Jeffrey Wasserstrom: commitment

Transcript context

…But it is. It’s a powerful… He’s not welcomed in Singapore, let’s just say. But he talked about how when he wanted to try to… He went to Japan a lot in the 1980s at a time when Japan was a place where you got a sense of what the future might hold. So the dark side of this, the surveillance state at its worst, which we see in Xinjiang in places. And there, again, it may seem like I’m just obsessed with science fiction. And there it really is minority report. It’s this kind of like you do certain kinds of behaviors, and we’re seeing this other places too. We’re seeing versions of it in the US as well. Where it’s like, oh, we can tell from a pattern that you are the kind of person who might do X, so in Xinjiang when they were starting to round people up… There’s this great book by a Uyghur poet. He talks about how people were just starting to disappear off the streets and they were being accused of being radicalized and being potential terrorists. And the cues could be something like, somebody giving up smoking, or not drinking alcohol. Because that was seen as something that sometimes went along with becoming more devoted to Islam, and more devoted to something, a particular version of it. So he talked about how a group of the poets, or writers, when they get together, they would… Whether or not any of them drank, they would make sure there was a bottle of alcohol on their table, because it was simply a way of trying to stay ahead of this system of looking for these kind of clues. So you really have this dark side of, Xinjiang is this example. And Tibet also with incredible tight control. There’s more of that kind of push on personal life in other parts of China as well. But I think the question of whether we give up too much, and who can abuse what we do give up, is something that is being asked in the United States now, about big tech companies, as well. It’s asked about governments, but it’s also asked about big tech, and what you have as a trade- off. But I hadn’t thought about it till this conversation, which I can tell is why people find it stimulating to have these extended conversations. Because you have set lines, but then the conversation goes and you think in a different way. So what I used to always say about China after 1989 was, the Chinese Communist Party wanted to stay in power, and they realized that the Soviet Union, Soviet Bloc was falling apart. They knew that one reason why people, and this is the simple way of… One way I think you have to understand why communism fell in Eastern Europe, was partly about ideals and thirst for freedom and that, but also people knew that people… East Germans knew that West Germans were having more fun and getting better stuff. sm fell in Eastern Europe, was partly about ideals and thirst for freedom and that, but also people knew that people… East Germans knew that West Germans were having more fun and getting better stuff. And when some East Berliners got over the wall, one of the first places they went to was this department store, to see if the images of better food and more choices were available there. And it was true. And I think this is as human as the desire for more freedom. So one of the things that the Chinese Communist Party, they never articulated it this way, but how can we try to get to a stage where we don’t have things like Tiananmen, again? Well, what if we try to make a deal with people? We’ll give them more choices in their daily life. We’ll give them better stuff, we’ll give them more choices at the store, we’ll give them more choices about what to read too, we’ll give them more choices in consumer goods and intellectuals, consumer goods they want or to watch the movies and read the books that other people like them around the world are reading. So we’ll give them more choices. We won’t open the floodgates completely, but we’ll give them more choices, but not give them more choices at the ballot box or in politics. And this was the new social compact. Allow us to keep ruling, and we’ll make sure that you’re living better than the last generation in terms of choices, and in terms of material goods. Now, one of the things that’s happening now is the Chinese Communist Party, the economy isn’t booming the way it was before. The sense of clearly, we’re living better materially than the generation before, it’s not as easy an argument to make when you have growth rates and things like that. But the Communist Party makes different kinds of arguments now about the rest of the world is in chaos and we’re stable. But the thing that I now am going to think about differently is, the argument was we’ll give you more choices, and you’ll have more of a private life, more of this. But now in the period we are globally, now there’s a new kind of suspicion about the degree of any kind of private choices. There was an idea that the post Tiananmen generation was promised to have a little bit more space away from the prying eyes of the state. And now globally we worry about the prying eyes of whether it’s the state, or whether it’s tech companies. It’s a different moment. What does it mean to say you have more choices? It’s almost like you have two knobs. One is 1984 and one is a brave new world. At first they turn up the brave new world more choices, and now they’re turning up the 1984… Keeping the choices, but turning up the 1984 with more surveillance. So the choices you make have to be more public. Do you have a sense that the thing we’ve been talking about, the increase in censorship, does that predate Xi Jinping? Is Xi Jinping a part of that increase in censorship? What is that dynamic? What role does Xi Jinping play in what China has gone through over the past, let’s say a decade and a half?…

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