Fang Ning and Feng Jungong on Post-Xiaokang Chinese Society

Fang Ning and Feng Jungong, “A Potentially Dramatic Change May Subject Chinese Society to Two Major Shocks”[1]

Introduction and Translation by David Ownby
 
Introduction
 
Fang Ning (b. 1957) is identified in the text as a member of the International Studies Institute of Sichuan University, but he spent most of his career as deputy director and Party Secretary of the Institute of Political Science Research 政治学研究所 of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing.  A selection of his writings is available on his Aisixiang page.  Feng Jungong (b. 1980) teaches at the Marxism Institute at North China Institute of Science and Technology, located in Langfang, Hebei, half-way between Tianjin and Beijing.  Neither author was on my radar before I selected this text to translate, and I doubt that the text had a major impact in China.
 
I nonetheless found the text interesting because it was penned by two Party members, and published roughly two weeks before the centenary celebration of Chinese Communist Party on July 1, 2021, yet it makes almost no mention of any of the major themes associated with that celebration, and no mention at all of great leader Xi Jinping.
 
The piece is instead a somewhat meandering reflection on what will happen once the goal of a “moderately prosperous society” is achieved in China. 

The term “moderately prosperous society”--xiaokang 小康—first appeared in the pre-Han Chinese classic,  The Book of Rites, where it refers to a “period of tranquility” in which sagely rulers established a fragile peace.   The late Qing reformer Kang Youwei (1858-1927) revived the term as one of the “eras” the world would pass through before reaching the age of “great unity.” The idea was recycled yet again in reform-era China, when it came to refer to a basic universal prosperity—the end of poverty and the beginning of a secure material life for everyone.  At one point, the Party set 2020 as the date to achieve a moderately prosperous society.
 
Fang and Feng are of course delighted to celebrate this achievement, and praise China’s reform and opening for having made it possible.  The point of their text, however, is reflect on the “post-modern” values that will accompany the arrival of a moderately prosperous society, when material desires will cease to the driving force in society. 
 
Citing the growing popularity of extreme sports such as marathons in China and elsewhere in the “post-modern” world, the authors argue that as materialism fades, individualism and diversity will emerge as new values, as everyone attempts to “maximize individual peak experience.”  Clearly concerned by recent discussions of involution and “lying flat,” the authors seem cheered by the prospect that an embrace of minimalism—particularly among Chinese young people—may help to resolve the contradictions plaguing China on the eve of post-modernity, i.e., the fact that salaries are not keeping up with real estate prices.
 
At the same time, the authors worry that the values consensus that has marked reform-era China—the general notion that “to get rich is glorious”—will give way to a fractious, fragmented society where everyone follows their own dream, and perhaps ignores the China Dream.  The authors propose no particular solution to this dilemma, which struck me as strange since Xi Jinping Thought and the great revival of the motherland surely could have done the trick. 
 
We need not read this as resistance, but merely as a reminder that, even in moments of collective celebration of the centenary of the founding of the CCP, two card-carrying CCP public intellectuals can publish a text that goes in a different direction.  Perhaps post-modernism is already leaving its mark.
 
Favorite Quotes
 
“Once the acquisition of material wealth and the associated social status are no longer regarded as fundamental life pursuits, a trend toward a genuine diversification of social values begins to emerge. And once people pursue other goals, they accordingly discover non-material meanings of life, so many people choose to challenge their own abilities and transcend themselves in extreme sports.  Post-modern values, characterized by personalized peak experiences, are the direction and trend of people’s spiritual activities in an era of material abundance.”

“Post-modern values are beginning to emerge in today’s Chinese society. Young people in Chinese society, with a greater ease of access to basic material needs, possess greater freedom of choice, and the younger generation, more than older generations, prefers to do what they like. In a sense, the ability to have this ‘freedom of choice’ has become a true value in life. When a young female teacher submitted her one sentence-long letter of resignation—‘The world is so big, I want to see it’—her decision sparked widespread social concern and empathy. This reflects the fact that, at least for young people, the willingness to endure the constraints of the work place as long as they yielded more income has greatly decreased, and the desire for freedom and alternative lifestyles is gaining wide social acceptance.”
 
