A persuasive analysis of the new Marxist Nationalism of President Xi’s increasingly assertive and intolerant China
IN 1861, the great jurist and legal anthropologist, Sir Henry Maine, wrote in his classic study, Ancient Law: “the movement of the progressive societies has hitherto been a movement from Status to Contract.” He was referring to the development from primitive patriarchal societies, in which nobody other than the decision-making patriarch (or tribal leader, or clan chief) had any significant agency, to the mid-Victorian ideal of every man being his own master.
Maine argued that that was a general movement among all societies which were “progressive”, or open to modernisation. Individuation was a liberating trend.
This is such a fundamental truth about civilised life that it is often forgotten by those people clamouring today for the public to be deprived of previously-accepted freedoms in areas like climate observations or decisions about the sort of heating you prefer in your sitting room.
The modern state is moving us backwards towards a group mentality in which individual contract (i.e. personal agency) is less often the basis of ordinary human interaction than it used to be. We are being forced to surrender our individuality to the state, Chinese-style, at the expense of the freedom to think without instruction from authorised “experts”, which is what we used to do in more civilised and successful times.
Take, for example, the shocked intake of breath you will hear from “green” authoritarians when you say that you agree with Matt Ridley that higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere is greening the world and reducing starvation. It reminds me of the conceited, narrow-mindedness of smug, broke Ireland in the 1920s which is so clearly depicted in this short film about the struggles of Sean O’Casey to express his contempt for the self-righteous introversion of the snobbish, middle-class Irish nationalists of the newly-declared Free State.
The point is that status in British academia today is just as cramping as status among the Irish bourgeoisie then. But assertive status, from feudalism to fascism, or from tribalism to Trump, has always been the biggest threat to private and public liberty.
The threat of the moment is the movement from contract back to status which is being led by the President of China, Xi Jinping (though he is not the only atavist; there is also Putin, the North Korean guy, the Mullahs in Tehran and even the Tottie Wee Thieves of Holyrood). Xi and his country represent a far greater danger to Western civilisation than introverted Ireland did in the dead ’twenties. Yet wolf-warrior China is almost as little known to most of us today as the nationalist slums of Dublin were to the Berkeley Square Flappers of the Roaring Twenties.
We should therefore be grateful to Kevin Rudd (an Australian of part-Irish descent) who has written an absolutely fascinating book about the political philosophy of the Chinese leader: On Xi Jinping: How Xi’s Marxist Nationalism is Shaping China and the World. In it he shows how Chinese nationalism is trying to reassert status, hierarchy and spheres of influence at the expense of freely negotiated contract, both in international affairs and in domestic relations between Chinese businesses and individuals.
Rudd is well qualified for the task. After studying Mandarin at university he joined the Australian foreign service as an under-strapper in the Embassy in Beijing. He rose to become First Secretary of the mission with special responsibility for political analysis. He then went into politics, becoming Prime Minister of Australia from 2007-10, then Foreign Minister, then Prime Minister again in 2013. He is currently Australian Ambassador to the United States. I mention all this to suggest he knows that of which he speaks. But the reader might like to judge for him or herself by watching this interview in which he summarises his ideas about the current direction of Chinese politics.
Two points stand out. First, Xi is likely to be President for life, in the manner of both God and his status-worshipping semi-friend, Vladimir Putin. Secondly, he is changing the direction of Chinese political development so as to de-emphasise “contract” in the form of commercial and personal freedom in China and outside it, and instead to re-emphasise China’s status as a great power which does not intend to tolerate competitors. The domination of Asia is part of that idea. On this, Rudd notes:
“Before [2013 when Xi came to power] China’s overall posture in southeast Asia had been driven primarily by economic engagement… All that would change from 2013-14 as Xi’s ‘new outlook on security’ was re-prioritised and recalibrated in relation to the continued expansion of China’s regional trade and investment footprint… From Xi’s strategic perspective, the region’s role would simply be to accept the reality of China’s dominant security presence, not to challenge it. And for this there would be either economic reward—or economic punishment… Xi’s ‘Asian Security Concept’ would be implemented on China’s terms, nobody else’s.” (p. 233)
That is pretty unambiguous evidence of status ambition. Rudd quotes Xi in support of his assessment of the new Chinese practice of Marxist Nationalism, which looks to me like another mask behind which a lawless China can bully smaller countries in the way Vladimir Putin is currently trying to bully Ukraine. This should not be news to any of us. Remember Tibet? Ever heard of Xinjiang? Or Hong Kong? Taiwan, perhaps? The Spratleys?
As First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev helped get Communist China on its feet in the 1950s, before Chairman Mao accused him of believing in peaceful co-existence with capitalist countries.
The Soviet leader remarked in the first volume of his autobiography, Khrushchev Remembers (1970): “The Chinese don’t recognise any law except the law of power and force. If you don’t obey, they tear your head off.”(p. 478) After dealing closely with Mao for a decade, Khrushchev wrote of him in terms that could apply exactly to President Xi today: “There is one thing I know for sure about Mao. He is a nationalist, and at least when I knew him, he was bursting with an impatient desire to rule the world. His plan was to rule China, then Asia, then… what?” (p. 474)
Likewise more recently, I remember President Xi’s response to the democratic protests in Hong Kong six years ago. The BBC quoted him as saying, in October 2019: “Anyone who attempts to split any region from China will perish, with their bodies smashed and bones ground to powder.” Charming.
Xi has another way of killing dissent, which is boring people to death. That is the weapon of choice among our own bureaucracy, quangos, NGOs, charities and wokey climate half-brainers. Rudd quotes many examples of this, but an almost random example would be an article which Xi wrote in 2023. He said this about something or other: “Promoting the systematisation of theory and its translation into academic knowledge is an inherent requirement and an important pathway for theoretical innovation… This fully illustrates the importance of systematisation and scholasticism in upholding and developing Marxism.” (p. 389)
Persistently speaking in terms which no normal person either understands or is interested in usually means you are in the presence of a psychopath who wants power over you, in order to establish local micro-status. You try to change the subject, but they will not let you. Their subject of interest is more important than your subject of interest.
That is how our own climate puritans behave, especially Ed Miliband. Apparently, pharisaic humanity must be forced to save the planet from sinful humanity.
Leaving aside that we have been there before, about 2000 years ago, state-backed coercion in any age is another word for violence. The police, prisons and, if you persist, the armed riot troops are really what Ed (“Herod”) Miliband wants to crucify us all with. Traditionally in Britain, that level of state violence was reserved for sedition or peasant revolt. Now you can get your “body smashed” for not aligning yourself with the public prejudice of the moment.
When I saw Comrade Miliband scampering around in China the other day trying to sell North London climate prejudice to Beijing, I wondered how much of this, if anything, he understands. Has he read Rudd on Xi? Has he read Maine on status? Or Matt Ridley on the benefits of rising carbon concentrations? And what about Betrand Russell on “Votes for Oysters”?
Or was Miliband really in China in order to find out how to lie to the world about the climate while building dozens of new coal-fired power stations to supply power to factories selling solar panels to gullible hysterics like himself and his co-conspirators in the government of self-impoverishing Britain?
For anyone interested in the malign role of Xi’s idea of Chinese exceptionalism (status) in undermining international free trade (contract), this book will be essential reading. Thanks to Kevin Rudd, we have been warned!
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