FORMER lead writer and chief editor of the Hong Kong Economic Journal, Yi-Zheng Lian recently wrote an article for the New York Times, entitled “Could There Be Another Chinese Revolution?” It was an interesting piece that examined the political situation in China and then compared it with the country’s recent and ancient pasts.
Yi writes: Some lament that China under Mr. Xi is returning ideologically to the Maoist era. But if the Red Aristocracy keeps rising, China’s politics may regress all the way back to medieval times.
“Chinese society underwent radical structural changes between the Tang dynasty (618–907) and the Song dynasty (960–1279). Naito Konan, a prominent Japanese Sinologist, noted in the 1910s and 1920s that before the enlightened autocracy of the Song era, China had for many decades been ruled by an informally hereditary aristocracy whose emperors also filled top government posts and controlled the civil service examinations. The emperors created a closed, self-serving and rapacious elite — until the entire system suddenly collapsed.
Naito noted that for decades the dynasties remained stable even as emperors were often overthrown by other aristocrats. It was another historian, Nicolas Tackett, who recently explained why the aristocracy was finally done in, and why so quickly.
After examining hundreds of epitaphs on graves from the ninth century, he concluded that the Tang empire was brought down by Huang Chao, a disgruntled salt-merchant-turned-rebel, who tapped popular discontent to wage a rebellion that swiftly turned into a blood bath — a class genocide that physically annihilated the entire medieval aristocratic class.
This is a precedent that should worry China’s leaders today.
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There’s a lot of information to unpack here, but what Yi is arguing is quite simple. President Xi’s administration is powerful and has managed to eliminate most of his political opponents. However, according to Yi, his base – which is made up of so-called “Red Aristocrats,” basically China’s modern day aristocracy – is also quite small, and brittle. The Red Aristocrats have consolidated their power under Xi, and have keep their opponents, the “Plebeians” – a class of counter-elites who gained wealth and influence through China’s growing economy – out of power.
Yi’s thesis is that Xi’s actions, as well as the Red Aristocrat-Plebeian divide are nothing new. They have happened before throughout Chinese history. Yi offered the example of Huang Chao the salt-merchant turned revolutionary, but he could also have included Shang Yang or Han Fei Tzu, both of whom attempted to reform the closed aristocratic systems of their own time. The point here is that Yi believes that China’s political class is reverting to its roots and I am inclined to agree.
This doesn’t mean that China will collapse or suffer some cataclysmic event (though that’s always a possibility). It simply means that despite being a nominally Maoist country, China remains a deeply in-egalitarian society, and no ideology will ever likely change that. One could even argue that the Chinese are genetically predisposed to repeat these social patterns, because that’s how the country and the people have evolved over generations.
Maoism was supposed to modernize China and create a new society free from the historical burdens and class structures of ancient China. Instead, the CCP has become what it has attempted to eliminate, and instead of creating a new society based around Marxist theories (which I would argue are foreign to the Chinese character), the PRC is reverting to its natural, organic past.
Will this reversion to the historical mean be bad for China? I personally see it as a good thing, and that’s because I believe that China is older than Maoism, and in the end, the former will outlive the latter. The power struggles in the PRC’s upper echelons seems to point towards this trend. (jdr456@gmail.com/PN)
