Beijing Cultural Review on the Decline of American Hegemony

“The Beijing Cultural Review on the rise of Trump and the End of American Hegemony”
 
Introduction and Translation by David Ownby
 
Introduction
 
The texts translated here are the editorial introductions to the cover stories of five issues of the Beijing Cultural Review/文化纵横, published between 2020 and 2023 and devoted to the theme of the decline of the American empire.  The texts describe a turning point in world history, when post-war American hegemony collapses under its own weight, giving way to…to be determined.  The texts are also part of a chapter of the book I am writing about how Chinese intellectuals view the United States, as well as the fruit of my recent trip to China.  Here’s the story.
 
In the course of my visit to China in May 2023, I spent an afternoon with the editors of the Beijing Cultural Review, in my opinion one of China’s best mainstream journals.  How this meeting came about is somewhat interesting.
 
Prior to going to China, I set up meetings and interviews with various intellectuals, including old friends as well as people I had never met.  One long-term goal I have is to diversify the authors I read and translate, who at present are predominantly middle-aged or older men of Han ethnicity,  since this is basically who writes for the journals I read.  To this end, I asked a Chinese scholar who works outside of China to contact a young woman whose work I had translated, since I knew that the two were friends. 
 
After a few days, she got in touch with me, and suggested we meet at the offices of Beijing Cultural Review, where she now works – which was news to me.  Later, I concluded that she had probably discussed my request to meet with her editors – it can be sensitive to meet with foreigners in China in the current climate – and they decided to invite me to their offices, an invitation I was pleased to accept, although I had no idea what to expect.
 
It turned out that the editors of Beijing Cultural Review already knew who I was because they follow my blog, after a fashion.  On reflection, this is not surprising, because I have translated some 30 pieces from the journal over the past few years, a fact which eventually came to the attention of the authors and the editors.  They were naturally curious about who I am and what I do; my impression is that the editors – in addition to being incredibly busy, like journalists everywhere - do not speak or read English fluently, and would not have consulted the mission statement or other explanatory material available on my blog, and instead would have simply heard, as a part of office banter, that “Ownby translated another one.” 
 
After a few minutes of small talk, the editors asked me point-blank about the purpose of my work and I replied, half tongue-in-cheek, “it’s for world peace,” which is true enough, but not the sort thing I would say out loud in most settings.  They laughed but were visibly relieved, and confessed that they were grateful to me, because they had been trying for years to circulate or publicize their work outside of China, and particularly the English-speaking world, without much success, and here I had done it for them, without their having to lift a finger. 
 
As our conversation continued, it became clear that the editors are thorough-going statists, and that while they are not a formal part of the government propaganda apparatus (they are funded by the Longway Foundation 修远基金会, which I assume is private - readers please correct me if I’m wrong - I know of course that "private" in China is not always what it seems), they see their mission as aligned with that of the state.  If this seems obvious in retrospect, it was not obvious to me when I translated those 30 articles from the journal. I chose them instead because I found them timely, well-researched, well-written, and often quietly critical of certain regime choices.  As a result, I was surprised at the extent to which the editors saw themselves as part of “team China,” as well as by their fervent anti-Americanism, which they no attempt to hide.  In fact, since I had translated so many of their articles and was working for world peace, they seemed to assume that I was part of team China as well.  They even suggested more formal collaborations in the future, which I declined, citing my independence as a scholar, which they immediately understood.
 
The afternoon was fruitful in many ways, but I left feeling perplexed and even a bit dismayed as I walked back to my hotel in a Drum Tower hutong.  To my mind, the Beijing Cultural Review had been in some ways the poster child for my blog and my project, consistently the best evidence of the relative independence of Chinese intellectuals, and of their willingness to engage with and even criticize the regime.  The editors with whom I spent three hours showed absolutely no such independence or willingness to criticize.  Quite the opposite – they spoke in the royal We of team China, as if speaking for the regime, the way generals do in wartime. 
 
The very premise of my work is to take Chinese intellectuals seriously,  but every now and then I can’t help but wonder if I am being played, if no one is really saying what they mean, and everything is really regime propaganda at some level, if sometimes deftly done.  My afternoon in the inner sanctum with the editors of the Beijing Cultural Review went directly into the “you’re being played” column, which would also mean that my blog is playing my readers, a disturbing thought.
 
