Wang Huning on American Technology and American Greatness

A Meditation on American Technology by China’s Most Powerful Intellectual

Wang Huning, fourth-ranking member of the Politburo Standing Committee, has served as China’s ideologue-in-chief for the past two decades. He has been called the “world’s most dangerous thinker” and the “éminence grise” of Xi Jinping. Yet long before Wang was elevated to high office, he was a young political scientist eager to learn everything he possibly could about the world outside of China. In 1989 this desire led him to tour the United States; two years later he published a philosophical meditation on his travels. He titled his travelogue America Against America. Reflective, candid, and largely free of party jargon, America Against America provides a refreshingly honest look at the ideas and ideals of one of the most influential men in the Communist Party of China. 

As part of a larger project examining Chinese thinking on the relationship between technology and national power, the Center for Strategic Translation has published several excerpts from America Against America. In this book Wang investigates which aspects of American life are accidental byproducts of America’s unique history and geography, and which illustrate more general political or social principles which might hold true outside of an American context. Americans’ relationship with technology is a special theme that runs throughout Wang’s journey across the United States. Again and again, Wang asks: What is the source of America’s technological might? Why is it always Americans pushing mankind to new technological frontiers? Why doesn’t this ceaseless stream of technological change undermine America’s social stability? And most importantly of all, how can China catch up?

            CST will publish five excerpts from Wang’s book. Two have been published this month: “Uncertainty Created by America” and “The World of the Future.” In addition to these excerpts we have also published a brief introduction to the book as a whole.

Uncertainty Created by America 

Wang arrived in the United States in the 1980s—a time when China remained a poor and undeveloped nation. He describes the cars, computers, and cityscapes he sees in the United States with shock:

The United States is a very developed society in many respects. Anyone who comes to the US will feel a sort of “future shock.” [In this situation], one type of person will just think about how they can enjoy being in America; another type of person will ponder why there is an America. ...What forces created such an awe-inspiring material civilization? What administrative and intellectual systems created the conditions for this development? Is this end-state the result of chance, or was it a historic inevitability?”

A repeated theme of America Against America is the need for some coordinating mechanism to ensure social stability and progress. Wang faulted the PRC for relying too much on violence to perform this coordinating role. He believes that in America it is shared values, attitudes, and habits that cause the many to act in concert without the need for any external coordination by the few. Culture and tradition can give the selfish strivings of millions of self-interested individuals a sense of coherence and direction. He believes this also holds true for America’s technological progress:

I asked some friends [about the origin of America’s economic power]. One answered: first, [the United States] is extremely rich in resources, and second, it encourages competition among talented people. Another friend added that at least people [feel this way] when they first come to America. I also asked G, a friend studying for a PhD at Stanford. He answered “tradition.” I think this is the most abstract but also the most valuable explanation….

Americans talk constantly about innovation and, in reality, the American tradition [of innovation] is very strong. The Chinese also talk constantly about innovation, but [China’s] tradition [of innovation] has had its ups and downs. Some people say that, to Americans, innovation is not in conflict with tradition; to Americans, tradition and innovation are the same thing, since traditions that exist today were innovations only thirty or fifty years ago. To Chinese people, the idea of innovation is in opposition to tradition, and it is not easy to counteract thousands of years of tradition.

Read the full translation of this excerpt HERE.

The World of the Future

The second excerpt from America Against America further develops the theme of technological innovation as an American tradition. Wang sees an especially sharp contrast between the Chinese and American approach to continuity and change. Where Chinese struggle to accept new innovations, in the United States radical change is itself a stable tradition:

Americans are, paradoxically, the most adept people in the world at being novel and original. This is a peculiar phenomenon among these people: the great bulk of the population accepts not only the oldest, most time-honored things, but also delights in the newest and most exotic.… They are both conservative and innovative at the same time. This seems to be something of a contradiction which manifests in different areas of [American] society. Americans tend to be conservative in their values, yet pursue novelty and originality in technical fields, where it is often the most audacious ideas that gain their support and approval.

Wang offers several hypotheses for the origin of this trait: Americans are the descendants of pioneers who settled a vast frontier. Scientific naturalism comes easy to a people who have long equated the exploitation of nature with national success. America is a nation of atomized individualists. Adopting the newest fads—or better yet, inventing the newest fads—allows Americans to distinguish themselves from peers otherwise treated equal. But most important of all, the American people are possessed by what Wang calls the “spirit of futurism.”

Wang contrasts “the spirit of futurism” with the short term market mentality that he labels “the spirit of pragmatism.” Capitalism leads the American people to focus narrowly on the practical functionality:

Pragmatism, reflected in ever-changing social life and human behavior, means that everything must achieve useful, practical, and realistic ends, while standards of value that are indiscernible, unattainable, or seemingly non-existent are rejected. In the contemporary United States, such a spirit is made more concrete by the expression “money first”, whereby quick financial gain is the litmus test of pragmatism and anything that makes money has an overpowering value. In a way, making money has become the essence of pragmatism in the current age.

According to Wang, the only force in American society capable of moderating the imperatives of the market place is this “spirit of futurism:” 

In this overly materialistic society, it is rare to see a force that can overwhelm pragmatism. However, here the idea of futurism carries a particularly strong allure. Thus futurism also makes up a fundamental component of the general spirit of American society. It may be difficult to win hearts with other ideas, but here the ideas of futurism are powerful.

To me, futurism refers to something that has no direct effect at the moment, but will have an effect in the future, whether that something be a tangible object, an abstract concept, or a state of being. From this viewpoint, it becomes clear that pragmatism and futurism are a contradictory dichotomy, with one seeking value from the present moment and the other from the future. Yet [both] of these two spirits do, in fact, dominate [this] society. This is why I say [American society] is a complex synthesis.

Wang believes that American greatness is sustained by the allure of the world to come. How could the United States, he asks, “maintain its status… in today’s highly competitive world” without “concerning itself with the world of the future?” Thus Wang concludes that American hegemony could not have been built solely by the egoist incentives of the marketplace. The drive to build a better future is thus both “a fundamental component of the general spirit of [American] society” and “a driving force [behind American success] that cannot be replaced by any other force.”

Read the full translation of this excerpt HERE.

Coming Soon

The Center for Strategic Translation will continue its investigation of the roots of Chinese techno-nationalism in the weeks to come. We will both publish additional excerpt of Wang Huning’s America Against America and a recent report by a former NDRC official on what China must do to overtake the United States on the technological front before the centenary of the People’s Republic in 2049.