Richard Sakwa (Kent) - China, Governance, and the Changing Global Order

Thanks so much. Following that, it's going to be a bit difficult, but I'll go back to say you know that we were asked you our exposure with China. I'm maybe an interloper in this company because my focus has always been on the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and other associated issues. But nevertheless, always been following Chinese affairs all the way back to the Cultural Revolution. In those days, we were able to receive the Chinese Embassy in London posted out various propaganda and other pamphlets. I've still got my little red book perched on my shelf, always looking at it, maybe seeking inspiration from the thoughts therein. But and of course, not only did we get these these big pictures, big folders, magazines, but you they were it was even the smell of socialism was a distinctive feel. This the quality of the paper, the quality of the printing, the type of you know, radiant sun over the mountains. It was very extraordinary. And of course, we've been following all the literature all the way back because in those days again, maybe hard for younger people to remember, but a revolution was in the air. You remember this idea, the idea that there could be a radical change in socio-economic political order. In other words, there was a belief in the future. I know it seems peculiar to think of it today. Even I'd go even so far as to say there was even a belief in progress, the P word, that you could actually go from a lower stage to a higher stage, this idea of linear development and anything else. All of those ideas of course have fizzled away in Baudrillard, postmodernism, post-structuralism, and I don't know what other. I think that you could have there's a whole proliferation of posts. And in fact, I want to move to post-postism. Let's get somewhere, finally. >> [laughter] >> But, we're not going to at the moment, by the look of it. Um but, in that literature, there there were all sorts of important debates. I mean, I I've been following it. I've got close links to main close links I said it to our colleagues earlier with East China Normal University in Shanghai. We've been I've been associated with that for many years. It's got a very large Russian center there and many others. But, the key point was that there is a vast sociological literature which we used to teach in British universities and I argue it elsewhere. But, certainly in British universities on revolution and indeed how the passage from uh how can I put it? From well, into the modernization, into modernization. And every student in any sociology, politics, and associated disciplines in the UK would have looked at Barrington Moore, Barrington Moore's book, for example. And of course, later on Theda Skocpol. There's a whole literature on this about how you know, passages to modernity and how do you define it and associated ideas of modernization. Now, modernization theory was very dominant classic 1950s, 1960s literature modernization. And of course, in those in those classes, we would look at the Soviet Union, we would look at China, we would look at India. Why the blockages on on Indian development? Maybe the revolution. I remember my PhD supervisor, Bob Davies, who used to work with E.H. Carr on the Soviet industrialization project. They did many, many fat volumes detailing every minor issue. Uh and he, for example, made this point that the Chinese revolution did unleash powers and process of modernization. And in two terms, and maybe this was 20 years ago, in terms of per capita income, in terms of standards of living, everything. India was stagnating, China was rushing ahead. And so it seemed that this was the way forward. Modernization theory, as you all know, was discredited because it was linear. It would It would even be Marx, maybe one of his less successful formulations was that the most advanced societies saw the more backward ones their own future. In other words, a linear model that all societies have to follow certain stages to get to modernity. And so that was a big debate. The modernization theory fell out of fashion in the 1970s, '80s. In the 1970s certainly we had the behavioral revolution. We'd look at opinion polling, we'd look at civil society, we'd look at other issues. And of course in the '80s we then had this big debate about bringing the state back in. This was early '80s. Peter Evans, well, a big debate. In other words, neo-institutionalism. That isn't just the study of institutions, but you also had to look at how institutions and people behave in relation to these institutions. And this was applied to Chinese and other uh uh At the same time, I personally was teaching a course Can you believe it again? It was called comparative communism. And this was quite a big subject. There's plenty of books about it. I've still got a bookshelf full of comparative communism. Remember the good old days? We would look at China, we'd look at the Soviet Union, we'd look at Cuba, we'd look at African socialism, and we'd look at various other ways and the difficulties in all these societies. And then comparative communism after 1989 became comparative post-communism. And then interestingly enough it morphed into comparative democratization. You see that optimism of those times, comparative [snorts] democratization. And of course China was a poor pupil in that some moments we thought about that it was going to get there, but at various ways it didn't work. Now of course, what should be called comparative I suppose populism would be the term or comparative demodernization because clearly demodernization and there is literally I've just reviewed a book called demodernization and the way that all these narratives of high modernity, which was interesting enough, was incorporated into Chinese uh visions of the future and progress and so on through Marxism, which is a classic 19th century highly high high Western modernity incorporated into Chinese experience. So uh that's right. So that that's all of that. Another point for me in particular was the the divergent paths of the Soviet Union and China. Well, you say, "Well, [laughter] divergent to the point at which we no longer have a Soviet Union." And of course, the debates would be, "Why didn't the Soviet Union learn from China and maybe do it differently?" Uh in particular under perestroika, Gorbachev of course came to China after the big gap gulf or division between Russia and Soviet Union and China in May 1989. Uh but uh the the issue was, "What Why is there a Could Gorbachev have saved the Soviet Union by doing a China, learning from the Chinese experience?" Big debate to this day. But of course, you could say no because quite clearly >> One one minute. >> Yeah, well, just getting started. >> [laughter] >> So it was uh yeah. So so I just just in that case on that particular point, why and how can we conceptualize the difference? Of course, different starting points, different cultures. In fact, the Soviet Union itself was a artificial construct. Maybe all states are, but it was particularly artificial. Uh in this way China as a vision of its statehood goes back at least 3,000 back 5,000 years. But then but in the more specific sense, the way I've been describing it lately is it that in the Soviet Union under Gorbachev perestroika in the late 1980s, it was the it was Gorbachev was trying to get a vision of reform communism. This is going back to Czechoslovakia 1968, socialism with a human face, back to Italy 1976, Eurocommunism. Remember all of that excitement and the vision of a modernized socialism with a human with a human face, a humane as Gorbachev formulated it in the party program which was never actually adopted, a humane and democratic socialism. I remember reading Pravda that morning when it was published. I still have it. It's just amazing banner headline. Uh prior to humane and democratic socialism. So it was reform communism. By the time that Gorbachev was trying to implement it in 1989-88, it was 20 years too late. The invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 was the greatest self-invasion in history. It killed the vision of humane socialism. China of course goes the other way. Instead of having reform communism, you have a communism of reform. And that's what it has today, a communism of reform that the Communist Party puts it at its head of marketization, of all sorts of other elements, using the market. I would slightly differ with Andrew's formulation and say not call it state capitalism, which is something very different. I Final point, I'd call it statist capitalism. So it's an important difference. State capitalism, Tony Cliff and all those debates we used to have in the Soviet Union is one thing. Statist capitalism is a capitalism with a statist inflection involvement. So, I'll stop at that point at this moment. >> Okay, and since I said something after Andrew's I just feel compelled now and so it is true that in the the start of capital Marx said that that England would show people a mirror of other countries a mirror of their own future. But in the letter to Vera Zasulich >> [laughter] >> he very clearly said there are many roads and there's no linear determinism so you know, we >> He even [laughter] learned Russian to make the point. So >> Uh