Wu Lao recently brought up again the idea that “being backward does not necessarily mean getting beaten,” which sparked controversy and even drew criticism from the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League.
This claim of Wu Lao’s is by no means a recent one. As early as his 1999 book *Thoughts on Modernization*, he included an article titled “Does Backwardness Mean Getting Beaten?” I read that book in high school, and it was one of the books I brought from Shanghai to Beijing when I entered university. (I remember that among my desk books at the time were several *First Push* volumes, Huang Renyu, and—very shamefully—He Xin as well. That shows my discernment was still a bit immature.)
Coincidentally, when I was a sophomore, I also wrote a piece called “Does Backwardness Mean Getting Beaten?” I remember this article very clearly: I wrote it by hand on paper at my desk, then typed it into the computer. This piece and the one that followed it were the last essays I ever wrote first on paper; after that I would never again write articles with a pen.
Because I wrote it casually on paper, without consulting any references while writing, I no longer remember whether I had read Wu Lao’s article with the same title at the time. (Again, very shamefully, that so-called “desk book” had actually been brought to Beijing and then left unread; by the second year I had almost forgotten it.) Looking back now, I should have read it, and I was surely influenced by it in some subtle way, but I also count it as a relatively independent rediscovery of the question.
I’m about to publish a new book, whose title has also beaten Wu Lao to the punch: provisionally *What Is Technology*. In it, I have rewritten a short section discussing the chapter “Backwardness Should Not Mean Getting Beaten.”
That article I wrote as a sophomore, and the previous one questioned the claim that “science and technology are the primary productive forces.” In fact, the two questions are very closely connected. The reason Wu Lao and I question these two popular slogans is that what we really want to criticize is nothing more than the so-called “will to power,” the modern “will to power.” We are not saying that one should not pursue being “advanced,” or not develop science and technology. On the contrary, Wu Lao’s consistent position is of course to defend “science,” but he defends free, non-utilitarian science. We develop science not in order to avoid being beaten or to beat others, but in order to seek knowledge and truth. Yet the mainstream logic today is too utilitarian, and it has a rather dangerous tendency to slide toward hegemonism and even militarism. On the surface it seems to revere science, but in essence it is revering force; this is a particularly dangerous thing.
Wu Lao probably isn’t too afraid of going head-to-head with the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League, but I still am, so I chickened out again. I both want to post something to express support and don’t want to stir up trouble, so I’ll keep encrypting it for now… (By the way, the emails received by subscribers are not encrypted, but I hope everyone will keep a low profile and not help me spread them.)
Below I’m pasting the chapter currently slated for my new book:
Backwardness Should Not Mean Getting Beaten
As mentioned above, when we equate “knowledge” with “power,” the progress of knowledge is understood as the establishment of brute force, and we therefore fear artificial intelligence, worrying that they will use greater brute force to enslave humanity. But if we can transcend the narrow “worship of force,” and realize that pluralistic coexistence is more “progressive” than sole domination by brute force, then we may be able to feel a bit more optimistic about the future.
Chinese people are no strangers to this logic of brute force. In modern times, China suffered repeated humiliation before the West’s sturdy ships and powerful guns, painfully experienced the combination of advanced technology and hegemonism, and drew the lesson that “backwardness means getting beaten.”
By today, we are no longer in a state of mortal peril, so it becomes necessary to reexamine the proposition that “backwardness means getting beaten.” Modern China got beaten because it was backward; that is a historical encounter, but it does not mean that whenever anyone is backward, throughout history, they must get beaten. We cannot take the special phenomenon of colonialism and regard it as a universal law of history.
Looking across history, we find that what is actually more common in the history of human civilization is precisely for advanced civilizations to be the ones “getting beaten.” In Eurasia, the general pattern was for developed and prosperous agricultural civilizations to be repeatedly invaded by surrounding nomadic civilizations and even barbarian tribes. The ancient Romans got beaten by the Germanic barbarians; it can’t exactly be said that the Germanic peoples at the time were more “advanced” than the Romans.
Chinese dynasties of antiquity also suffered repeated attacks from northern nomadic tribes, and often had to resort humiliatingly to methods such as conferring titles and ranks, offering gold and silver as compensation, and using alliances through marriage to placate those harassers.
In ancient times some invaders possessed more sophisticated military technologies (such as the adoption of Hu dress and mounted archery, Mongol warhorses, and so on), but technology includes more than military technology. In terms of the overall technological environment, the more prosperous and abundant a civilization is, the more it tends toward peace. Even in times of internal and external crisis, Song-dynasty people could still sing and dance in harmony, indulging in literature and the arts, with no thought of expanding territory. On the one hand we naturally resent their failure to strive; on the other hand, this also proves that “advanced” technological culture often promotes peace.
“Progress” can never be smooth sailing; history therefore always has exceptions and reversals. The era when colonizers could run amok by relying on advanced military technology is over. Today Westerners themselves have long since engaged in reflection; many even promote “political correctness” to near-pedantic lengths, respecting equality and diversity. Perhaps there is some hypocrisy or overcorrection, but it is undeniable that today is at least somewhat more advanced than the colonial era.
If Westerners are moving forward, then Chinese people even less should regress and instead go back to the colonialist road. When we proclaim that “backwardness means getting beaten,” the subtext is precisely: if you are advanced, then you can beat people.
But the reasoning is very clear: we get beaten not because we have committed the “crime” of backwardness, but because the people doing the beating are in the wrong. The correct principle should be: backward people should not be beaten. Backwardness is not original sin, and being advanced does not entitle anyone to do whatever they like.
Under the logic of the “will to power,” technology is understood as a tool of conquest, and the degree of conquering power is taken as the standard for judging progress. But the rule that the strong are supreme and may conquer at will is not a law of biological history, nor a law of human history; this narrow view of progress should be discarded.
But we do not need to abandon the idea of “progress” altogether. Beyond brute power, there can be many other standards for measuring progress. Of course, the ideal of what counts as progress has its own historical specificity and cultural relativity; different times and different cultures have different notions of what is good and bad. But acknowledging relativity does not mean falling into nihilism. When we say that ideas are rooted in their time and culture, it sounds as if we ourselves now have no time and no culture. We may not be able to find a standard that transcends history and is absolutely fixed, but of course we can, and should, search for the ideals of our own time.
Whatever standards we use in this age to measure “advanced” and “backward,” I think we can at least hold fast to this point: progress is a moving away from “barbarism,” a movement from slaughter toward peace, from monopoly toward shared prosperity.
For Chinese people, we should be wary of a dangerous tendency: because of the experience of being beaten, we fall into a mentality of “revenge,” urgently wanting to become strong so that we can turn around and bully the Western powers. This ideal may look very “satisfying,” but in substance it means that on the deepest level we have already been conquered by the great powers. The gentle and humble culture of China has been dismantled, and the Western colonial stamp has been burned into the bones of Chinese people.
We should learn advanced science and culture from Westerners, but we must not get our priorities upside down, learning barbarism and losing civilization. In the last century, the Soviet Union or China shouting “backwardness means getting beaten” may have had some motivational value. But if by the 21st century we are still never forgetting this phrase, then that is not quite appropriate.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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