A few days ago Beijing was hit by torrential rain. Unfortunately, I had just returned to Shanghai and missed this rare spectacle.
Once a rainstorm turns into a disaster, there is inevitably all sorts of praise for skillful command and unity of purpose, and then a call for donations appears, something we have long since grown accustomed to.
Calls for donations are of course met with a flood of abuse online, but the reality is that they will still work. Setting aside the many uninformed people who are only too happy to donate, just think of how much can be wrung out by those “progressive” Party-state organs, enterprises, and schools as they assign donation quotas down the line.
When commenting on the Red Cross, I already said that the key issue is not whether this money will be embezzled or diverted. Even if all these donations were used with perfect transparency, as long as China does not have a truly “non-governmental organization,” and as long as official baseline and emergency investment cannot be clearly distinguished from spontaneous private-sector contributions, then any public-welfare donation is a shameful joke.
I will not dwell on that here. What I want to say now is that, from these disasters and the measures taken in response, we can sense this: disaster and despotism reinforce each other, while disaster and democracy are opposed.
Of course, despotic systems also regard disaster as an “enemy,” but despotism is precisely built on enmity; so although disaster remains an enemy of society, it is also the closest companion of a despotic society. By contrast, democratic societies are genuinely more resistant to disaster. Especially in the face of major disasters, democratic countries also have to enter a “state of emergency.” A so-called “state of emergency” is nothing more than taking somewhat more despotic and forceful measures in certain necessary respects. As for those despotic countries, in practice—and often indeed in name as well—they are always in a state of emergency, always facing “the most dangerous moment.”
Disaster encourages demands for despotism—demands for strong leadership, for stern and swift action, for an atmosphere of unity. This tendency is hard to avoid even in democratic countries. The difference is that once a democratic country overcomes a short-term disaster, the machinery of the system quickly returns to normal, and because military, administrative, and judicial powers are relatively separated, and because non-governmental civil society also has a relatively strong capacity for self-governance, despotic elements do not rapidly spread through the entire system. In emerging countries, however, power structures have not yet undergone sufficient growth and differentiation, civil society is weak, and once they enter a state of emergency to confront disaster, they are very likely to fall into a vicious cycle from which they cannot extricate themselves.
That vicious cycle is the mutual reinforcement of disaster and despotism. While disaster promotes despotism, despotism in turn promotes disaster.
In terms of solving the immediate and pressing emergency, despotic systems appear more efficient. But that is precisely the fundamental problem with despotism—it is built on the logic of efficiency in solving immediate problems. If there is no enemy standing before you, waiting to be defeated, then what should governance take as its standard?
If building a powerful urban drainage system requires decades of effort and its effects may not become visible until a hundred years later, then who would bother to do such a thing? More importantly, even if such a project could be completed at once, once the opportunity to win praise in another disaster response, to secure large allocations, and to launch massive fundraising campaigns was lost, what would be the point?
What is called a planned economy is in fact worst at planning—in practice, most of the plans it sets out follow a get-rich-quick logic: how many units of this or that target number are reached, how much growth is achieved, how many projects are completed, all with an eye to instant results. But basic infrastructure, old-age care, education, the ecological environment, and so on—long-term undertakings that cannot show immediate results—never receive sufficiently high levels of investment. It is even harder to raise education spending to the bare minimum of 4% than to go to the moon. Why is that? Aren’t we supposed to be good at concentrating resources to do great things? But by “great things” we mean grand, loud, spectacular things like spaceflight, moon landings, the Olympics, and military parades—not century-long undertakings that work silently like a spring rain nourishing all things.
Of course, in theory, a despotic system can also support century-long undertakings, so long as orders come from “above” and each stage of the project is set as a task that must be conquered right now. In this respect, what we need is to hope that our leadership core truly puts the people first and truly keeps the state in mind. But that is secondary. Even if our highest leaders were incomparably wise, and the tasks they laid down all were of lasting historical merit, the key issue would still be how to ensure implementation, how the supervision mechanism operates.
At present, our system makes lower levels responsible to higher levels, so what lower-level officials care about is inspection, evaluation, and acceptance by their superiors; thus Maotai has become the central hub of the Chinese bureaucratic system. Corruption cannot be solved, because corruption is still one of the issues of governance, and still requires a supervision mechanism. If that supervision mechanism is still one in which lower levels are responsible to higher levels, and still relies on superiors inspecting, evaluating, and accepting the work of subordinates, then all that happens is that one more layer is added to Maotai’s sphere of influence.
Even if corruption were completely solved, a supervision model that relies on top-down monitoring is still inefficient. After all, no matter how wise and mighty a leader may be, he is not Guanyin with a thousand hands and a thousand eyes; when it comes to actual investigation and research, one must ultimately rely on the eyes of the masses.