“The goal of socialist development is that of achieving great material abundance, but if people's needs and desires increase faster than the speed of economic development, then the boat merely rises with the water. Moreover, one law of economic development is that of decreasing marginal returns, and the speed of economic development will decline after reaching a certain level.  Currently China has entered a period of economic compression which will constitute the ‘new normal,’ and if people's needs and desires continue to increase, this will create more social problems.”
 
“However, postmodern values are pluralistic, and at their core is the pursuit of individualized peak experiences. While Nietzsche proclaimed that ‘God is dead’ as the West entered the industrial age, in post-modern society, everyone can create a ‘God’ of their own liking. Once the beliefs that constitute moral values, moral standards, and behavioral norms fall apart, society as a whole will fundamentally lose its common value base, and the system of state and social governance will lose its spiritual and moral foundation. People holding different values and pursuing individualized peak experiences will have difficulty understanding and accepting one other, to the point of becoming strangers. Following the post-modern value revolution, more and more people will disagree with the mainstream value system and live instead in a world of individuality.”

Translation
 
After Moderate Prosperity:  The Emergence and Challenge of Post-Modern Values 
 
"Moderately prosperous society" and "socialism with Chinese characteristics" were key words in the titles of the reports of the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th National Congresses of the Communist Party of China, [held respectively in 2002, 2007, 2012, and 2017]. The year 2020 is meant to mark the achievement of a moderately prosperous society. The term "moderately prosperous society" is a Chinese expression for the achievement of modernization, and thus it signals the imminent arrival of a “post-prosperity,” post-modern society in China. From the perspective of world experience, the transition from modern society to post-modern society will lead to a conceptual revolution that will transform mainstream values, which will have significant and far-reaching impacts on social structure and governance. 
 
What Does “Moderately Prosperous Society” Mean? 

The concept of "moderately prosperous" or of a "moderately prosperous society" has undergone a process of deepening and development, beginning as a reflection by the leaders of the Communist Party of China who explored the path of China’s modernization through reform and opening, and gradually rising to the level of national strategy. The concept of was first formally introduced by Deng Xiaoping when he met with Japanese Prime Minister Masayoshi Ôhira on December 6, 1979, and he made "moderately prosperous" the strategic development goal of China's socialist modernization in the 20th century. Since then, "moderately prosperous" has become an important indicator measuring the effectiveness of the CCP’s socialist modernization. 
 
As a Chinese concept, the basic goal of "moderately prosperous society" is to achieve the people’s "common prosperity" and to facilitate the "pursuit of the good life" by all the people, but as a specific indicator to measure economic and social development, it is also linked to comprehensive national power. Therefore, "moderately prosperous" is a concept linked to the state. In a horizontal comparative sense, “moderately prosperous” is a concept used to characterize the levels industrialization, urbanization and modernization within Chinese society.
 
As a Chinese synonym for industrialization and modernization, “moderately prosperous” has its own Chinese characteristics and necessity. It is what is “Chinese” about China's process of industrialization and modernization, of building a moderately prosperous society. Chinese scholars have offered an excellent characterization of this Chinese specificity, referring to its “spatial and temporal compression." In a new wave of industrialization and modernization beginning in 1979, China has accomplished in just 40 years a process that took Western industrialized countries a century or more to complete.
 
What we have called "spatial and temporal compression" is, in short, the problem that China is facing, including what we might call pre-modern problems, modern problems, and even post-modern problems that are also beginning to appear; the compression of space and time is concretely reflected in the fabric of Chinese society. In terms of pre-modern problems, for example, 2020 is a crucial and decisive year in the fight against poverty, which means that traditional agricultural poverty remains a problem for the vast majority of China's rural population.

At the same time, China also has a host of "modern" problems, such as the rapid development of China's industrialization, which means that China is now the world's largest industrial manufacturing base, China has become the world's factory, and the world has entered the "Made in China" era. In addition, there are many new problems in China, namely what are called post-modern problems in the West, and these "post-modern" problems are increasingly attracting people's attention and concern. 
 
A Historical Shift in Values 
 
“Postmodern” is not merely a temporal concept.  Instead, it refers to a historical social phenomenon producing a gradual change in social values following a significant increase in material wealth and a significant improvement in the quality of life and living conditions in industrialized and modernized societies.  It is a social process in which the material values of pre-modern and modern societies are gradually replaced by non-material values.
 