At one point in my conversation with the editors, they asked me the purpose of my trip to China, and I replied that it was part of a book project on how Chinese intellectuals view the United States.  “Great topic,” they replied, “we’ve been working on the same thing over the last little while.”  Following which Yang Ping, the editor-in-chief, fetched five issues where the issue featured as a cover story in Beijing Cultural Review. 
 
Their coverage of the topic began in October 2020, with an issue entitled “America’s Once-in-a-Century Change,” where the editors cleverly applied a major talking-point about China and the post-pandemic world to domestic changes within the United States.  This was followed by “Rethinking the American Model” in April 2021;” “Behind America’s Rupture” in December 2022;  “The World Economy in the Great Disintegration” in February 2023; and “The Global South in a Changing World System” in April 2023.  The texts translated below are the editors’ introductions to the five cover stories, each of which consists of three or more articles – generally penned by scholars rather than journalists – which seek to delve more deeply into the issues at hand.  The entire package comes to some 230 8 X 11 pages – a small book.
 
I decided to study these texts, both for their content, which, as always, is interesting and timely, but also to try to better understand how to read the Beijing Cultural Review and other similar Chinese materials.  Who are the editors?  Who are the authors?  What is their message and how do they shape it?  Having spent some time with the material, the argument I will develop in my book is essentially the following:
 
First, the editors as they appear in the five issues remain clearly team China, but to a degree far less obvious than what I observed in our in-person meeting.  They do not openly savor the trials and tribulations of the United States, nor do they trumpet China’s successes or future world leadership.  Repeatedly, they suggest that America’s loss of hegemonic status illustrates that there is more than one success story in the world, and that Chinese intellectuals should wake up to that fact.  Part of this moderate stance might be explained by the fact that many Chinese intellectuals – the primary readership of Beijing Cultural Review - are still liberals of one stripe or another, who might be convinced by cogent arguments but will not be swayed by propaganda, to which they are largely immune.  Editors everywhere have to sell their product and thus to think about their readers and their market, and they shape their message accordingly.
 
Second, the editors allow the authors of the individual articles in the five issues to articulate the overall message they want to deliver, which is that U.S. hegemony is a thing of the past.  The message is obviously negative (in the sense that it describes the U.S. in unflattering terms) and somewhat repetitive, all the more so for being concentrated in the first three of the five issues devoted to the topic – the last two are more about the world after the American empire. 

The basic story is that after building a prosperous post-war order and a hegemonic empire, the United States essentially dropped the ball.  Beginning in the 1980s, decades of globalization hollowed out American manufacturing, leaving middle- and lower-class workers without jobs and the government without tax revenues.  Politicians fiddled while Rome burned, exploiting identity politics and culture wars instead of addressing the real class issues caused by fundamental economic change. 
 
At the same time, financialization transformed American corporations, replacing a culture originally grounded in innovation, pride in product quality, and a sense responsibility for the workers who made those products with a shareholder-driven focus on short-term profits, which often meant “buying” innovation and product quality instead of developing it in-house, and “selling off” in-house workers if they were not up to the task.  Decades of such wheeling and dealing eroded American leadership in technology and innovation and allowed the rest of the world to catch up, jeopardizing the American world empire.  The wave of populist conservatism that brought Trump to power thus represents an understandable response to America’s failure:  let’s Make America Great Again by bringing back manufacturing and shutting down the global empire, and globalization along with it.
 
Third, if we look closely at the key articles delivering this message, they are written by young researchers, university professors who studied abroad – mostly in the United States – and their essays are little different in style, substance, or sourcing, than those we read in mainstream American publications, although they might be cast slightly differently - but only slightly - for a Chinese audience.  Indeed, several of the pieces cite only English-language sources, and to my mind could probably be published in peer-reviewed journals in the United States.  In other words, if the editors created a negative message by grouping together a critical mass of critical pieces, the individual essays, if still negative, are not exercises in propaganda but rather successful attempts at professional scholarship, written by Chinese scholars who have been influenced by the left-wing trends that largely dominate the American academy. 
 
Returning now to a macro view, the casual Chinese reader who glances at the cover stories or flips through the material without paying too much attention will see a propaganda point cleverly presented:  the U.S. is experiencing a once-in-a-century change just like China is, part of a historical moment, a global transformation that will ultimately produce a very different world in the near future.  The more careful reader who decides to sit down for an afternoon with one or more of these issues may well be convinced by the propaganda point, because the individual pieces within each issue are arranged in such a way as to hammer home that same point from different angles and in interesting ways.  The truly discerning reader may not be convinced by the propaganda, because propaganda is everywhere in China and most intellectuals are quite cynical, but will grudgingly admit that most of the individual essays are solidly written and quite credible, even if they are contributing to a product with a propaganda message to sell.  If I have time, I will translate one or more of these essays and publish them on my blog in the future.        
 
