement of people from rural to urban areas, but a settling into of urban norms. Large parts of Beijing twenty years ago were essentially agglomerations of urban villages: a phenomenon that is familiar to anyone who knows contemporary Indian cities. In the forms of address and dress, the sociology of public space where the communal trumped the individual, the rules that governed interpersonal interactions-based on assumptions of reciprocity rather than abstract concepts of civic space, there is a long phase in the process of urbanization when the village lingers in the city. In the larger of China’s metropoles this phase is speeding towards completion, and with it we see the concomitant transformation of people’s “software” to a more urban iteration.

And then of course, the hardware influences software directly. A beautiful street with ample dustbins will automatically promote less littering. Better toilets, broad roads, clean waterways, tree-lined public spaces shape behaviour, encouraging people to interact with and use them in more respectful, considered ways. One of the most noticeable physical differences between the Beijing of today and the one I knew in the oughties is the greenery. Targeted afforestation between 2012 and the early 2020s, saw the city add 2.19 million mu of green space— roughly the size of 219 Olympic Forest Parks, with the addition of 103 million trees. The look and feel of public space is an important determinant of how people behave within it.

A final, and crucial, piece of the puzzle in the software upgrade of Beijingers is increased surveillance. China’s capital today is bathed in cameras, a substantial proportion of which went up during COVID to ensure compliance with pandemic-era rules and were never disabled. From traffic intersections to subway stations, public parks and random points along the urbanscape, the panopticon of surveillance cameras is a pervasive fact of city life. According to some estimates (there are no official ones), larger cities in China have 370-odd cameras per 1,000 people. The cold fact is that big city life in China is unfolds within an environment where every infraction is potentially recorded, so that people anticipate being observed. Surveillance may not have created civic behaviour—urban norms were already emerging because of improved material circumstances and better infrastructure—but it certainly results in a degree of self-policing and consequently, less behavioural slippage in public spaces. People often revert to “bad” but “easy” habits, like littering or spitting, when they think no one is watching. But in a city like Beijing the cameras ensure a sense that someone is always watching, regardless of whether this is fact or not.

None of this should be read to mean that China has morphed into a nation-sized team of synchronized swimmers. There is still enough ongoing chaos, shuffling, rule-bending—and yes, spitting—to enable someone like me, who has returned to the country after a 17-year-long break, to orient themselves. On a recent weekend, the display beds in IKEA’s flagship store in Beijing were reassuringly filled with nappers, à la 2005. Pajama couture remains haute fashion in the older, hutong neighbourhoods. Exploring the city on a bicycle, as I do almost daily, is reassurance that the Taoist spirit is alive and kicking in the Middle Kingdom. In the world of the Beijing bicyclist, Cartesian logic never held much truck. The way of the Tao is intuitive and profound, with little time for illusory trifles like zebra crossings and one-way roads, security cameras be damned.

The Chinese, I would conclude, are natural loophole-finders rather than rule-followers in the Japanese vein. They are Taosits trapped in Confucian bodies, engaged in a constant acrobatic act between their individualistic, jugaad-oriented instincts, and the order-seeking, paternalistic diktats that they are also culturally conditioned to obey —a tendency reinforced by massive surveillance.

There has certainly been a software upgrade in civic behaviour, but it’s an upgrade with Chinese characteristics.

Until soon,

Pallavi

Leave a comment

Follow The China Chronicle and Andrew Singer on Social Media: LinkedIn and Instagram.

As I get ready to return to China next week, today’s issue spotlights the jade burial suit of a Liang King, son of an emperor, that I encountered at the Henan Museum in Zhengzhou last year. I cannot wait to see what new-to-me discoveries await during this China trip.

Share The China Chronicle

Jade in China embodies the essence of heaven and earth (天地之精). It has long been revered. Confucius held jade in high esteem, noting that among its attributes are benevolence, propriety, intelligence, and morality.

With such a position in ancient society, it is not surprising that jade was used in elite burial rituals from time immemorial. Jade bi discs, cong tubes, amulets, pendants, necklaces, and axes were placed with, on, in, and under the body for protection from decay and to accompany the deceased in the afterlife. All of this jade was also intended to protect that part of a person’s soul that remains on earth after death. Evil spirits had to be kept at bay.

Jade face covers were used early on. Pieces of jade sewn into clothing of the decreased were added later. Full jade burial suits were the final extension of this practice. When more complete suits began being used, silk thread was initially used before transitioning in the early Han Dynasty to full suits threaded with gold, silver, and copper wire depending on the deceased’s rank.

Jade burial suits were the perfect fit for a thriving Han Dynasty that witnessed expanded and more complex burial protocols and tomb construction. These were attempts at harnessing jade’s power, at seeking immortality. They were status symbols.

The body’s nine orifices within the outer suit were themselves covered and/or plugged with jade. Proof of this came from a Han tomb in what is now North Korea. Art historian Osvald Siren had this to say in 1929 about the body found in situ:

“The eyes had been covered with two elliptical leaves; the nostrils had been stopped with two octagonal pieces; a couple of similar pieces had been placed in the ears; a cicada-shaped piece of jade had been laid on the tongue; the rectum had been stopped by an oblong, flattened plug. A round sculptured reclining bear was held in one hand. A pi [bi] placed under the back or on the chest. Beside the corpse lay the sword equipped with a scabbard buckle and belt fittings of jade.”1

Jade burial suits were intricate and elaborate, time consuming, and incredibly expensive even for royalty. In fact, the labor and cost required to make them were so great that the practice did not survive the end of the Han Dynasty (202 BC-220 AD). Subsequent Dynasties banned them. About two dozen have been unearthed so far.

This jade suit was designed for a Liang King and interred deep within a rocky mountain in Eastern Henan Province sometime between 206 BC and 25 AD. The suit consists of twelve interlocking pieces. The preparation time for both tomb and suit were measured in years, maybe decades.

The following is my theory of one of the early to-do checklists when one became a Liang King:

1. Begin excavating burial chamber complex in the family mountain cemetery region;

2. Obtain a large supply of jade rocks (not nephrite from the northwest, but Xiuyan jade from the northeast, which today is more commonly accepted as serpentine) and then begin cutting, grinding, shaping, drilling, and polishing thousands of small, mostly rectangular jade plaques;

3. Sew the head, torso, arms, hands, legs, and feet already sized for the future occupant with, in this case, gold wire through the small holes bored through the four corners of each plaque; and

4. Hope everything is complete and in order before death arrives.

The eight peaks of the Mangdang Mountains in Yongcheng City of eastern Henan Province, almost 500 miles east of the then Han capital at Chang’an (now Xi’an), were where the Liang Kings chose to build their tombs. The expansive Yongcheng City region (think a county) is also where my wife spent her formative years growing up more than nineteen centuries later.

