Question:
I really like what you said about the new mood also having a material basis because that’s really important. It can’t just be a confidence made of words and feelings, but then people are experiencing extreme poverty in these countries and are in severe debt.
So I guess China is one of the most confident emerging powers of the world. I just want to ask you like you spent so much time in China, do you feel the new mood here?
Vijay Prashad:
Firstly, China is a very interesting place because the new mood is actually old mood. If you go to, let’s say, rural India, you will find because India never had an Indian revolution of the kind that China had in 1949. You will find that hierarchies in rural areas are really quite rigid. The landlord, the caste structure, the hierarchies of existence, are very much in place. What this does is this, in fact, to some extent, destroys the confidence of the majority of people. In some places, you have to sort of hunch and walk. You can’t make eye contact with people. You are endangering yourself. It’s all illegal. It’s illegal to prevent people from making eye contact or walking. All these things are banned. But you can’t just ban things in law. You have to change the culture.
So in India, the new mood is there. Consumerism does break down certain hierarchies, money does break down. It’s a great solvent. If classes that were oppressed get rich, they rise in status. It’s a very complicated structure. But the fact is that it is hugely hierarchical.
And on the other side, in China, you have a population where because of the Chinese revolution, I would argue the idea of equality is just normal, like nobody feels that somebody else is more equal than me. Maybe they’re richer than I am, but they’re not a better person. They’re not closer to God. I don’t think that feeling is there. So in a place like China, that’s a huge advantage. You have a civilized society that has rejected various forms of a hierarchical life and has normalized… I’m just looking at this bookshelf that’s next to you – it makes no sense because I don’t know who comes and reads it, but there are books and people. They don’t need to have a life that is constrained by hierarchy. They can read, they can be confident. And so that’s one kind of new mood which the Chinese revolution has produced, different from India.
The broader new mood is much more national than individual in many countries. Within the country, you will still see hierarchies, because they didn’t attack them, frankly, didn’t do full agrarian reform. You’ll still see the hierarchies. But the country as a cumulative entity is demonstrating a new mood on the international stage. Countries like China, Cuba – they are unusual, because here you’ve produced a different society. The hierarchies within the society have been, to some extent, smashed.
Question:
Totally. And also, I think China on the material front is doing a lot to conduct South-South cooperation, right? They’re building ports and building railways. They’re building hospitals all in these Global South countries that are obviously helping these countries out a lot and allowing these countries to actually develop a sense of infrastructure and then to develop their new mood as well. Right? It’s a consequence.
I read one of your dossiers recently about the Bandung spirit, how the well-known spirit, and I remember this line very clearly, is almost just an ethereal thought, right? It can feel like a nostalgic memory, almost, but I am hopeful that it could be revived. And I think places like China and Cuba, with, as you said, a totally different kind of society could rejuvenate that in a way, though it is very challenging. But I think in the dossier, I read that one of the main challenges is that a lot of other Global South countries may not know or the perception from the Global South countries, maybe of China, maybe of Cuba, even is not accurate or just not aware of what China might be doing materially.
What do you think about that?
Vijay Prashad:
Well, I’ll put it in a way that’s slightly on the edge of your question, which is that, look, technology, science, material progress by itself doesn’t transform a society. The Chinese historical path was very interesting. You had a revolution in 1911, which ended the monarchy, the imperial system. The country attempted a republican form of government, went into a long period of civil war, civil strife, Japanese invasion, and so on. And then back to civil war. And then there’s the Chinese revolution – an enormous landmark event.
The Chinese revolution does a few things. Firstly, it actually starts to consolidate the sovereign territory of China, which had been ripped apart during the civil war period. The disorder, in fact, even during the dynasties, the last dynasties of the imperial house, parts of China disappeared from complete sovereign control. So the Communist Party brings it back to sovereign control. What remained was basically Macao, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. These were small areas in comparison to the vast mainland. People talk always about Taiwan, and it’s actually a minuscule percentage of the whole of China. It’s a minuscule area. Even Hong Kong was tiny, significant, but tiny, so they consolidated the mainland. That’s one part of this.
The second part of the Chinese experiment is what we talked about, which is the changing sense of self of Chinese people that they felt or feel now that I’m equal to anybody in the world. I reject the ideas of racism, racial hierarchy. I’m Chinese. I don’t have to apologize for anything. We have people who went up into space, we have people drilling down into the plasma to create new forms of energy. I’m not worried about it. That is very important.
Third, the Chinese created institutions, they built robust institutions over time – it’s an up and down thing – they dealt with corruption. They created a new sense of red culture in the institutions so that people didn’t think I’m going to join a government department to steal. This is a very difficult thing to do. It’s very difficult to train a population to feel inspired to work in a government department, where they’re getting paid less than in the private sector. In China, even today, private sector wages are higher than government wages, so you’re making a choice to go into the government sector. There’s a certain level of, quote unquote, sacrifice there.
This sensibility is what I call the Chinese revolution: consolidating the territory, building a new sense of self, and then building institutions that are capable of resisting the rot of money and capitalism. It’s very difficult to resist the rot of money. So that’s the Chinese revolution. It’s an incredible advance.
China can go through Belt and Road and build a port here, and that is not transformative by itself. That’s important. It builds the productive forces in a country. That’s important. But the people in that country have to take charge of their own country. They have to build their sovereignty, they have to build a strong sense of self, they have to build their public institutions. China cannot do these three things for a country, and that is why whenever one thinks about China and the world, you can’t just talk about the technology or the trade. You have to talk about the Chinese revolution and that’s what people don’t know about. They think that the BRI, the Belt and Road, by itself is going to transform the world. It’s not true. The Belt and Road is only one part of it. The Chinese revolution is the other, but you can’t impose the Chinese revolution on other countries.
It’s up to the working class, the peasantry, the oppressed people of a country to take control over their own countries, to take control of the sovereignty of their country, to prevent their currency from being drained, their resources from being stolen and so on. They have to fight to build what Che Guevara called a new socialist person. They have to fight to build that person, that personality. And then you have to fight to build republican institutions. This is a non-trivial part of human life. People think no. Public institutions in most parts of the world have been destroyed. You don’t have administrators.
I’ve sat at the table, watched a negotiation happen between Global North countries and Global South countries. They come with 20 representatives, 56 lawyers, Global South country, one or two people. They come with all that paperwork ready, highlighted, they know exactly where to turn. Global South people hardly any preparation. They may not even have read the agreement. They just came to sign. And they sign agreements they haven’t read.
It’s the same experience in People’s Bank of China. When they go to different countries, they try to negotiate a loan. People don’t read the whole thing. Why? Because they don’t have the capacity in the state. We have to build all that again. It’s not just the Belt and Road. It’s the Belt and Road plus the Chinese revolution that is going to inspire people. And you can’t just tell the story, but you also have to tell the story of the Chinese people’s new self-confidence, right?
Editor: Charriot Zhai