The package is cleverly, even expertly, put together.  I asked my liberal intellectual friends in China what they think of the Beijing Cultural Review, and their impressions were uniformly positive.  Most mentioned having published in the journal at some point.
 
What do I think at this point?  First, Beijing Cultural Review’s explanation of the socio-economic, political, and cultural forces that produced populism and Trump is little different from the explanations we read in major American publications.  Here and there the authors might cite Marx or talk about “class” in ways we generally do not, but the main story line is the same.  In fact, I prefer how they treat Trump as a product of identifiable forces, without getting lost in the details of his personal foibles, as the American media tends to do.  In any event, this means that the editors and authors of the Beijing Cultural Review do not come from a separate Chinese universe where academic and journalistic writing must follow the latest musings of Xi Jinping (whose name I don’t think appears anywhere in the 230 pages).  They are working from the same data set as we are and drawing similar conclusions, if for a different audience.   
 
Is the material in the Beijing Cultural Review one-sided?  In a sense, yes, because neither the editors nor the authors are looking for story lines that contradict the major themes of “hollowing out” and “financialization.”  At the same time, hollowing out and financialization have been major story lines in American media over the past few years, and a widespread pessimism seems to pervade much of America, if we can trust the polls and the opinion columns in newspapers like the New York Times, so the Chinese focus does not stand out to me as biased or unfair, in the way, for example that Chinese government white papers do.  I’m not sure Beijing Cultural Review is very different from a left-wing French or German publication, both of which are often anti-American in broadly similar ways.  My conclusion is that we should still read the Beijing Cultural Review, while bearing in mind who the editors are and what they are trying to do.  It is still journalism, in my view, and not propaganda, even if it remains "team China."
 
Translation
 
America’s Once in a Century Change  October 2020
 
Sino-American relations are a subject of widespread concern. Recently, relations between China and the United States have become increasingly tense due to the impact of the pandemic and the intensification of election politics in the United States. In seeking to understand the changes and future direction of Sino-American relations, we have been surprised to find that the America we thought we were knew seems to have become a stranger - not only has the U.S. turned out to be the country where the pandemic is the worst, but also different types of social conflicts, grounded in class, ethnicity, and political ideology, have intensified as the pandemic has spread. It seems clear that the United States, like the rest of the world, is experiencing a once in a century change.
 
Thus to understand the nature of this round of conflict between China and the United States, as well as to see where the conflict may lead, we need to go beyond the analytical framework of international relations and study how the United States is changing and how it is responding to these changes.  This is the only way can we establish a deeper perspective on the direction of Sino-American relations and the evolution of the international landscape.
 
In his article on “The Sino-American Conflict:  The Rupture of the International Economic Hierarchy,” Feng Kaidong concludes that the current Sino-American conflict is a conflict between a rising late-developing country and the hegemon at the top of the current international economic system. After World War II, and especially after the Cold War, the United States established a hierarchical international economic system by providing public goods for global technological and economic development, in the process imposing its own hegemony. However, waves of deepening financialization since the 1970s have gradually hollowed own the capacities of American companies in terms of organizational management and technological innovation. Consequently, American technological leadership and the American-style international economic system are unraveling. 
 
In his “The Domestic Roots of the Rapid Adjustment in America’s China Strategy,” Pan Yaling uses abundant data to chart the decline of the American economy, military, finance, education, etc., as well as the unprecedented identity crisis experienced by middle- and lower-class whites under the dual pressure of ethnic recomposition [i.e., immigration concerns] and economic transformation. It is these crises that have fueled the Trump administration’s rush to find a new “enemy,” and China, which is pursuing its peaceful rise, fit the bill.
 