This jade suit was buried at Xishan Mountain. Here, untold thousands of laborers spent their productive years chiseling out a palatial stone burial chamber complex deep within the body of the mountain. Though the tomb was robbed in times gone by, stunning artifacts were still found during excavations in 1986, including the dusty and collapsed piles of more than 2,000 small jade plaques that make up the now restored jade burial suit.

The Book of Rites, Liji, one of the five classics of Confucianism, summarizes the honor of jade, in part, as having “purity of soul in its rarity and immaculateness, eternity in its durability, [and] moral leadership in the way in which it passes from hand to hand and remains without a blemish.”2 This is what the members of the Han Imperial Family were attempting to capture when they were buried in full suits of jade.

Leave a comment

Follow The China Chronicle and Andrew Singer on Social Media: LinkedIn and Instagram.

According to Dr. Benjamin Wang (Stanford University), the debate in China today is not about China catching up with the world, but rather about China “bringing its own sense of the world [to the world], not slotting into the western sense of the world.”

Global academics and intellectuals recently presented and debated social and political theory in China at the 2026 Telos-Paul Piccone Institute China Initiative Conference, “The Chinese New Leviathan: Cultural Subjectivity and Statecraft Today.” The goal of the two-day forum in New York City was to further explore and discern what makes modern China tick.

I came away from the Conference with Three Awarenesses:

• First, of the nature of Chinese nationalism and civilizational discourse;

• Second, of the tricky eddies of language and meaning; and

• Third, of the essentiality of dialogue and collaboration.

Chinese Nationalism and Civilizational Discourse (Awareness One)

The Chinese Communist Party promotes nationalism and civilizational discourse with spirited institutional vigor. Five thousand years of Chinese civilization. Confucianism is our proud legacy. Love our country. Love Socialism. Love the Party. These are to be cultivated.

The debate over the nature of the Chinese state, of its modern nationalism, blossoms from this golden heritage. The status of civilization brings gravitas, connects dots over millennia, provides comfort and security in the memory of longevity. The practical benefits of Love of Socialism and Love of Party seem clear for those who govern: Legitimacy. Power. Control.

In China, concepts from centuries before Christ breathe strong. The Great Unity (Da Yitong 大一统). The World Under Heaven (Tianxia 天下). These are treasured philosophical ideas. They envision a global approach to statecraft, something more ancient than the Westphalian nation-state international system. There is an aspirational focus on good governance and taking care of all, a sense of wider community. Harmony and relationships predominate as motivator and method.

Da Yitong and Tianxia were joined in the early 20^th Century with Cosmopolitanism (Shijie Zhuyi 世界主义) and evolving concepts of Nationalism (Minzu Zhuyi 民族主义). The former envisions a global order grounded in the ethics of a world community. In a China that loves slogans, the latter now calls for burying the Century of Humiliation (百年国耻) to achieve National Rejuvenation (民族复兴) and the Chinese Dream (中国梦) while promoting a Community of Common Destiny for Mankind (人类命运共同体). Independence, self-determination, pride, control of own destiny and identity. These are very relatable ideals.

Share The China Chronicle

Language and Meaning (Awareness Two)

I have studied Mandarin for four decades and still I struggle with the cultural, literary, and historical references that are peppered throughout as metaphor (idioms and proverbs) framing thought and unlocking richer meaning. The Conference illuminated that the same phenomenon exists within the expression of language and thought in philosophy and academia.

There are baselines that connect speakers with listeners. Without the background context and history, who said what, why, and how the same have been critiqued, debated, and analyzed over time, meaning is clouded, misunderstandings can easily proliferate, knowledge and communication are hampered. The analogy of these risks to other situations, e.g., business and politics, immediately came top of mind.

When Leviathan and the role of sovereign were raised, everyone else knew intuitively that Thomas Hobbes pronounced his theory of autocracy to prevent chaos 375 years ago and how R.G. Collingwood and Carl Schmitt in the 20^th Century and others before and after had and have their own interpretations and reinterpretations on the nature of civilization and models of statecraft. From these, they based their papers, tested theories, and argued, defended, and possibly amended positions.

Listening to panelists discuss Leviathan’s application to China and where that took the discussion, I know I missed subtext because so much of the deeper conversation was Greek to me. It reinforced in my mind that common lexicons, or at a minimum an appreciation of the differences between lexicons, are vital.

Subscribe now

Dialogue and Collaboration (Awareness Three)

This one should be basic, though it seems increasingly like a lost art. Talking and thinking and interaction among diverse peoples and ideologies matter. Those gathered at the Conference were professors, postdocs, PhD candidates, Masters students, think tankers, and me. From China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Australia, Italy, England, Hungary, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Canada, and America. These are people earnest in exploring how the world does, can, and might see China, while reflecting critically on what the Western tradition can (and cannot) bring to the analytical table.

It took me until late on the second day to begin asking questions during vibrant post-panel Q&A sessions. I can discuss Chinese thinkers and the Hundred Schools of Thought of the Warring States Period with a modicum of intelligence [see On Being Chinese]. However, discussing them with experts and within the framework of Collingwood, Schmitt, and Hobbes was initially a tad intimidating.

Sharing takes many forms, from the academic to the entertaining. My dinner companions on Friday night were the Deputy Director of the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore and philosophy professors from Chang Jung Christian University in Taiwan and the University of Colorado. A good part of the amiable conversation touched on issues that do not arise at my kitchen table, namely, travel budgets, research opportunities, how philosophy is taught and received. Dialogue. Connections.

Conclusion

Nationalism fueled by civilizational discourse is powerful. It can be used for good. It can spiral out of control and lead to something bad. In the words of one Conference attendee, “nationalism is emotional mobilization.”

I end a discussion of an academic conference focused on philosophical questions of social and political theory with more questions. Is the choice for China Leviathan or Behemoth? Who frames and is allowed to participate in the debate? Is hegemony among states a truism of humanity? Can traditions seemingly so disparate as China and the West have a collective future of peace?

Leave a comment

Follow The China Chronicle and Andrew Singer on Social Media: LinkedIn and Instagram.

China today is a reinvigorated successor to its “Hundred Schools of Thought” ancestors. Though China defies easy labeling, the melded legacy of the early Confucians and Legalists courses through Chinese society. We see this in statements such as that of Chinese leader Xi Jinping above and his overseeing of strict rule of law for the populace.

Part Two On Being Chinese discusses how the philosophical debates of the early Chinese years have translated to the China of the twentieth and now twenty-first centuries, focused on governance.

Share The China Chronicle

The prime goals of the early years of Chinese philosophical thought for governance of person and nation remain the same more than 2,000 years later: Order. Order. Order.

