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Tiananmen-era fear of 'peaceful evolution' seeded the PRC's 'Patriotic Education Campaign'. Lesser known, though, is the more encompassing framework of 'securitizing culture.' The PRC's move to securitize culture, and its consequences, should be understood. https://twitter.com/RonPauliticsJS/status/1381428742111834117
Let's begin with this Ministry of State Security report from June 1, 1989 (sourced from John Garver's 'China's Quest')? Notice anything familiar? In 2013, it popped up in “A Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere” aka Document 9 https://www.chinafile.com/document-9-chinafile-translation
Many people have the false impression that after Mao Zedong ideology was replaced by pure pragmatism. In fact, as the Four Cardinals Principles clearly enunciated in '79, the Party would always do what it takes to stay in power. That included 'ideological struggle':
Ideological competition for the PRC, however, is deeply interconnected with an even more all encompassing frame: securitizing the national culture. The implications of this framing are big.
Building on aversion to 'peaceful evolution', it demonstrates the deep fissures the CPC sought to cultivate between its citizens, its system, and 'the West.' The purpose being to ensure that its system of single Party rule would never again be challenged.
CPC scholars have for the last few decades offered a negative vision centered on attacking 'foreign Western ideology' (other than Marxism-Leninism, of course) that would seek to divide people from Party and, as Sun Yat-sen once said, turn China back into a “loose sheet of sand.”
The most prominent scholar operating in this vein is Wang Huning.
"According to him, the supposedly universal values of Western civilization were forms of “cultural expansionism” being deployed to infiltrate Chinese society...
"According to him, the supposedly universal values of Western civilization were forms of “cultural expansionism” being deployed to infiltrate Chinese society...
...They could be countered only by a CPC capable of firmly asserting its own “cultural sovereignty,” a term that Wang adopted to refer to China’s ability to maintain its ideological autonomy and political unity against criticism from the outside world." https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2017-12-04/chinas-crown-theorist
These ideas reek of a Huntingtonian 'Clash of Civilizations' frame.
But are they influential?
Well, Wang Huning is not simply a theorist or scholar. He's a member of the highest ranking body in the PRC: the PBSC. He's the country's 5th highest ranked official.
But are they influential?
Well, Wang Huning is not simply a theorist or scholar. He's a member of the highest ranking body in the PRC: the PBSC. He's the country's 5th highest ranked official.
The 'National Cultural Securitization' strategy pioneered by Wang came to serve as bedrock framing for regime security.
As Rush Doshi has argued, and as Matthew Johnson argues here, problems many analysts simply attribute to Xi have much, much deeper roots. Fundamental fissures over values have divided the PRC and the US since 1949—and the CPC since Deng has actively sought to keep it that way.
One hundred years ago, Vladimir Lenin retreated from War Communism via the 'New Economic Policy' of the 1920s.
He warned his comrades in a speech that during this temporary retreat, "discipline must be more conscious and is a hundred times more necessary"
He warned his comrades in a speech that during this temporary retreat, "discipline must be more conscious and is a hundred times more necessary"
Today, Xi says: "we must diligently prepare for a long period of cooperation and of conflict between these two social systems in each of these domains...The eventual demise of capitalism and the ultimate victory of socialism will require a long historical process."
A core component of the CPC's 'socialism with Chinese characteristics' is the "securitization" of "culture." As we have seen over patriotic outbursts over Xinjiang, it appears to be having the desired effect.
In today's China the government has mastered the craft of influencing people's genuine emotions and having these ordinary users do the trolling and doxxing — for free. https://www.protocol.com/china/chinese-online-hate-campaigns
The undergirding framework that made this phenomena possible is the PRC's deliberate "securitization of culture." The CPC has stoked aggrieved patriotism to safeguard itself against threatening Western values.
The deep fissures in values the CPC has systematically maintained between itself and the 'West' is an all out effort to try and avoid the fate of the CPSU.
It has bought itself space to grope toward defining its own positive vision. https://www.nbr.org/publication/chinas-vision-for-a-new-world-order-implications-for-the-united-states/
It has bought itself space to grope toward defining its own positive vision. https://www.nbr.org/publication/chinas-vision-for-a-new-world-order-implications-for-the-united-states/
As Adam Tooze wrote: "In putting a full stop after 1989 we prematurely declare a Western victory. From Beijing’s point of view, there was no end of history, but a continuity..." https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n15/adam-tooze/whose-century