By comparison, the mature bureaucratic system of ancient China could still function relatively effectively. That was because it had two additional supervision mechanisms. One was the system of court historiographers: every word and deed of officials would be recorded by historiographers who stood on a politically neutral footing. Some historiographers were responsible for reporting officials’ words and deeds to superiors—for example, officials such as censorial investigators—much like the modern procuratorate. But more importantly, the recorded words and deeds could ultimately be compiled into biographies, judged once and for all at the coffin’s closing, transmitted to future ages, and passed down from generation to generation. In a lineage-based society that worships ancestors, this “good name for a whole lifetime” was a very important matter. Thus the historiographical system made officials answerable on the one hand to their superiors, and on the other, even more, to posterity, and to the perpetuation of their own family line.
The other supervision mechanism was “heavenly retribution,” that is, prodigies and calamities; in other words, to modern people this mechanism seems sheer superstition. But in any case, it is highly meaningful. Whether it was anomalies such as solar eclipses, or disasters such as droughts, floods, and earthquakes, all were regarded as warnings from Heaven. After prodigies and calamities occurred, rulers had to perform corresponding rituals; the emperor had to conduct self-criticism, cultivate virtue and reform government, issue edicts seeking frank speech, dismiss officials, grant amnesty to the realm, and so on.
What use are rituals in the face of natural disasters? Thinking with a modern, “scientific” mind, they probably seem like unnecessary ornament. But their significance lies precisely not in overcoming the immediate crisis, but in their value for long-term stability and order. At the very least, we can see that when disaster strikes, rulers are not busy singing their own praises and extolling “skillful command and unity of purpose”; rather, they are tremblingly reviewing their gains and losses. What good is dismissing officials? In theory, dismissing high-ranking officials is done out of the consideration of “taking the blame before Heaven on behalf of the emperor.” But in terms of actual effect, it is precisely a way to keep the ruling stratum humble and reverent, and to disperse the people’s hostility.
A regime founded on hatred cannot endure for long. Today it treats nature as an enemy and stirs up the slogan of “man must conquer nature”; tomorrow it incites everyone to strike at class enemies; the day after tomorrow it urges people to resist foreign enemies such as the Americans, Soviets, Japanese, French, and so on… The people’s resentment can be continuously redirected. As long as a common foe can be found, the masses may unite in common indignation and support authoritative leadership. But hatred is a double-edged sword, and at any moment it may turn back and point at that very leadership core. When that happens, the fifty-cent party will ask: why are you all so impulsive, why are you all so irrational, why can’t you calmly and quietly consider how to solve practical problems? Little do they know that this situation is precisely self-inflicted—who indoctrinated the masses with a friend-versus-enemy way of thinking? Who strangled the masses’ critical thinking? The more critics there are, the more stable politics becomes; and when resentment overwhelms criticism, when hostility and apathy outweigh satire and irony, rule is in grave danger.
After disaster strikes, whether it is a natural disaster or a man-made one, ordinary people will be filled with complaints. No matter how much you praise the wise leadership in disaster relief and rescue, no matter how you place those earthquake orphans, who have just lost their loved ones, onto a celebration of singing and dancing and prosperity, you cannot make those who have suffered disaster feel genuinely happy. In particular, watching the leaders one by one gain merit and promotion after the calamity, pocket plenty of greasy benefits, and speak with heroic gusto at the victory banquet about a bright future—how can the ordinary people who have suffered hardship possibly feel psychologically balanced? This is not merely a matter of fairness and justice—when the disaster is clearly an irresistible natural calamity, why should ancient emperors criticize themselves and demote officials, and why should Western officials resign in disgrace? The effect is precisely to channel popular resentment, allowing the suffering masses to vent their anger.
Of course, from the standpoint of immediate efficiency, replacing officials at the front lines in the midst of battle would seem to reduce the effectiveness of disaster response, and holding self-criticism meetings is not as good as holding mobilization meetings for inspiring a spirit of unity. In short, failing to create an atmosphere of common enmity seems as though it would weaken the fighting capacity of disaster response. But in the long run, despotism’s being better able to deal with immediate disaster is only relative. In the absence of mature popular organizations and a完善保障设施, when faced with a sudden calamity that leaves people at a loss, a strong authoritative leadership is indeed necessary; otherwise, if the masses are left in a scattered, disorganized state, things will be disastrous. But the question is: why do the masses become a pile of loose sand the moment they do not rely on strong leadership? That is precisely what the system produces. If, in ordinary times, freedom of association were allowed; if, in ordinary times, rather than deliberately fostering the masses’ dependence on authority, one instead cultivated a free and independent civic consciousness; then not to mention replacing a few frontline officials, even if the official command system were completely paralyzed, the masses would not necessarily become a pile of loose sand in the face of a sudden disaster.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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