The instability of the Warring States Period before 221 BCE, the collapse of Chinese power and prestige during the Nineteenth Century (the beginning of the so-called Hundred Years of Humiliation), and the travails of Maoist China in the mid-Twentieth all highlight this overarching aspiration.

Proponents of the main early schools, Confucians, Daoists, Mohists, and Legalists, each wanted this. Terms such as harmony, peace, and stability have long been common in China. They are metaphors for order. They foreshadow that the ultimate measure of good governance in China to this day is positive outcome, not process.

What is harmony in the Chinese context? According to Professor Daniel A. Bell,

“What Confucians mean by harmony, in contrast [to the West}, is a dynamic process in which diverse elements are brought into a mutually balancing and cooperatively evolving concept that involves adaptation to new situations….Harmony then refers not simply to the absence of conflict, hatred, and resentment but also to something more positive, namely a feeling of commonality and commitment among the diverse parts of the relationship.”2

China’s focus on harmonious outcomes may be the most significant point of dissonance with that of governance in America. While we object to the results of this in China when it conflicts with our ideals, and not discounting that there are those in China who are themselves not satisfied, such governance is how China has managed its enormous population and complex society for-almost-ever. I do not see it fundamentally changing.

Running China

Since the Han Dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), as China has expanded and contracted, shifted and settled, the country has been governed by a ruling system that has been on the one hand authoritarian (Legalist) and on the other hand generally guided by the ideal of virtuous and moral leadership by example (Confucian).

The ideal portion was discarded for much of the Twentieth Century by the newly-established Chinese Communist Party after it began the struggle of leading a collapsed China toward the new, self-directed, harmonious future envisioned by its founders. This was most spectacularly in evidence during Mao Zedong’s rule of China from 1949-1976 when he expressly and energetically attempted (and ultimately failed) to destroy all things Confucian and traditional in China.

Promotion of the ideal at the political level (it was never truly abandoned in the hearts of the Chinese people) has returned with a vengeance since then alongside the Legalist framework.

Rule of Law Plus

The Legalism heritage of Han Feizi seems straightforward. Under it, people are inherently bad and must be controlled strictly. By itself this would not auger well for compassionate authoritarianism. The Qin Dynasty (221-206 BCE) is generally held up as the poster child in this regard. In fact, the development of this School of Thought was initially viewed as anathema to Confucians for two related reasons. First, reliance on enacted codes and laws would supplant the higher moral calling of leadership by example. Second, the result of reason number one would be poorer governance and a risk to harmony.

One of the ancient Confucian Guodian texts notes that “it is only through a match between words and deeds that the ruler can establish trustworthiness in the people….The people might be led to avoid committing wrongs through political orders and punishments, but it is only through the education of virtue and the cultivation of ritual…that they are motivated to behave well on their own initiative.”3

China has long promoted meritocracy in governance at all levels below the hereditary top.4 Successful candidates in the Imperial Examination System filled government offices in the past. Today, China’s eventual Communist leaders work their way up the system in various technical and substantive posts around the country, first gaining many years of experience, connections, and support.

So, although authoritarian rule is a hallmark of the Xi Jinping government, at the same time, the government takes pains to stress the Confucian ideal, to promote moral and virtuous leadership. Whether this is done because it is sincerely believed or because it sounds good or both, it is well received as policy and approach because it accords with the cultural heart of the people. They want it to be true.

Nature of Man

Is the nature of man inherently good or evil? In Part One, I accepted that the choice is binary and wrote that the Confucian Xunzi saw man’s nature as evil. After exchanging emails with Professor Bell, I realize that this characterization was incorrect. There is a more nuanced middle ground, one epitomized by Xunzi that I believe is appropriate.

Xunzi wrote that we are neither necessarily good or evil, but we are “prone to self interest and the unlimited pursuit of desires,….”5 “[Xunzi] points out that man is born with desires, and necessarily seeks to satisfy his desires, yet without proper measures and standards to guide his search, inevitably there will be conflict and disorder. Ritual is just the measure to guide the proper satisfaction of desires.”6

When the Chinese government promotes the virtues, morality, and ethics of Confucian philosophy, they are seeking to tap into this. They are hoping to tamp down and shape those bad desires and self-interests in a modern context.

Corruption

Notwithstanding the Confucian ideal, corruption has long been a bane of China. The gift-giving nature of Chinese relationship culture can easily spiral out of control. Abuses of position, taking advantage, and looking out for oneself and relations to the detriment of others are examples of self-interest run amok and demonstrate lack of Confucian virtue.

Xi’s China has witnessed relentless anti-corruption campaigns since he came to power in 2012-2013. The first campaign (“Hunting Tigers and Swatting Flies”) was aimed at both high and low-level governmental offenders. Most recently, there have been large-scale purges in the Chinese military, including almost ALL of the top leadership. In a speech to military and public safety delegates at the National People’s Congress earlier this month, President Xi stated that “There must be no one in the military who harbors disloyalty to the party, and there must be no place to hide for corrupt elements.“7

These campaigns serve two goals. The first upholds the ideal of moral leadership. Government officials should be models. They should act honorably for the benefit of society in order to bring harmony and stability to China. At the same time, these campaigns enforce loyalty to the paramount leader in the survivors.

Moral leadership. Follow the law. Citizen buy-in. This is China’s continued approach to providing order in society.

Leave a comment

Follow The China Chronicle and Andrew Singer on Social Media: LinkedIn and Instagram.

This 2,300-year-old statement by Mencius, second only to Confucius in the Confucian pantheon, would have been relatable, yet not, to Daoists Laozi and Zhuangzi who believed that the Way of nature is balanced. This distinction is representative of the freewheeling philosophical “Hundred Schools of Thought” discourse for hearts and minds that blossomed in the Chinese heartland during the half millennium preceding Jesus Christ’s birth.

Share The China Chronicle

This was a time seething with violence, instability, and a desperate longing for harmony and meaning in China. A cauldron of rival kingdoms continually battled for control of real estate and more throughout both the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods (770-476 BCE and 476-221 BCE).

While Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were debating virtue, happiness, character, wisdom, and humanity in ancient Greece, luminaries such as Confucius, Mencius, Xunzi, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Han Feizi, and Mozi were themselves engaged in a roving, vigorous conversation about the nature of man, virtue, ethics, morality, and governance some 8,000 kilometers to the east.

Over the course of this lengthy run-up to China becoming united by the short-lived Qin Dynasty (221-206 BCE), these citizen philosophers roamed the land, the disparate Warring States, offering their thoughts and guidance to any leaders who would listen. Nothing was as yet settled on being Chinese. Anything was possible.