How is the United States responding to these changes? Our next three authors - Ou Shujun, Zuo Yilu, and Ji Mingkui - all wind up focusing on what they call the trend of "contraction" in the United States. Actions such as withdrawing from international organizations and "decoupling" its economy suggests that, as it changes, the U.S. is adjusting its identity and pulling in its tentacles. Ou Shujun's article "From ‘Empire’ to ‘Nation: The Ongoing Transformation of American State Capacity," charts the growth of American state capacity over the past two centuries and its eventual achievement of hegemony.  However, in recent years, he notes, the United States has grown complacent, leading to a trend of declining state capacity and even "de-modernization." At present, the Trump administration has realized that the burden of "empire" and the neoliberal international order are no longer beneficial to the United States, so it wants to step back from being a "world hegemon" and "downgrade" to become a more normal modern state.  Ou Shujun believes that this may well be a wise choice, but that it is easier said than done.
 
Zuo Yilu's article, "The Decline of the Reagan Era and the Trumpist Road to American Reconstruction," re-examines Trump's "unconventional character" from the perspective of the history of political change in the United States. He argues that Trump is reshaping the American system of government in an unprecedented way, i.e., by repositioning the country and its foreign strategy as a fulcrum to pry apart the domestic political system and its entrenched interests. Such an "outside-in" approach to rebuilding the U.S. system of government will have spillover effects on other countries, including China, and thus deserves our special attention.
 
Ji Mingkui's article on “New Patterns of Great Power Relations in the Post-Pandemic Age” systematically analyzes the changes in the diplomatic strategies of major powers in the wake of the outbreak of the pandemic and points out that the United States is in a stage of strategic contraction, although it still has the capacity to readjust.
 
The expansion and contraction of “empire” shapes the world map.   In the future, conflicts of interest and frictions of all kinds around the world may be inevitable. But the collapse of the old power structure is also an opportunity to improve the old order and push it toward greater equity and reciprocity. China should be keenly aware that the world is undergoing a once in a century change and can no longer linger in its own memories of yesterday’s world,  but instead should seize the opportunity to adjust its development strategy in a timely way and actively participate in or even lead the construction of a new order.
 
Rethinking the American Model  April 2021
 
The riots on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021, once again revealed the "American crisis" to the world in an extremely dramatic way. Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. political system and development model have become the template followed by many countries and regions, and the U.S.-led international system is also built on this foundation. The outbreak of the current crisis reminds us that, as relations between China and the United States grow increasingly tense, it is no longer enough to understand the evolution of the international context solely from an international relations perspective. We must also analyze the domestic and historical context of American politics, economy, and culture, in hopes of grasping the operating principle of the American model and its inner problems, and then reflect on the profound influence of the American model on the world, so as to prepare our minds tosearch for a new development path.
 
The fragmentation of America is probably the most distinctive impression the United States has left on many people in recent years. Kong Yuan's article, "Forgotten Class Issues and the Future of Oligarchy," argues that both political parties in the United States essentially abandoned class issues after World War II and instead mobilized the middle and lower classes through identity politics, which has led to the abyss of extreme inequality and cultural conflict in which the United States finds itself today. Although Trump has reintroduced class issues, seemingly as a challenge to the establishment wings of both parties, in practice, he has basically done what other Republicans do when they are in power, and his populist economic policies and foreign strategies have achieved little.
 
In the post-Trump era, however, the American political elite must confront the re-emergence of class issues. In his article “Is ‘Two Americas’ the Norm?” Ou Shujun suggests that the divisions in American society are not new but have marked virtually the entire history of the United States, although the nature of the divisions have changed over time. Only for a brief period in the thirty years or so after World War II did a relatively solid consensus exist in American society. Since then, however, the power of the American elite has grown unchecked, the middle class has shrunk dramatically, and the United States has once again become a "consensus-free society," and today's great divide is simply the inevitable result of this trend.
 
American policies on race and ethnicity are an integral aspect of the American model. But Li Xuan's article, "Beyond Beaconism: American Race and Ethnic Policy Reconsidered," finds that the propaganda and imagery that the United States has shaped itself into a "melting pot” of many races through the creation of a unified American nation and citizenship is not in fact reflected in the reality of American history. On the contrary, mainstream white American society has systematically discriminated against people of color and even against certain white European immigrants. Moreover, the progress of American racial and ethnic policies has often drawn on socialist ideas about these issues.
 
In the face of political polarization, cultural clashes, social division, and ethnic antagonism, the United States may have neither the space nor the tools needed to solve its problems. In "The Hollow State and the Institutional Crisis in the United States," Li Quan points out that in order to balance the tensions between capital accumulation and political legitimacy, capitalist countries constantly adjust their institutions and policies, but the adjustments in the United States at different stages have given rise to bulky and superfluous results, which in turn has provided space for interest groups and the private sector to influence the formulation and implementation of government policies, resulting in the hollowing out of the state and the fragmentation of governance, without enhancing the state's ability to solve real problems.
 
