China, Power.*

Above we have three women and a man being devoured by an octopus.

The three women are "Truth," "Justice," and "Law."

This is Jurisprudence** (1903) by Gustav Klimt. 

Some years ago I read an article in The Economist. The author, British, wrote that America's legal system acts as an unseen tax on the American economy, that the costs for lawyers to do everything that we do, file suits, defend suits, win suits, collect judgments, is built into the cost of all the products of the American economy. Law inhibits the intercourse between consenting capitalists and makes the American economy less efficient was the point of the article. In The Economist’s sense, maybe in an economist’s sense, there is a conflict of laws going on here; there is a conflict between the law in Klimt’s painting and “the law of supply and demand,” a sort of “natural” or “higher” law. 

Now, via an Austrian painting, an English magazine and intercourse among consenting Americans we come to the subject of this post.

Before Deng Xiaoping assumed power, China did not have much of a legal system.  Thus, in The Economist’s view of things Deng would have been able to shift the Chinese economic paradigm from communism to capitalism “efficiently.”  And he did.


The law is a power source (a pole?) in the West (especially in America according to The Economist). The legal power pole in America is…separate from…different than…it is in some meaningful sense “not the same as” the political power pole. "All are equal under the law" makes explicit that the law is over everyone. Until Deng there was no “civil” law, the kind that applies to business, to speak of in China.  Even today, 30 years after Deng’s economic paradigm shift, civil lawyers have a lesser role in China and civil law is subservient to the Chinese Communist Party, that is to politics. There are no law schools as in America.

In China there has always been the political power pole and few others and those others have always had less “wattage.”  Power has never been as centralized in the West as it always has been in China. Power in Middle Ages Europe was shared or competed for among the “Three Estates,” the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners.  China, without religion, never had a clerical power pole. It did not have an aristocracy separate from the Crown. It always had commoners of course. China did not develop a bourgeoisie as did Europe (1) That merchant middle class power pole did not exist.  Much more so than in Europe, there was the political power pole within the Forbidden City and little else. The Communist revolution has wiped out the pre-existing civil society in China. This is the key aspect of China today. Even as Deng and his successors have led China on the greatest continuous economic expansion the world has ever seen they have kept a capitalist middle class from becoming a competing political class. Political power is more centralized within Zhonghanhai then it ever was in the Forbidden City.

Economics is about who gets what size slice of the pie. That’s a pretty big slice of our lives; it’s not the whole pie though. Americans can make money with the best of ‘em; we can consume with the best of ‘em.  There is a sense in which Americans have subsumed political power to economics while the Chinese have subsumed economics to political power. And there is a sense in which, I believe at least, that is overstated. I think it is more true to say that, unlike Chinese, Americans have more paths to power open to them, and consequently more power. Both can now get rich. Both have a political path to power, Chinese by entering government service, not through elections. Both of those paths overlap to a degree, that is politicians tend to be rich in both countries. It seems to me that there is greater freedom of movement for Americans along these two paths to power. “Freedom” to fall back on the path of power, to fail. It is just my impression but it seems to me that Americans are more likely to lose the wealth they’ve made than in China. If that is correct, then the riches path to power in America is more open to those behind. He who has fallen does not present the same obstacle to those following the same path. It (only) seems to me that Chinese further along the path of riches stay there, more effectively blocking others.  Similarly with political power in the two countries. Isn’t that what the resentment over the “princelings” is about?  The sons and daughters of revolutionary heroes have an aristocratic leg up on the rest?  America has its political dynasties but could an Abraham Lincoln, or a Lyndon Johnson, ever become Paramount Leader in China?

No religion, no religious path to (worldly) power.  Priests, ministers, Rabbis, tele-evangelists, have “social standing” in the West, especially it seems to me, in America. Social standing is a form of power, it can lead to political power but it too is a separate path. It is part of the “civil” society of the West that does not exist in China. Teachers and professors too have always had their own social standing--in both China and America. In China, what they teach is determined by the Party, thus their status is subsumed to politics. Doctors, writers, artists: in China more under political control; in America less so, another separate power pole.

No religion, no “higher law” either. Christianity and Judaism do, among other things, a similar thing to what Klimt’s law does. Morality in the West operates as a check on the behavior of homo sapiens.  In a sense barbarous to this Westerner, religious morality can be seen as depriving us of "freedom,"  the freedom to, for example, beat to death a high school principal or pelt to the ground the president of the country.

Law of either kind demands obedience. Chinese are good at that.  Americans have so many laws to obey, man-made laws, higher laws, natural laws, we have to think: Is this man-made law sensible? Does that other one conflict with the higher law of morality. Chinese don’t have much of either kind of law to obey, never had much of either to obey, and so don't have to think as much. Chinese have orders. Orders must be obeyed without thinking.

Law of either kind has “thought consequences” in addition to behavioral consequences. This is part of the meaning in Mao Lushi’s statement. Calls for a Cultural Revolution in America would be laughed, or strangled, out of existence. In China the calls for a Cultural Revolution received a universal response. To some of us Westerners the most astonishing thing about Deng’s economic paradigm shift was the facility with which ordinary Chinese went along with it.  The behavior was completely different, the politics the opposite, in the one, to be the reddest communists, in the other to be capitalists. The mind-set was the same, “we will obey.”

So, what of it?  Isn’t this how Chinese want to be?  It is. It diminishes the soul of mankind. In my opinion. The obedience mind-set is in conflict with the values of America--and Western values generally. If the soul of China is survival and if this obedience mind-set has always been present in China, then it was present in 1600 when China was as advanced, as competent, as it ever was in its history until Deng's paradigm shift. The key difference for our purposes between 1600 and 2012 is that China today is relevant, it was not in 1600. China today is projecting power, emanating from its soul, a product of its mind-set, around the world. It sees economic competition as a zero-sum game where it will be the winner and America the loser. It openly talks of the need to resolve common international disputes with America "in order to avoid war," which means it thinks of war with America. I don't think China is planning war on America but I don't think China is planning war because that would be irrational: they would lose. I think China knows that. Their society is not agile, their military is not agile; there are communications and logistics difficulties within the Chinese military that come with such a centralized behemoth. I think Chinese are rational so I do not think they plan war on America. But they would not be constrained from making war on America by morality. So that's what of it. In my opinion.

*Originally posted June 25 at 7:36 pm, reposted with today's date and time because I added on to the last paragraph and neglected to include the footnotes below last night.

**Destroyed by fleeing Nazis, along with Medicine and Philosophy, in 1945. No color photographic copy of Jurisprudence that I could find.

1. Law in Modern Society, Roberto Mangabeira Unger.