A vast, liberating discussion ensued on the interplay of Morality, Ethics, and Virtue; on the place of Righteousness, Benevolence, and Humanity; on engaging in Ritual and Education and developing Wisdom; on the Way. This period of questioning and answering and searching was ultimately norm setting in defining what it meant to be Chinese and in launching China on its long journey to today.

Chinese philosophers wanted the same thing. In the face of a disintegrating feudal society, they yearned for a more stable, harmonious China. They were looking to establish the foundation of a well-governed society.

They did not agree on how best to get there. They offered their own, occasionally overlapping, methods for moving forward. The differences were not just between various schools of thought, but often within the same school of thought. China was struggling to become China.

Is man’s nature good or evil? Are men equal in standing or innately divided? Are humans meant to operate up individually and collectively within social or natural frameworks or must they be directed from above? The answers to these questions shaped the beliefs among the Hundred Schools of Thought.

At their most basic, we can say that early

• Confucianism (Confucius, Mencius, Xunzi) emphasized the measured primacy of benevolence and righteousness for achieving an ethical order guided by following regulating ritual and defined hierarchies.

• Daoism (Laozi and Zhuangzi) promoted a more mystical following of the Way of nature, seeking individual accord and harmony with the natural patterns of the world as the basis of living.

• Legalism (Han Feizi) counted man as evil and advocated a rigid, law-and-order society governed by an absolute leader enforcing strict and expansive laws.

• Mohism (Mozi) was the most Woodstockian of the beliefs arguing for universal love and to live for today with neither gimmick nor war.

Subscribe now

The debates of the era were fluid. Confucius followed the Way, albeit within his framework of social order based on ritual that generally did not accord with the Daoist view. Other Confucian adherents espoused beliefs at odds with each other that affected how they would implement Confucianism.

Mencius believed in the goodness of people; Xunzi (similar to Han Feizi in the Legalist School) saw man as evil. Xunzi was more of a realist than Mencius. He viewed man’s emotions and nature as being in inevitable conflict with the Confucian ideals of his predecessors. Though Buddhism had not yet found its way to China, Xunzi’s reflections on the intersection of man’s desires and the creation of conflict and suffering have a distinctly Buddhist-feel to them.

Mencius noted that “the governor existed for the sake of the governed.”2 Rulers had an ethical and moral responsibility towards their subjects. Han Feizi argued for the hammer of law to control our base tendencies. Xunzi, on the other hand, proposed strict education in etiquette and ritual to train ourselves to overcome those same base tendencies. Mozi was also pragmatic, though nonetheless likely aghast at both Han and Xunzi.

How did effective governance finally come to a united China? Did one School win?

The Legalist School emerged triumphant when the Qin Kingdom defeated its six rivals and ended the Warring States Period in 221 BCE. The new Qin Dynasty, however, fell quickly after its charismatic leader died a decade later.

A melding of Schools then took hold in the subsequent Han Dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE). The Han is today seen as the most formative Dynasty in China’s Imperial Era. It was then that a de facto combination of a more centralized, authoritarian rule (Legalist-like yet Confucian too), with a hierarchal and ritual-based social compact (Confucian), and a fondness (at least in theory) with nature (Daoism) developed. Buddhism played a significant role later on as well. Mozi was the big loser.

The early pre-Qin Confucian philosophy adopted in Han downplayed coercive governance and instead endorsed governing by being a role model, by setting examples of virtuous, ethical, and thus moral leadership for the people of China.

One ancient text on bamboo strips relates that “‘By honouring virtue and propriety (zun deyi) and having a clear understanding of human relations (min lun), one may serve as ruler.’”3

In a governance dispute between two Han Kings, brothers of the sixth emperor of the Dynasty, the elder retorted to his brother that “‘The King of Chung-shan [his younger brother Prince Liu Sheng] fritters away his days in sensual gratification instead of assisting the Son of Heaven [the Emperor] to bring order to the common people. How can someone like that be called a ‘bastion of the throne’?’”4

As his mortality became more apparent, the great Han Wudi, seventh emperor of Han, wrote a letter to his son and heir: “Crown Prince, you should be a benevolent ruler, paying attention to the needs of ordinary people, reducing their burden of taxation, protecting talented people, staying close to the great thinkers, being a model for all to follow, respecting your ancestors…striving to uphold the mandate of heaven you will inherit….”5

The message was clear: Be the type of leader you would want if you were being led.

The Hundred Schools of Thought were wide-ranging, and the above cannot but scratch the surface. It is, for example, silent on the central acceptance of the vital connection between Heaven and Earth (Man), as well as on the importance of music in manifesting the philosophical ideas championed herein.

Part Two will discuss how the philosophical debates of these early years have translated to the China of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Leave a comment

Follow The China Chronicle and Andrew Singer on Social Media: LinkedIn and Instagram.

The Chunyun travel rush during the extended holiday period in China is gravitational. To the tune of 9.5 billion trips being made across and around the country. Workers returning in droves from the cities to their hometowns. Students eager to see mom and dad, grandma and grandpa. Friends reconnecting. Young and old attending vibrant celebrations of colorful culture and tradition. It is boisterous. Spirits are high.

2026 is not a typical Horse Year. It is the Year of the Fire Horse. This special year happens every sixty years when the zodiac animal reunites with its original element (there are twelve animals and five elements). The last Fire Horse Year was in 1966. Six decades ago. One elemental cycle complete. Most of us will only live such an experience once.

Astrologically, this new year will be both auspicious and challenging. Passions will be heightened. Emotions will be running hot. Fire energy is not subtle.

This year is personal to me. I am a Fire Horse. I grew up as a Horse. I stack up favorably against several Horse traits. Independent? Yes. Intense? Oh yes. Adventurous? Absolutely. Confident? Not infrequently. Charismatic? Let’s not get carried away.

But there is a wrinkle.

A BIG one.

One I did not realize until I reached college.

And one I have basically ignored since then.

I was born in calendar year 1966. But before the Lunar New Year. Which means that technically, astrologically, officially, I am not a Fire Horse. I am a Wood Snake.

Now, don’t get me wrong. the Snake qualities of being wise, strategic, compassionate, and graceful are enticing. The thing is, though, I do not think of myself as a Snake. I just don’t.

I feel at home being a Horse. And a Fire Horse to boot. It fits.

So, as dumplings are wrapped and boiled, people gather with family and friends, laughs and stories are shared, red packets of gift money are sent digitally and handed out, and wishes for good fortune and health abound, here’s to a

Happy Year of the Fire Horse!

Share The China Chronicle

Leave a comment

Follow The China Chronicle and Andrew Singer on Social Media: LinkedIn and Instagram.’

“A successful society is one that is supported by a majority of the people.”

This comment during a recent conversation led us down a new path. I would add that a successful society is also one in which the people are proud, confident, and satisfied with their place in the world.

