A Chinese Techno-Nationalist Manifesto:
“Let the Americans Sing and Dance While We Smelt Our Iron”
“Democracy is not the only universal value. Science is a universal value. Industrialization is a universal value. Unlike Westerners, we want to make sure industrialization benefits everyone. This is China's universal value.”
So declares the most famous techno-nationalist manifesto of 21st century China—a manifesto published for the first time in English by the Center for Strategic Translation. Penned in 2011, this manifesto calls for China to seize its destiny as the techno-industrial leader of the 21st century. The essay helped birth an intellectual movement known as the “Industrial Party” [工业党] whose writings and ideas have become an inescapable part of Chinese debates over foreign affairs and economic policy in the era of Sino-American tech competition. Though by no means an official party document, it stands as an early and influential articulation of many of the techno-nationalist policies now embraced by the Communist Party of China today.
The author of the manifesto is Wang Xiaodong, a prominent public intellectual who made his name as a nationalist firebrand attacking other Chinese intellectuals in the ‘80s and ‘90s for their embrace of Western critiques of Chinese culture and politics. The manifesto, “China’s Industrialization Will Determine the Fate of the World and China,” expresses the same confidence in Chinese power that defined Wang’s earlier work but sketches a far more ambitious vision for China’s future. Gone are Wang’s trademark denunciations of hypocrisy abroad and internalized racism at home. Instead, Wang writes of bullet trains and manufacturing hubs, fighter jets and foundries. In the manufacture of copper wiring and steel beams Wang finds an objective measure of strength and progress. Nationalists who fret about American financial might, cultural prestige, or discourse power confuse the byproducts of strength for its source. “What is there to admire in the American financial industry, in Hollywood, in the Grammys, or in the NBA?,” Wang asks. “Let the Americans sing and dance while we smelt our iron.”
In heavy industry and high technology Wang identifies China’s national purpose. Theirs is a global mission: “Industrialization,” Wang argues, “has the potential to transform not only China’s appearance but the face of the entire world.” Key to Wang’s argument is the idea that unlike the abstract moral values that guide many political movements, technological progress can be measured. The material transformation brought about by industrialization is inseparable from physical reality. It provides an objective measure of success. The Chinese people must be laser-focused on this material success—which means first catching up to, and then surpassing, Western technological might. Wang maintains that this is the Communist Party’s only route to lasting political legitimacy. Luckily for China, it is endowed with the world’s largest population of potential scientists, technicians, and engineers. If China wants this destiny, then China shall have it.
The problem is that not all Chinese understand the stakes. Wang introduces a novel set of terms to distinguish those who instinctively understand his program from those mystified by it. He calls the former group the “party of industry” [工业党]:
Members of the Industrial Party, as the name implies, are inclined toward further industrialization. In terms of their intellect, they are more suited to work in industry. That does not mean that everyone in the Industrial Party is an engineer, since I consider myself a member but do not work in industry. People in the Industrial Party are similar to scientists or engineers in the way they think about things.
Opposite the industrial party is what Wang calls the “party of sentiment” [情怀党]. Like the Odes-memorizing literati of old, China’s sentimentalists waste their time debating the merits and meaning of media, rhetoric, and art. Some are part of China’s “left.” Others are part of China’s “right.” But, left or right, they are all preoccupied with things that do not matter. They argue about political philosophy, history, and the deeper meanings of movies, music, and novels (readers will find Wang’s claims reminiscent of the American technologists who wonder why people waste their time arguing about “representation” in superhero films when the AI revolution is just around the corner). They do not realize that technology is the crowning achievement of mankind. Wang believes that this truth is only grasped by those who value statistics over sentiment and material victories over intangible moral values. These are the people who—for the sake of humanity’s future—must run China.
Over the 2010s many Chinese who believed they were exactly the sort of STEM-minded thinker that Wang’s essay celebrated coalesced into a distinctive internet subculture. They are known by the name Wang gave them: the Industrial Party. Their movement is well suited for the times. Over the last five years Industrial Party intellectuals have seen policies that they advocated all the way back in the late aughts and early 2010s—building self-sufficient industrial supply chains inside China, exporting Chinese-style infrastructure to the developing world, fusing China’s civil and military technological development, pouring national resources into basic scientific research, and an industrial policy that privileges heavy industry over software or consumer tech—be adopted one by one by the Communist Party of China.
Read Wang’s full argument for China’s techno-nationalist future HERE.
Glossary
Beyond its translations, CST also publishes a glossary of key terms in the PRC political writing. Each entry is an essay that summarizes the meaning and traces the history of key concepts invoked by the author translated. Many of these terms are relevant for understanding Chinese techno-nationalism, including:
The Century of National Humiliation [百年国耻]
The Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation [中华民族伟大复兴]
Advancing Towards the Center of The World Stage [走近世界舞台中央]
Coming Soon
The Center for Strategic Translation will continue its investigation of the roots of Chinese techno-nationalism with analysis and translation of excerpts from Wang Huning’s 1991 book America Against America. Before Wang was the fourth-ranking member of the Politburo Standing Committee and the CPC’s ideologue-in-chief, Wang was a young academic wandering across America, intent on understanding how America came to possess its astounding technological might. In the weeks to come we will translate excerpts of his meditation on this question. Subscribe to stay in the loop!