Illustration by OpenAI’s DALL·E 3
Pan Wei presents a strangely counterintuitive idea here: that, rather than a symptom of continuing social fractures, the second election of Donald Trump is evidence of strengthening cohesion between America’s elites and the masses. The common description of America fragile internally but strong externally is therefore too negative; America’s current external strength is still dependent, like that of all great powers, on its internal cohesion—which the recent election has strengthened.
Given what we know about Trump and American politics in recent years, this may at first sight seem a surprising claim. It helps to put this in the context of Pan’s intellectual background, which is deeply concerned with explaining social ferment and change. As a relatively conservative intellectual, the core of Pan’s thought is that a nation’s overall strength relies largely on the state’s ability to face social tensions and re-establish cohesion [内聚力] between the elites and the populace. Elite alienation from popular concerns, as the Soviet Union once experienced with its prioritisation of cutting-edge technology over popular wealth creation, constrains the power of a nation on the world stage. In the past, Pan has opposed the dominance of a single elite perspective on China’s “reform and opening up” process over and above popular interests, arguing that “the era of uncontested reform is over”.
Broadly, Pan sits at the left-end of a conservative spectrum that espouses the “China model” of eschewing democracy in favour of a consultative political model. By his understanding, social progress is caused by dialectical tensions between the political stances of the elites and the populace, which create “social protest movements” like the identity-based movements America has experienced in the past decade. While this is vital to progress, it inevitably causes instability and—fatally for a nation’s strength—undermines elite-popular cohesion. Rather than democratic competition, Pan’s proposed solution to this has been a “consultative rule of law regime”, a China-specific modernisation model capable of ensuring cohesion between the elites and the populace.
From this perspective, Trump’s victory has re-corrected excesses in elite social concerns, realigning elite and popular priorities and taking the heat out of identity-based social movements.
James Farquharson
as reposted from
TRUMP’S “RESTORATION” AND THE INTERNATIONAL STRUCTURE
Pan Wei (潘维)
Published by Global China (海外看世界) on 13 November 2024
Translated by James Farquharson
Key Points
Domestic cohesion [内聚力] between elites and common people is a key determinant of a nation’s relative international power.
The recent division that the US has seen are signs of a “social revolution”—the process through which a society evolves—arising from dialectical tensions caused by a global economic shift from “manufacturing wealth” [制造财富] to “wealth creation” [创造财富].
Trump’s victory and the response to it is not a sign of division in the US; quite the reverse—it will lead to greater domestic cohesion by re-balancing elite and popular concerns.
China’s power in the next decades depends on whether its rulers can, like America’s, balance popular concerns with elite ideology, which would include limiting the scope of government and upholding market mechanisms.
It would be unwise for Beijing, as the Soviet Union once did, to prioritise elite concerns such as cutting-edge technology and the space race over popular concerns such as mass wealth creation.
Trade flows are determined by relative international power. Countering China's manufacturing dominance does not require war—tariffs and non-tariff barriers may suffice.
As a secular power that uses a non-alphabetical writing system in a non-secular world that uses alphabetical systems, China lacks the cultural and religious interoperability to spread a vision of global civilisation, unlike the West.
Rather than narratives of the “East is rising while the West declines” or even a “bipolar world”, we are actually returning to a situation more akin to the post-Cold War “unipolar world” dominated by the US.
However, one upside is that this will reassure the US and help avert the “Thucydides Trap”.
Furthermore, a return to populism [平民主义] in the US, which is at root against international ideological interventions and in favour of market mechanisms (in spite of Trump’s pro-tariff stance, which is temporary), will give China more space to grow.
The Author
Name: Pān Wéi (潘维)
Year of birth: 1960 (age: 64)
Position: Chair Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Macau
Previously (until 2023): Director, Centre for Chinese and Global Affairs, Peking University; Professor, School of International Studies, Peking University
Other: A conservative associated with the Chinese “New Left”
Research Focus: Comparative politics; social evolution; China’s foreign relations
Education: BA-MA Peking University (1978-1984); PhD University of California, Berkley (1996)
Experience abroad: United States