By this metric, the People’s Republic of China is currently more successful as a society than the United States of America. In other words, China is doing something right by a majority of its people; America is not.

Chinese society, led by a government we demonize that is anchored on a political system that scares us silly, is more supported by its citizens than is American society by Americans.

Why would a people support their government? First, a reflection. No government enjoys universal support. It will do things right; it will do things horribly. Societies stratify and threats abound. Governments always face complex issues that are difficult to manage and may be impossible to resolve and could (and repeatedly have) become domestically existential.

The above notwithstanding, today’s Chinese government by many measures functions at a high level for its people and the nation:

• It provides infrastructure.

• It promotes policies to protect the environment and enhance quality of life.

• It prevents extreme poverty.

• It supports education and healthcare.

• It encourages and funds economic and technological research, development, and advancement.

• Streets are clean and safe. Crime is low. Homelessness is not a crisis.

• Daily life is mostly peaceful. Hope is still on the agenda.

The quid pro quo in China is a government that demands loyalty. A government that surveils. A government that dictates and enforces policies in a command and control manner. If one lives within the strictures of the system, life is good. If one disobeys or breaks with the system, the penalties are swift and substantial. And yet,

Most Chinese look at their nation with pride. The country has risen from its status as a tiny player in world governance five decades ago to now be one of the two most powerful players on the planet. There is a robust state capitalist economic system that has created a wealthy class, a large (if for the moment battered) middle class, and a lower class that has by and large not been abandoned to its own devices. China continues to advance as a global trading partner, a consistent and increasingly trusted peer to much of the world, and potentially a future international power broker.

Share The China Chronicle

On this side of the Pacific, it is not a stretch to argue that every single measure listed above about China is diametrically the opposite here. The government is barely functioning. Society is being ripped apart by culture and economic wars. Few (of any political party or leaning) support the direction of the country. Physical and emotional infrastructure is collapsing. Hope is in short, if not nonexistent, supply. We bully and alienate. Now, because America has been so strong and so powerful for so long, the country remains wealthy and continues to operate from a position of (declining) strength. The question is for how long.

China advocates a glowing, coherent image of its historical narrative that is harnessed to reach new national heights. America cannot agree on what our history is, and this undermines our present and future. Each country believes it is exceptional, but each is veering in seemingly opposite directions. I do not count the U.S.A. out, nor state unequivocally that China will surmount the pole. However, at the present time, by the measure of its citizens’ satisfaction, China as a successful society is eating our lunch.

Leave a comment

Follow The China Chronicle and Andrew Singer on Social Media: LinkedIn and Instagram.

These questions keep coming to mind lately. Maybe because I have now entered my seventh decade of life. So, I am stepping aside for a moment from the onslaught of daily news fraught with unrelenting disquiet. Pondering briefly the self in culture and belief on the long and winding road of life. What of the individual in the Confucian and Buddhist traditions of China?

Don’t buy the hype. The individual plays a starring role in these Chinese philosophical and religious practices.

We often hear that “China is a Confucian country based on collective harmony and order.” This is the default counterpoint to “America is a country based on individualism and free expression (as we revel in its disorder).” It implies that there is no I in China, only us, and that this is bad.

There are indeed truths in these statements, but they are also misleading, or should be. Collective. Individual. Mutually exclusive. Compatible. It is not so simple.

Confucianism and Buddhism in China are ancient. One developed in the central Chinese heartland some twenty-five centuries ago. The other migrated in over the Silk Road from what are now India and Nepal almost twenty centuries ago shortly after Jesus Christ was roaming the world.

Where does the individual (I) come into play in a Confucian heritage that can superficially be seen to suppress the self to the service of society?

When we talk of Confucianism in the West, what comes to our minds is generally the later Song Dynasty systematic re-interpretation of the original. This more rigid Neo-Confucianism began flourishing 1500 years after Confucius died. The self was key here to achieving an ethical and moral society.

To a Neo-Confucianist, a good person is one who acts in a socially conscious and responsible manner. Each person is charged with learning his true nature, cultivating his moral self, and engaging in ethical conduct. A goal is to “overcome the selfishness of human desires.” The individual has a duty to the wider community, and the good individual acts on that duty. The above is accomplished in part by “doing what is right because it is the right thing to do.”

Jumping back to c 500-250 BCE, early Confucianism was a looser set of guidance promoted by Confucius and his successors. The goal was for the individual to be a good and humane person and thereby promote a better society. To do this, the individual was encouraged to be in tune with those around him, strive to relate to others, understand others, and work to support them. Individuals were the bricks of community, and the society built with these bricks was stronger, more harmonious, and more humane not only for being built and supported together but also for having higher quality bricks. This philosophical principle lives on in the Chinese consciousness today.

Yet we still have to deal with those pesky base desires that trap us, limit us, demand attention. Confucianism calls on the I’s to break free of their respective desires in order to be able to act in the best interests of the wider We. Following prescribed ritual is the path to self-cultivation, to bringing about personal goodness, humaneness, and ultimately a better world.

Confucius’ Doctrine of the Middle Way encapsulates this philosophy of avoiding extremes to achieve harmony in the complicated, conflicting world that is humanity. The individual is central to the community, but not more important than it. If the goal of Confucianism is for individuals to better society, then America is anything but Confucian. We are suffocating in individual desires, insecurities, and hubris. Empathy is lost. We live by extremes. There is no harmony. When the individuals in a society do not agree on what the right thing to do is, how can they do right as a group?

The individual is fundamental to Buddhism as well. It is not the same, though, as the express linkage in the Confucian instruction that a person becomes good by working to better the self in order to better the community. Rather, the Buddhist goal is to cultivate oneself to realize the true nature of the world and nurture one’s place in it and the self in a more positive, fulfilling way. The fact that this will also benefit the community is an added plus.

Buddhism teaches that suffering exists in life, that desire and ignorance cause suffering, and that individuals have the ability within themselves to achieve release from this cycle of causes and effects. Where Confucianism has its ritual to be a good person, Buddhism has its Eight-Fold Path to individual enlightenment. Study, belief, compassion, and ethical living are once again essential ingredients of self.

Buddhism is an internal and demanding cultivation of the self. An integral part of this is calming the mind. It is an affirmative, individual step that calls for training and repetition. While lifelong, dedicated meditation is the gold standard, any scheduled disengaging from the always-on world of social media, news, doomscrolling, and worries to seek contemplative quiet will also help. The individual is ultimately in charge of seeking and finding space within to let him or herself better process and cope with tumultuous life and inevitable death.

Share The China Chronicle

Some fictional, spiritual and practical advice for the individual that is no less real or relevant for its creation:¹

“Don’t look at people by their category--gender, race, social standing, age--but relate to them inside-to-inside, soul-to-soul, from and to that place where we’re so much more alike than different.”

