Recently, we invited Ms. Wang Di, Ph.D. in History from Johns Hopkins University and Chair Professor of the University of Macau, to give us a lecture entitled "Public Sphere and Social Development: A Historiographical Discussion".
Today I would like to discuss an issue in the public domain. The title is "The Public Sphere and Social Development: A Historiographical Discussion".
There are three main issues:
First, traditional China's ** and society.
Second, the expansion of the power of the modern state.
Thirdly, the problems we face today are that in order for society to be vibrant, it is necessary to develop the public sphere.
Traditional China has the concept of "public" in a relatively early period, "public" is between the official and private, the individual family is private, and there is a state, and the civil or social space, we call the concept of "public". After the Song Dynasty, there were various social organizations, such as guilds, trade unions, fellow villagers' associations, benevolent halls, land associations, nursery halls, charity associations, fire-fighting associations, and even in local societies, in rural areas, there were so-called righteous warehouses and community warehouses in every community, that is, some warehouses for storing grain were established by the community. Every autumn, when the new grain is laid, the old stock is taken out and sold, and then the new one is bought, and the cycle continues. These are not hosted by the government, but by society.
After modern times, especially at the beginning of the 20th century, due to changes in the social and economic structure, new schools, various economic organizations, and chambers of commerce were allowed to be established, and a large number of social organizations played a very important role in the late New Deal. It can be seen that the concept of "public" is neither "private", nor "family", nor "official", but a part of the operation of society. If we extract the realm of the "public", that is, the individual directly confronts the state apparatus, then in the process of the operation of the state apparatus and the development of society, a chain will be broken.
The "police" was the earliest official municipal administration
What was the municipal administration like in China in the past? In fact, until the Xinhai Revolution, there was no city in the general city, and the state institutions of the Qing Dynasty ended at the county level, and there was no state apparatus below the county level. The earliest machinery for municipal administration was the police, which was established by Yuan Shikai between 1901 and 1902 during the New Deal in the late Qing Dynasty, and the earliest was in Tianjin, which was the first city management agency to appear in China. Since then, it has gradually expanded to the whole of China.
"Police" is a concept introduced from the West, today the police are mainly related to public security, but in the early days of the police in China, they were in charge of all urban affairs. In the past, the affairs of the city, which were managed by local organizations such as the Villagers' Association, the Land Association, and the Charity Hall, were gradually transferred to them after the police appeared. For example, the sanitation of the city is managed by the police hired by cleaners, and the sweepers run rampant on the roads, sometimes knocking down pedestrians, because they are hired by ** and have a high social status. So at the beginning of the twentieth century, there was a transition from autonomous cities to state-run cities. That's why there is a saying that "the sky is high and the emperor is far away". There is a delusion in both Chinese and Western historical circles that China has always been a centralized ruling structure, but this is actually a misunderstanding. Below the county level, it relies on society and self-government.
In the past, we didn't talk about it, and Western scholars didn't talk about it, until my teacher at Johns Hopkins University, William Robert, talked about the workings of society in his book, and we realized that Chinese cities are not like the urban forms that Max Weber discussed. When Max Weber's book "The City" mentions Chinese cities, he believes that the reason why China cannot develop capitalism is that China does not have urban capitalism, because Chinese do not regard cities as their place to live, and they still have to return to their hometowns when they are old. However, my teacher, William Luo, believed that China has the concept of the city and the concept of the hometown, and he proved that Max Weber's understanding of the Chinese city was wrong by carefully analyzing the Shantang, Yicang, the Townspeople's Association, and the Guild Hall. In the past, Chinese historians did not go deep into the city to see how the city operated, although the county is the most basic state representative, but when we look at the vast grassroots, Chinese society is not a mess, not disorderly, orderly, how is this order maintained? It's by the public domain.
The more state institutions there are, the higher the level of management?
When talking about the country in English, there are three words: state, country, nation. The word "country" is too broad in Chinese, but it is clearly distinct in English. country is our land, talking about the geographical country, and the motherland is a concept; nation is the nation-state; state is talking about the state apparatus, is **. In fact, it is very important to distinguish between these three words, for example, if you criticize **, you may mistake it for criticizing the country, which is not right.
At the beginning of the late New Deal, the state apparatus gradually entered the grassroots society, and China's social management began to modernize, along with this process, China's modernization was also considered to be more and more important, and the traditional social organizations became obstacles to modernization, including land associations and charitable organizations, all of which were considered to be handed over to the state. As a result, the Qing Dynasty began to crack down on and abolish these grassroots organizations, and the power of the grassroots organizations became greater and greater, which was the process of state power going deep into the grassroots society. But the population involved in the grassroots society is very huge, and to manage such a huge population, it is necessary to increase the number of people, and to feed such a huge institution, you have to charge higher taxes.