In today’s world system, the United States is the hegemonic state or empire, and its institutional adjustments also face the problem of how to balance internal and external relations. Zhang Yongle's "A ‘Sub-Healthy’ Empire and a Weighty ‘Headquarters’" points out that although the United States has developed a set of "frugal" and efficient strategies to facilitate imperial rule, the distribution of the costs and benefits of imperial rule within the imperial "headquarters" is uneven, which only exacerbates economic inequality and social disintegration; yet attempts to correct this imbalance undermine the empire itself. This contradiction also constrains future reforms and adjustments in the United States.
 
The American model once shaped a powerful capitalist country and a global empire, but adherence to it and dependence on it has also brought bitter fruit to the United States today. The above articles only describe some aspects of the American model. A more comprehensive and in-depth interpretation and reflection will require that more researchers join in and continue these research efforts over a longer period. But the story of the American model reveals a simple truth: there is no eternal, universal model, and we should always make dynamic adjustments to the institutional system according to changing times. This is what outside observers and students of the American model need to keep in mind.
 
Behind America's Rupture  December 2022
 
The hustle and bustle of the U.S. midterm elections has largely come to an end. The Republican Party’s victory was not as big as expected, and many of the Trump-endorsed candidates lost. Does this mean that the latest wave of conservatism and populism, triggered by Trump’s explosion onto the scene in 2016, is coming to an end?  No.  In fact, the white-hot tug-of-war between the two parties shows that both camps have failed to form an effective governing majority, behind which are two mutually incompatible social forces that cannot be reconciled. In light of this, the fact that the Republican “red storm” did not come to pass in the midterms perhaps signals the beginning of an even greater rupture, instead of being the starting point for the United States to mend its differences and move toward unity. This issue's cover story is an attempt to drive the discussion forward through a set of articles discussing different aspects of this issue.
 
In "The Origins of Economic Inequality in Contemporary America," Li Yin argues that the increasing economic inequality of the last 40 years has become one of the most important forces in contemporary American society, and that this inequality stems from the dramatic changes that have taken place in the American workplace. The "new economy" and the information technology revolution that began in the 1980s brought about new modes of industrial organization and the rise of shareholder-value capitalism. Those who benefited the most from this process were wealthy, corporate executives and financial institutions, while those who most suffered were workers, the manufacturing sector, and taxpayers, all of which plunged economic inequality in the U.S. into a never-ending quagmire. After WWII, the gap between rich and poor in the United States was relatively small for a time, but the technological conditions and industrial organization that supported this economic and social system no longer exist. Although the Biden administration has attempted to recreate Roosevelt’s New Deal through a series of policies, the success of these efforts remains uncertain.
 
The emergence of the "new economy" and the de-industrialization of the United States are two sides of the same coin. Huang Xuan's "De-industrialization’s Losers" argues that during the de-industrialization process in the United States beginning in the 1970s, white workers lost the manufacturing jobs that had provided stable income and benefits, and their economic situation deteriorated. Trump was one of the first politicians to respond acutely to the demands of this group, which is an important reason why he won the 2016 presidential election. More critically, the potential of the white working class as a "significant minority" in American political competition has since been fully realized, and both parties have had to pay more attention to this group. However, there is a serious conflict of interest between the white working class and the financial capital on which both parties heavily rely. This means that future attempts by both parties to attract the white working class are likely to result in unstable coalitions.
 
While the above two articles focus on changes in the American economic base, Wang Shaoguang analyzes changes in the “superstructure” of institutions in recent years. In his "Is the Supreme Court Still the ‘Guardian’ of American Democracy?" he points out that the "undemocratic" U.S. Federal Supreme Court has always been regarded as the "guardian spirit" of American democracy,  part of a constitutional design to balance the tyranny of the majority with the hegemony of the minority. However, in recent decades, the behavior of the Supreme Court has become more and more partisan and confrontational, the composition of judges has become increasingly elite, and its image of "just adjudicator" has gradually headed toward bankruptcy. This has led to the Supreme Court to repeat the mistakes of Congress and the President, and gradually lose the trust of the majority of the American people. In Wang Shaoguang's view, this means that the American people's confidence in their country's political system has almost disappeared, since the Supreme Court, the last "fig leaf" of American constitutional democracy, has also fallen.
 