“…give up the crutch of having a plan….[We can make] all the plans we want, [but] we can never really know what will happen a month, a week, or even a few seconds in the future….”

“‘…when you meditate, when you go past the words, when you see that everything in words is metaphor for something bigger, then you have the whole big space to go around….[W]hen you die, if you know this other part, this absolute, this energy, then it is not so scary, dying. Maybe you understand the bigger you then, and when the little you dies it will be not so hard….’”

For me the mental clatter of my monkey mind is incessant. I tried through Qigong practice for several years to empty my thoughts, to concentrate on my qi, to slow down the processes of the world. Once, maybe twice, for a couple heartbeats, I may have felt the clarity of silence, only to be whisked away in the next deep breath. Knowing the path is easy; following the path is not.

Thus, I close with the words of Carl Spackler in Caddyshack. After providing the Dalai Lama with a service (a Himalayan looper), his caddy was blessed by the Tibetan spiritual leader with this: “…when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness. ‘So I got that goin’ for me, which is nice.’” You go, Carl.

Leave a comment

Notes

¹ My thoughts in this article have been guided in part by Roland Merullo’s four-book series, Breakfast with Buddha, Lunch with Buddha, Dinner with Buddha, and Dessert with Buddha; the Harvard X Online Course “China Humanities: The Individual in Chinese Culture;” and Donia Zhang’s January 2026 article, “Qufu City and Confucian Architecture,” in the Athens Journal of Architecture.

Follow The China Chronicle and Andrew Singer on Social Media: LinkedIn and Instagram.

Information = Power = Control.

Data legitimacy in China flows from the State. In Chinese healthcare this involves obtaining, storing, processing, and managing intimate and comprehensive information about each and every person. Insurance, medicine, preventative care, hospital stays, treatment, and follow-up are all linked. Such information amassed at scale is power. Effective management of this information is control.

In the view of the Chinese government, the principal duty of political leadership is exercising dominant control for the benefit of the people as a whole (in the healthcare sphere and beyond). Social harmony is the principal end goal. The community trumps the individual.

From this metric, the Chinese government has succeeded spectacularly over the past four decades. China is healthier. China is richer. China is advanced. China is powerful. Life in China is lightyears beyond what it was at the end of the Mao era.

It is this success and its broad acceptance domestically in China and increasingly in pockets abroad that crash onto American shores like a howling storm surge. In the face of so foreign a governing system, we feel intense political and social agita. We are confused and remain frozen on the wind-whipped shore, unsure of what and how to respond.

I propose three steps in response:

• The first step is recognition. A radically different governance model exists that is coherent and functional even though we neither endorse nor want to adopt it;

• The second step is acknowledgment. This alternative model is attractive to many hundreds of millions of people and should be studied, not simply dismissed or vilified out of hand; and

• The third step, if we get that far, is processing. Are there any aspects of the alternative model that we might want to incorporate here to improve American governance and society?

Subscribe now

Authoritarian. National Security. Public Security. Surveillance.

The above drivers of the Chinese model represent social governance that is menacing to American concepts and definitions of privacy and freedom.

China. China is authoritarian. It is a society that is not afraid of and has long embraced and often thrived with absolute leaders wielding virtually unconstrained power. This is Chinese history with Confucian and Daoist communal cultural contexts. And now, the current Chinese government has accomplished what the West thought impossible. It has fused autocratic leadership with money and technological prowess to unleash incredible growth across Chinese society.

In discussing what she terms “smart authoritarianism,” Professor Jennifer Lind writes in her new book on autocracy in China that the adaptive, agile, innovative system created by the Chinese government depends on “good information—about what’s going on in the world, about technology, about strategies of control.”

China is an enormous place in terms of geography, population, and urban v. rural divides. Organizing, managing, and effectively operating an effective national healthcare system is a herculean enterprise. AI, HI, and a combination of both make it run.

As Dr. Ruby Wang notes, “China’s approach…recognises data as a national security asset,…and sees prioritisation of national control over health information as a core element of public security and governance.”

America. In America, we have been raised on the twin pillars of inviolable individual privacy and absolute individual freedom. The government always takes second place. This is fundamental. Any challenge is framed as existential. Unlike China, the individual trumps the community.

With this as backdrop, how then do we account for the fact that Alexa, Ring, Flock, our cars, and our cellphones enable corporations to listen, watch, and track almost everything we do? In America, data legitimacy is supposed to flow upward from the individual but is increasingly captured by private, if not also governmental, actors. Americans have accepted this silent surveillance voluntarily into our homes, on our bodies, and in our lives with few constraints and less accountability.

It often escapes notice that America appears to be morphing from a Rule of Law nation where every person is to be equal under the same laws no matter their station to a Rule by Law nation where law is used top down by the governing authority for greater control of citizenry. Constitutional provisions we take for granted, i.e., speech, assembly, religion, and privacy, are in substantive ways becoming more symbolic than real.

This article headline from the Indian think tank ORCA strikes me as particularly anathema to Americans’ notion of liberty: “Codifying Compliance: The Social Insurance Law and the Future of Health Citizenship in China.”

Nothing is more frightening to us than the idea of an all-encompassing digital presence dictated by a national government (or maybe tech giants). We see only negatives. Our digital footprints will determine whether we are denied or provided access to medicine and treatment, whether we receive rewards or are punished, and whether we are able to live lives of comfort or distress. The loss of control of self, whether as an ideal or an actuality, cannot be tolerated. And yet, it is happening.

Share The China Chronicle

Back to China. On the other hand, every Chinese person alive today in China has lived their entire life in this other system, with different history, different reality, and today a seemingly different trajectory.

In the prior, analog twentieth-century world, Chinese society was organized on ever smaller local communities, not the individual. Monitors watched their districts, information was collected, control was maintained (with glaring exceptions like the Cultural Revolution). In the hi-tech world, things have not really changed so much as they have been modernized and made hyper efficient.

What has been the outcome of the surveillance state in this new age?

Two, young Chinese who are allowed to be active on social media outside the Great Firewall argue that China has freedom that Americans cannot fathom. Specifically, Li Jingjing and Eric Nan Nie extol how ubiquitous surveillance and a well-controlled society enable Chinese people to live without fear. Lack of crime, no mass shootings, clean and peaceful streets, affordable basic healthcare, rising living standards, longer life expectancies. Freedom to them is safety and stability. Freedom to them is a bright future of confidence and potential.

Now, Jingjing and Eric are open to critique for soft-pedaling the harsh downsides of such a controlling society. The tradeoffs in China are that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one, often with brutal-to-our-sensibilities results to minority groups and individuals. Nevertheless, the message that control leads to security, that security is protection not oppression, and that the Chinese government has delivered tangible benefits for its citizens resonates and is endorsed widely by the masses in China.

