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Dylan Levi King

@dylanleviking

15 Oct

A key figure in neo-authoritarianism, Xiao Gongqin speaks here on Maoism, which he calls the fifth modernization model chosen in Chinese politics (this was preceded by abortive post-1898 enlightened despotism under the Qing, Sun Zhongshan's 1911 parliamentary model...

...Yuan Shikai strongman government, and nationalist authoritarianism under Chiang Kai-shek). Leninist totalism backed by military force holds for a long time. But it gave in to extreme left-wing thought. Competent neo-authoritarianism keeps both flanks at bay.

Deng Xiaoping's neo-authoritarianism was the solution—gradual reform with an iron fist 用铁腕进行渐进市场经济改革. Xiao Gongqin has praised Xi Jinping for taking up that neo-authoritarian line, dropped by Deng's succesors: deepening reform while disciplining the extremes.

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Dylan Levi King

@dylanleviking

13 Oct

We know Wang Huning's trip to America was important. But his experiences in Singapore are more formative. This is where he sees a neoauthoritarianism in action, with political, economic, and cultural freedoms permitted under stable authority and shared values.

He marvels at the wealth of Singapore. It's clean and prosperous and lively. There's nothing like equality, but the lives of the underclass are, he assumes, fairly good. But how was it been able to surpass some cities in the West in wealth and other factors?

The history of colonialism and the drive to modernize inclined Singapore toward Western civilization 西方文明 and Western culture 西方文化. Taking industrial civilization 工业文明 from the West, means taking less positive aspects, like its social ills 社会病.

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Dylan Levi King

@dylanleviking

12 Oct

Wang Huning is described as making a "daring break from the materialism of orthodox Marxism" in the idea that social "software" shapes its "hardware." I want to say a few things about this. palladiummag.com/2021/10/11/the…

For the break from Marxist orthodoxy on economic determinism in Chinese political theory, we should go back to the 1930s, at least. Mao tells us that political and cultural changes can become crucial. This was his idea of a cultural revolution, decades before 1966.

Culture is a reflection of politics and economics, Mao says in 1940, but the former has a "tremendous influence and effect upon the latter." Mao repeatedly argues this is not a break from Marxist orthodoxy. You can decide for yourself. It was less of a break from Lenin, for sure.

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Dylan Levi King

@dylanleviking

10 Oct

The most significant reforms Deng Xiaoping carried out were vertical decentralization and aggressive depoliticization: localities were isolated from the top and anything bubbling up from there could be evaluated through the logic of marketization and given ex post facto approval.

This was making official the lay of the land through the 1970s, when decentralization and depoliticization were already underway. Factional politics at the top, but commune and brigade enterprises and other novel organizations thriving down below. It only had to legitimized.

The Two Initiatives that formed the theoretical basis of Mao's own attempt at devolution of powers in the 1950s (after being forced to liquidate Gao Gang and Rao Shushi) were written into the 1982 Constitution. This created the most complex, dynamic modern political system.

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Dylan Levi King

@dylanleviking

10 Oct

This is Huang Haihua 黄海华, the style is pingtan 评弹, and he is singing from an opera called Finding Mother in a Nunnery 庵堂认母. The subtitles are imperfect but I hope they will give you the general idea of what he is singing about.

The tense in the subtitles could be adjusted, I believe. But, again, you get the general idea: he is an orphan, raised by another woman, but, after finding a note his mother wrote in her own blood, hinting at his parentage in riddles, he realizes the truth and vows to find her.

I don't have it in me to do anymore, but you should hear Zhang Jianzhen 张建珍 sing, giving us his mother's point of view. The nun—Zhizhen 智贞—is upset by the arrival of her son at the convent. She knows it's him, but to admit that would harm her reputation and hurt his career.

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Dylan Levi King

@dylanleviking

19 Aug

A United States Information Service production, Korean Cultural Goodwill Mission to Southeast Asia (1958) was part of an effort to build mutual understanding among "free people of Asia" and showcase American empire with Korea as second-in-command. Saigon, Manila, Hong Kong...

And here's Taipei, the capital of Free China. Han Sang Kim writes: Korean "self-awareness as second-in-command and their sense of superiority over Southeast Asian people are both cinematically exercised." But it's also USIS "showing off its power to see and visualize."

"...[T]he governmentality of Cold War Asia was
formed through a process of inheriting the basic structure established in colonial regimes of knowledge and redetermining the relationship between the newly independent states and the U.S. in the new world order."

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