According to the ideal state, the number of countries has increased, the tax revenue has increased, and there are more and more institutions, so the level of management should be higher and higher, but the fact is just the opposite, and the efficiency has decreased. This is the involution of political power that the American historian Du Zanqi talks about in his book "Culture, Power, and the State". That is, your input has increased, but there is no corresponding output. They have extended their power to the community, established many institutions, set up, but they are not capable of managing all aspects of society. There is an area in Chengdu where the number of floods has become more and more numerous after the revocation of the private land association. Because there is no one to clean up the silt, this action used to be called by the land council.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the management of the country became more meticulous. A large unit like a factory is a small society, with security, canteens, cinemas, and commissaries, and everything is managed by the unit. After the reform and opening up, the planned economy has shifted to a market economy, so what is the basic driving force of China's economic development? Many people may think that it is the country's wise decision to take a right path; But it can also be said that the state power has changed from the all-encompassing power of the past to the gradual decentralization of power to give vitality to the market.
I often think about a question: China and China are reforming at the same time, but why can't we develop from a backward country to the world's second largest economy after a process of thirty or forty years? What's the problem? Once I was talking to an expert on history, and he said that you don't understand, before the revolution, the manor slavery system, the peasants were all attached to the system of the manor owners, and there was no self-sufficient small peasant economy like China, but since the October Revolution, all the peasants have entered the collective farms, and the peasants have no experience in running the family economy, so when Gorbachev carried out reforms, the peasants did not know what to do, where to make money, how to do and how to transform. The small-scale peasant economy has a very far-reaching history in China, after the reform and opening up, farmers went to work as small traders and workers, and some private enterprises have blossomed all over the world. You don't even need to give them any support, just give them freedom.
China's public sphere is fundamentally different from that of the West, not an antagonistic force
Chinese society has a tradition of autonomy and agency, and this tradition is in our blood. The development of the public sphere is a win-win idea for **. China's public sphere is not the same concept as the Western public sphere, the emergence of the Western public sphere is a confrontation with state power, early salons, churches, newspapers, etc. are all Western public spheres, they have always appeared as a role in the confrontation of state power. However, the public sphere of traditional Chinese society has always cooperated with the state to make up for the shortcomings of state management. I think this ideological foundation comes from the pre-Qin era. The "well field system" is to divide a piece of land into nine families, the middle piece of land is the "public", and the other eight families have to cultivate the middle land in addition to their own land, and use it as a public space.
Therefore, in order for a society to be healthy, it is necessary to develop the public sphere. Parents want to do everything, and children are not able to take care of themselves. An immature society can't stand any blows, and if we have thousands of social organizations that don't rely on ** and the state, then there are better and more sound mechanisms to tide over the difficulties. During the epidemic in Wuhan, there was a courier brother Wang Yong, who saw that the doctor couldn't go home after work, so he used his own car to send the doctor back, and saw that the doctor in the hospital had no food, so he mobilized his friends to send a box lunch to the doctor. Anthropologists have used countless examples to prove that collective wisdom is absolutely higher than individual wisdom, and it is wrong not to think that everything has to be decided according to my idea, that I can make the wisest decision. Sometimes inaction may be the best way to be promising, and let the society do what the society can do, and let the society manage it.
Some time ago, it was mentioned that the private economy should withdraw from the stage of history, and later the state reaffirmed its intention to support private enterprises. The state is important, it is important, in the process of economic operation, law, security, fairness, anti-corruption these are what the state can do, as well as to protect the rights of vulnerable groups, equality in education, opposition to gender discrimination, etc., these are what the state can do to stabilize social order. The country has spent a lot of energy to eradicate poverty, which is what the country should do, and China has done this very successfully, a large number of poor people have come out of poverty, but we must also be vigilant against the problem of people returning to poverty in economic decline.
A healthy society should not have only one voice
The last question concerns the very important "public opinions" in the public sphere. A society must have many voices. We often say that "right and wrong have their own opinions", but in fact, people are not stupid, they know what is good for themselves, good for the country, and good for our future. There is also ** supervision, and major affairs must be fully explained by everyone. A healthy society cannot have only one voice, and if there is only one voice, there must be a problem. Reform and opening up means opening up, opening up, and absorbing people, and we must be diversified, and we must not have only one kind of thinking. As a leader, don't think that I am smarter and think better than everyone else, you can brainstorm, you can do research, you can bring together the vice chairman, directors, and middle-level cadres to discuss problems, and give full play to their wisdom and vitality, the same is true for the country, and the power of the public sphere is also to give full play to the collective wisdom.
We often say that we can learn from history, but how can we learn from history? History is not meant to tell you how to do and how to manage a country, and how complex a country is, and it cannot be solved by reading a few ancient books and listening to a few stories of "Zizhi Tongjian". But reading history can help us think, help us reflect, help us have a critical spirit, have the ability to think independently, and not follow the crowd.
As a supplement to the management professional course, the EMBA Humanities and Business Lecture Hall of Fudan University adheres to the goal of "Integrating Business and Humanities", so that students can draw strength from humanities and have great wisdom, vision and feelings. Relying on Fudan University's strong resources of famous teachers, the "Junzi Knows" Humanities and Business Lecture Hall has invited Ge Jianxiong, Chen Sihe, Shen Zhihua, Xu Jilin, Wu Xiaoming, Ha Jiming and other famous experts inside and outside the university to share hot topics such as business, humanities, politics and economics for EMBA students and alumni.