What of the future?

The United States is frightened that China is winning hearts and minds around the world, including (in thoughts and actions if not also by public statements) among powerful interests here at home. Our polity is fractured. American society is teetering on, if not already over, an abyss.

In these perilous times, we need to recognize, acknowledge, and process the positives and negatives of both the American and Chinese models. To survive and prosper, might we not be better served by considering a greater openness to promoting a sense of community in America?

Leave a comment

Follow The China Chronicle and Andrew Singer on Social Media: LinkedIn and Instagram.

(www.marketingtochina.com)

China and Global Health

China is a force to be reckoned with in global healthcare. Being active in global health deepens and enhances China’s ongoing Belt and Road Initiative to increase its economic and political clout beyond its shores. The emphasis is in the Global South, principally Africa, Latin America, and large swaths of Asia -- South and Southeast, which is home to more than 85% of the world’s population!

At a time when the United States has slashed foreign aid, withdrawn from international organizations, and radically reoriented its health efforts worldwide, China has adopted a broader, collegial face as part of its soft power push. In the words of the Executive Director of UNAID, China is positively engaged in “…multilateralism and advancing South-South cooperation, through sharing of technology, innovation, and grant funding in our pursuit of universal health coverage,….”

Share The China Chronicle

It is easy to say that as America pulls back, China is stepping in. Dr. Ruby Wang, of LINTRIS, who I introduced in Part One, believes that this zero-sum formulation is catchy, but superficial. I confess that I am guilty of using this very shorthand and that it is indeed too facile.

China is not just filling a vacuum. No, China is pursuing a long-term, selective strategy to expand its global influence by reshaping the system itself with Chinese interests, norms, and technology as primary. It has found a receptive audience where it counts, becoming the partner of choice for more and more countries. Though America’s lack of interest certainly helps, it is not the principal cause of China’s growth.

A New Approach to Global Healthcare

Since the end of World War II, governmental institutions and nongovernmental organizations, funded by wealthy Western nations, have principally coordinated international health aid. This aid was viewed, at least nominally, as a public good. That world is gone.

In pivoting away from its preeminent role in the prior system, the American government has issued a new call to arms with the America First Global Health Strategy. This new health strategy, which is being rolled out in kind throughout America’s new system of foreign relations, is a bilateral, transactional philosophy that mimics China’s approach of folding health “into trade, infrastructure, diplomacy and power, delivered through a mix of public and private mechanisms” (Wang).

Optics matter:

• The stated aim of the American policy is to implement a “comprehensive vision to make America safer, stronger, and more prosperous.”

• China’s stated aim is to create a “global community of health for all.”

Each wants to change the existing system. America is a bull in a china shop; China is water seeking the path of least resistance. Both can break; the latter can also nourish.

China on the Ground in Africa

So what does China’s global health footprint look like? In Africa, China has long been deeply embedded providing care and training. Chinese Medical Teams of doctors, nurses, and support staff have been operating in successive waves throughout many countries in Africa since the year President John F. Kennedy was assassinated (1963).

Today, Chinese involvement in Africa’s healthcare is extensive. The Chinese government is funding AIDS prevention in South Africa. Chinese-made insulin is set to be produced in Nigeria. A Chinese pharmaceutical company is building an enormous, multi-phased facility to manufacture antimalarial and antibacterial drugs in the Ivory Coast. Chinese medicines, technology, and know-how are being deployed in more than 130 physical hospitals and clinics the Chinese have built in Africa, while digital, remote-first care is also expanding.

The above has been accompanied by a sea change in technology. China now develops, builds, and supplies many cutting edge nuts and bolts for global healthcare. Zak Dychtwald of the Young China Group notes that Chinese firms are not only competing with Western medical device companies. They are setting standards in developing markets. In setting standards, China is shaping the future.

The United States wants to remain involved in Africa for strategic and economic reasons and has announced new, targeted healthcare investments on the continent. It remains an open question whether America can shift the momentum. Color me skeptical. The Chinese are on the ground, building relationships and trust improving the lives of Africans. In the process, they are cementing China as a growing leader in Africa more broadly.

Subscribe now

A realignment in global health is well underway. The old architecture has shattered. The new system is being assembled through global institutions as well as bilateral relationships, local investment, strategic alignment, and infrastructure that appeals to countries weary of the West and who welcome China’s help and in the process adopt China’s systems.

If the U.S. wants to remain a potent force in this arena, the government needs to prove it. China is showing up. China is committing. Its efforts are not universally successful nor free of criticism; however, the message is clear. China is a friend to the Global South. This helps China strengthen its power and influence around the world in meaningful ways that bring practical benefits to billions of people.

Leave a comment

Follow The China Chronicle and Andrew Singer on Social Media: LinkedIn and Instagram.

This series looks at all three. Part One focuses on what is happening inside China. Part Two will explore how China is spreading its healthcare reach internationally. Part Three will look at embedded control and oversight features and why the West may find them troubling.

Subscribe now

(image from www.sandpipercomms.com)

Healthcare in China

China’s healthcare revolution is a whole-of-nation approach where the central government sets the direction and the rest of the country executes. It is an ongoing process that involves repeated experimentation and adaptivity. Policy. Technology. Citizen acceptance. These are the three forces that define China’s rapid healthcare transformation at home.

Policy

A basic question underlies every healthcare debate. What is healthcare? In China, the Communist Party frames it as a right. Care for everyone. There is history in this view stretching from the Party’s roots as a people’s peasant party, and there is political practicality of working to ensure the Party’s continued power. Both matter.

What sets China apart is how the Party has repositioned the debate. Over tea in Cambridge, Dr. Ruby Wang of LINTRIS shared with me that “China has rebranded health as a driver of economic growth.”

A masterstroke. When healthcare becomes part of the engine of national development, people and companies buy into it. It becomes productive and innovative, as well as socially beneficial.

This stands in contrast to our experience in the West. Dr. Wang notes that innovation itself is not the barrier here. Rather, the barrier is that a stew of privacy debates, regulation, procurement silos, and bureaucracy throw up roadblocks. Healthcare has become a political football. Our incentives are out of whack. The Chinese government avoids this by pushing technology and policy in the same direction across the vast nation in a way that now “touch[es] daily life at scale.”

Technology

The system is built on digital infrastructure. Hospitals have seamless online twins providing care. Citizens use QR codes to schedule appointments, check in, receive results, and follow up. AI is used from triage and diagnostics to prevention and treatment. Robotics, machine learning, and large language models are integrated parts of daily practice. Herculean pharmaceutical management and distribution for 1.3+ billion people are organized and processed through a national labeling and coding system.