The article “What Created the ‘Out of Control’ America?” combines the insights of many scholars who have presented their views on the United States over the past two years in Beijing Cultural Review’s pages and seminars and re-examines the causes and consequences of the return of American conservatism from the perspectives of the economic base, cultural conflicts, political institutions, and foreign policy.

​As the analysis of the above articles illustrates, the recent wave of conservatism in the United States is not a mere temporary shift in social attitudes – instead it is linked to political institutions and organizations, as well as possessing deep technical and economic roots. Thus this wave of conservatism will not lose its political energy in the near future; nor will the violent conflict between it and the ideology of liberal internationalism on which the U.S. maintains its world hegemony dissipate overnight, which will undoubtedly keep the U.S. divided domestically.  And the way this domestic division affects American interaction with the world system deserves China’s close attention.
 
The World Economy in the Great Disintegration  February 2023
 
The world economy that was beginning to recover in 2021 has been pushed back to the brink of crisis yet again in 2022.  For the world economy to get out of its present mess, it surely needs an international political atmosphere of unity, cooperation, and mutual trust. However, as symbolized by the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, international political tension and confrontation have intensified in ways rarely seen. These changes in international politics run counter to the needs of world economic recovery and development. At such a historical juncture, it is necessary to explore the deep root causes of the world economy's predicament and closely observe the tremendous changes that are taking place in the global economic governance system.
 
Yu Chunhai and Yang Wenqi's "The End of ‘Super Globalization’" points out that the reason why the world economy will be depressed again in 2022 is because the foundation of the global economic recovery in 2021 is not stable. More importantly, against the backdrop of the pandemic, geopolitical conflicts, and the long-term stagnation of the global economy, it is increasingly difficult for major countries to coordinate and cooperate on the various crises that the world is facing; and it is just this kind of coordination and cooperation that is indispensable to solve the current world economic difficulties. From a long-term perspective, this may be the result of the gradual deceleration of "hyper-globalization" since the 1980s, following which the economic logic of “efficiency above all” was replaced by political-economic logic of security and international power and competition, which then became the core concern driving economies throughout the world, which seriously weakens the foundation and mechanism of the world economy as a unified whole.
 
In "Penetrating the Fog" -  the Ukraine Crisis and the Underlying Logic of the World Economy,” Lu Zhoulai takes the economic and financial competition between the West and Russia following the Ukraine crisis as his entry point, in hopes of clarifying the true underlying logic of the operation of the world economic system. In his view, the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war reminds us that peaceful development is not the norm, and that major powers must always make trade-offs between development and security.  The exchange rate of the ruble has remained strong despite the Western financial sanctions against Russia, revealing that currency itself is not real wealth, and that hard currency and real assets are still important supports for national credit and currency; the weak performance of the European Union in the Ukraine crisis shows that the major powers are still the biggest driving force for changes in the world economic structure, and that an "era of disorder" will create opportunities for "recombination."
 
In "De-globalization, or New Arrangements for Globalization?", Cao Yuanzheng focuses on the 2022 economy, trying to read the tea leaves concerning trends for China and the world in 2023. He points out that in the past year, the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the subsequent Western sanctions against Russia have shaken the institutional foundation of economic globalization, and that the theme of the times is shifting from "peace and development" to "security and development.” In China, the pandemic and real estate dragged down economic performance, and it is urgent to adjust the basic logic of macroeconomic regulation. Looking ahead to next year, Cao believes that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has caused huge changes in the global industrial structure, and that global supply chains are increasingly concentrating in the center of the Eurasian continent, which will make the significance of the "Belt and Road" all the more prominent.  The Chinese economy needs to guard against the financial risks brought about by the historic downturn in real estate, as well as the global financial turmoil brought about by the rise in the US dollar.
 
In "The ‘Chinese Moment’ in the Modern World System," Yan Peng takes a longer view, looking at the evolution of the modern world system over some centuries to access the world significance of China's rise. Yan believes that in the process of the evolution of the modern world system and its global expansion, the hegemonic country plays a role in promoting the restructuring of the global economy, and thus is the driving force for system change. Historically, hegemony has shifted among three Western countries: the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Today, U.S. hegemony continues to decline, but looking at the history of transfers of hegemonic power, while China is gradually rising, there is no way it can be a candidate for the post at the present time. This means that the logic of the modern world system in terms of the transfer of hegemony has been interrupted, that the global structure will develop towards a more balanced and multipolar direction, and the history and theories of the modern world system will also need to be rewritten.
 