Hi-tech Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is also part of the system. In Shanghai, writer Andrew Stokols tested an automated health screen at a community center that used TCM readings. It scanned his tongue, produced a report, and sent it to his phone. A doctor later confirmed much of what the machine detected.

Citizen Acceptance

The third force is citizen acceptance. A system can be brilliant in design, but if people refuse to use it, it will collapse. China does not have this problem. Dr. Wang says receptivity to digital participation is high.

Daily life in China already runs through the cellphone. Access to transportation and buildings, food, banking, shopping. Each requires confirming one’s personal data. Notwithstanding that healthcare is ultimately the most intensely personal aspect of life (and death), adding it to citizens’ digital existence is a natural extension.

The Chinese tradition of cultural communality also plays a role. Whether rooted in family and social ethics, the legacy of collectivism or both, the result is a population comfortable with being online if it delivers a tangible benefit.

***

China’s population is diverse. Quality and access to care vary from rural to urban. The expansive, public insurance system has gaps and newer private insurance is uneven. Wealth still buys better care. But the system works. And it is evolving quickly in innovative ways and delivering real improvements in the lives of the people.

For a deeper look at China’s healthcare shift, I recommend Dr. Ruby Wang’s China Health Pulse.

Leave a comment

Follow The China Chronicle and Andrew Singer on Social Media: LinkedIn and Instagram.

Subscribe now

Dragon Screens

Datong Nine Dragon Screen (www.westchinatour.com)

Dragons are powerful creatures in China. Unlike Western tradition, Chinese dragons are good omens. Symbols of authority and strength, protectors and bringers of wealth and good fortune. They live deep in the water and high in the sky connecting heaven and earth in the traditional Chinese Daoist universe.

Imperial dynasties adopted the dragon as a source and mark of power and authority. The emperor was the Dragon Visage who rode in a Dragon Carriage and sat on the Dragon Throne. He wore Dragon Robes and slept in a Dragon Bed. The five-clawed dragon is reserved for the emperor.

Dragon screens are detached, exterior walls that were placed in front of Imperial residences both to project authority as well as ward off misfortune and evil spirits, that can only move in straight lines. Because the number nine represents good fortune and long life, nine dragon screens were the most auspicious. Only a handful remain.

Datong Nine Dragon Screen (photo by author)

In Datong, a north China city, a Nine Dragon Screen from the late fourteenth century survives as the oldest and largest such structure in the country. This Ming Dynasty screen graced the entrance of the prince’s mansion here. Rising twenty-four feet, the dragon screen stretches almost 150 feet and is six feet thick. Ceramic dragons soar between earth and heaven. A green wave rolls along the bottom as it meshes with an expansive blue sky above. Myth and power speak.

Even now, the dragon remains shorthand in China, if not more muted than in the past, for the authority of the state and a belief that power is both inherited and divinely supported yet also earned.

Pagodas

Wenfeng Pagoda, Tianning Temple, Anyang (photo by author)

Pagodas are Buddhist. Buddhism came to China from India a millennium ago and fast became an integral part of Chinese imperial society. It remains a vibrant force in China to this day. Pagodas are ancestors of Indian stupas and are reliquaries for relics of the Buddha. They assumed a Chinese shape and style over the centuries. The central column symbolizes the Buddhist connection between earth and heaven. Pagodas serve(d) as sacred signs that following the path of Buddhist dharma leads to salvation.

Five Pagoda Temple, Beijing (photo by author)

The Five Pagoda Temple in Beijing dates from the early fifteenth century and is a rare, Indian-style, diamond-throne pagoda constructed of brick and marble. Five small pagodas rise from the top. 1,000+ Buddhas, Buddhist symbols, and animals grace the outer walls. An interior hallway allows for passage around the square, central core with four Buddha statues facing the four cardinal directions.

Porcelain Pagoda, Nanjing - “An embassy from the East-India Company” (1665), by Johan Nieuhof

The Temple of Gratitude Pagoda, more famously known as the Porcelain Pagoda in the West, was built in Nanjing during the same general period as the Five Pagoda Temple., It is gone. This was a massive, octagonal structure of multi-colored glazed tiles and white porcelain bricks with a diameter of almost 100 feet. Animals, Buddhist images, and patterns covered its ceramic sides and reflected the sun’s light. More than 125 lamps along its towering body lit the tower at night.

The top three floors of the Porcelain Pagoda were sheared off by lightning in 1801 before being repaired. Fifty-five years later, the tower was first commandeered and then plundered and destroyed during the Taiping Rebellion. A symbol of foreign religion. A strategic resource for the enemy. Part of the past that became no longer desirable for important-at-the-time, political, religious, and cultural reasons.

Pagodas endure as markers of a spiritual tradition that has survived dynasties, rebellions, revolutions, and reinventions, always reshaping itself to the needs of the moment, staying relevant.

Share The China Chronicle

City Walls

Peking City Wall Northwest Corner (Early Twentieth Century)

“Walls, walls, and yet again, walls, form the framework of every Chinese city….There is no real city in China without a surrounding wall, a condition which, indeed, is expressed by the fact that the Chinese use the same word cheng for a city and a city wall.” So said Osvald Siren (1879-1966), a Swedish art historian, in 1924.

Chinese people have employed fortifications for their settlements, villages, towns, and cities for more than 4,000 years. For defensive protection. To control populations. Simple perimeter ditches, low earthen walls, and moats eventually led to wider, taller, and sturdier mounded earthen/stone/rubble barriers. The now familiar, rammed earth walls, often faced with bricks and stones, are synonymous with China. City gates, with and without soaring watch towers, led from the outer walls to the inner walls protecting the elite to the most interior walls enclosing the palace.

North Gate, Xian City Wall (photo by author)

In advance of attacks, food, weapons, and supplies could be relocated inside from the countryside before the gates were sealed. This provided cities with manpower and resources to withstand long assaults and also removed potential resupply sources from the attackers’ grasps. There was a significant downside, however. When crossbows, exploding bombs, fire-launching catapults, battering rams, and cannonballs could not breach defenses, enemy blockades could lead to starvation, depredation, and worse inside the walls.

Beijing’s city walls were intentionally torn down after 1949. Some former city walls have been restored/recreated around the country as cultural attractions. Much of Nanjing’s old city wall remains. Xian’s old city wall has been preserved and is popular with the public.

Modern China no longer builds walls to keep enemies out, but boundaries, enclosures, protections, and controlled gateways continue to serve as governing principles.

***

Dragon screens, pagodas, and city walls tell us something essential about Chinese society. Power announced and respected. Belief that flexes and survives. Boundaries drawn, destroyed, and redrawn to shape the world within. These artifacts echo the past in the China of today.

Leave a comment

Follow The China Chronicle and Andrew Singer on Social Media: LinkedIn and Instagram.