Today, when the world economy and its governance system have slid into chaos, China is also facing enormous challenges. Looking forward, China will need to constantly balance the relationship between sustainable economic development and national security, international cooperation and international competition, further opening up to the outside world and economic and technological independence and self-improvement. At the same time, China's intellectuals need to predict the future direction of the world economic system and to begin to think seriously about how to provide new ideas for the improvement and renewal of this system.
 
The Global South in a Changing World System  April 2023
 
The current world is a period of great change and upheaval. The crisis in Ukraine in 2022 has plunged the Western-dominated international system into a major disruption; at the same time, the discourse power of the global South is increasing, and the action-space and influence of many Asian, African, and Latin American countries and regions in the international arena is expanding significantly, as are their motivation and willingness to cooperate with one other. This trend tells us that the world system is taking a new turn towards the "global South.” In the face of this new emerging force, China’s intellectuals nonetheless remain tied to the old intellectual framework of the developed countries, ignoring the autonomy and new features of the global South. This issue's cover story delves into the local perspective of the Global South, analyzing the development of Southern countries and exploring the forces reshaping a new and possibly more equitable world order.
 
The primary problem facing the development of the global South is the difficulty in breaking through the bottleneck of economic development and achieving "economic catch-up." In his “The Problem of ‘Surplus’ and Scale:  The Dilemma of Third World Development,” Xu Zhun builds on Marxist political economic thought and points out that  the fundamental driving force of economic growth does not lie in static supply and demand, but in how to distribute the capital accumulation generated by economic surplus. As late-developing countries, the Third World government's colonial economic system made it difficult to develop national industries, and the accumulation of capital lagged behind. China, which has succeeded in overcoming this dilemma, can and should provide the Third World with a huge space for political and economic cooperation. In "Neoliberalism and the Premature De-industrialization of Countries in the Global South," Qin Beizhen and Hu Shulei point out, on the basis of abundant data, that the neoliberal shift in international production, domestic policies, and ideology in the global South, in a capitalist center-periphery system, has led to a premature dampening down of manufacturing development in those countries, with serious negative effects.
 
The rise of the Global South offers China the possibility of working with it to build a new international system. However, Li Xiaoyun and Xu Jin's "Can the Global South Become China's New ‘Deep Operation’[1] Strategy? " takes a geopolitical perspective and reminds us of the complexity of the realities structuring the strategic relationship between the Global South and China. Although the global South is gradually emerging as a strategic resource with strong geopolitical influence in terms of economic volume and politics, it is also important to see that the countries of the South are still deeply intertwined with the Western-dominated global political and economic structure; moreover, the interests and demands within the global South are beginning to diverge, forming new structural relationships. China needs to reconceptualize the new position and characteristics of the global South in the geopolitical landscape and construct strategic relationships that meet the development needs of the global South.
 
At the beginning of the 21st century, admist a flurry of global left-wing anti-globalization activities, a group of scholars at Lingnan University in Hong Kong re-established a theoretical and intellectual platform for South-South cooperation, using the South-South Forum and the Global University as organizational intermediaries. In his article, "Moving the Mountain to Benefit of the People," Liu Jianpai gives a detailed account of the 12-year practical experience of the South-South Forum and the Global University. As one of the organizers and initiators, Liu has reached out to a wide range of progressives in the global South and North to build a vision of Asia, Africa, and Latin America that is different from the Euro-American centrism.
 
Finally, Vijay Prashad, in his "Development Theory for the Revitalization of Socialism," summarizes and reviews the development problems of the South based on the historical context of development theory. The crisis of capitalism since 2008 and the creation of South-South cooperation institutions during the crisis have given the global South new possibilities for relaunching the development agenda and for the formation of a new socialist theory of development, according to Prashad.
 
Today, the countries of the South have demonstrated strong autonomy and dynamism in the political and economic arena. In the midst of the turbulent changes in the world system, the global South is constantly seeking development, cooperating at the economic, political, ideological and ideological levels to promote the transformation of the old world order. For China, embracing the global South is an inevitable choice when building a new international system. Facing the new historical changes, China must recognize the new characteristics of the development of the South, reposition itself in the global South, and build its relationship with the global South.