After developed industrialized countries and developing countries enter post-modern society, the pursuit of extreme sports and the idea of pushing life to its limits have become social phenomena, and various extreme sports, including marathons, have been widely developed. Extreme sports have become a social phenomenon in China today. In a certain sense, extreme sports are an important symbol of post-modern society. Marathons are a typical example of extreme sports, because they are the most popular—the  extreme sport with the lowest entry threshold and the most participants. 

Just looking at the example of China, in 2014, there were only 50 marathons, including half marathons, in mainland China, while Taiwan, with a population of 22 million, held more than 300 marathons that same year. In 2015 China made the application process easier, and the number of marathon events on the mainland quadrupled that same year. Three years later, in 2018, 1,581 marathons were held on the mainland, and the total number of marathon participants nationwide reached 5.83 million, with 285 prefecture-level cities hosting marathons.
 
The essential meaning of participating in extreme sports is to explore life’s limits, it is a kind of extreme physiological experience. Therefore, in a social sense, the widespread development of extreme sports, as represented by marathons, means that the pursuit of personalized extreme experience has become a value pursuit. It is no coincidence that this phenomenon has emerged in Chinese society at a moment when we are about to achieve a moderately prosperous society.

Since 2008, we have been engaged in a comparative study of political development in the era of industrialization. In our multi-country research, we discovered that there are large numbers of "road runners" in Western societies and even in developing Asian countries like the Philippines. As our research progressed, we realized that with the advent of industrial society, extreme sports have become a common social phenomenon in all countries. In comparison with traditional societies, we can see that, to a certain extent, this is a revolution in values.
 
Values are how the subject makes use of the objective world, and the social knowledge resulting from this process creates a set of values.  These sets of values are the crystallization of social practice and social life, and are the subjective results gradually achieved by the people in the process of pursuing life goals. In our prior experience, the development of production and the pursuit of growth were the dominant traditional standards of value. The ceaseless pursuit of material wealth has been the state of existence of human beings during the eras of industrialization and modernization. Nonetheless, the ceaseless pursuit of material wealth remains a manifestation of the backward state of productivity that limits basic human behavior.

In conditions of low productivity and lack of material wealth, traditional society—no matter whether agricultural or industrial—was a society in which material production and material life were the core values. Of course, there were also spiritual activities, such as the zither, chess, calligraphy, painting, poetry and song, but its core issues all revolved around material production and material life. In a certain sense, material production and material life are the core values of agricultural and industrial societies, and human society has accordingly developed traditional values that have endured for thousands of years in pre-modern and modern societies. 

The Chinese people, with their long history of civilization, have boiled these values down to the five characters that mean good fortune, prosperity, longevity, happiness, and wealth 福、禄、寿、禧、财." In traditional Chinese society, many scholar-farmers and moderately prosperous families would hang a plaque bearing the first four characters in their parlors, while the last word of the "five character proverb," wealth, was the foundation. These five traditional social values describe the life pursuits of most people, and they also serve as a clear example of how traditional society revolves around the pursuit of material wealth.

With the change from traditional to modern society, social values experienced a profound change. In traditional societies, material wealth is the core value pursuit, the fundamental reason for which are limitations of material conditions and productive capacity, summed up in the phrase "things are precious because their scarcity." When industrialization and modernization produced a great abundance of material wealth, the same principle led to a decline in the value of material wealth, which gave people other pursuits and options besides the possession of as much material wealth as possible. The significance of the resulting revolutionary change is that for the first time in the history of human society, material wealth is no longer the only marker of life values. 
 
Once the acquisition of material wealth and the associated social status are no longer regarded as fundamental life pursuits, a trend toward a genuine diversification of social values begins to emerge. And once people pursue other goals, they accordingly discover non-material meanings of life, so many people choose to challenge their own abilities and transcend themselves in extreme sports.  Post-modern values, characterized by personalized peak experiences, are the direction and trend of people’s spiritual activities in an era of material abundance.

Post-modern values are beginning to emerge in today’s Chinese society. Young people in Chinese society, with a greater ease of access to basic material needs, possess greater freedom of choice, and the younger generation, more than older generations, prefers to do what they like. In a sense, the ability to have this "freedom of choice" has become a true value in life. When a young female teacher submitted her one sentence-long letter of resignation—“The world is so big, I want to see it"—her decision sparked widespread social concern and empathy.[2] This reflects the fact that, at least for young people, the willingness to endure the constraints of the work place as long as they yielded more income has greatly decreased, and the desire for freedom and alternative lifestyles is gaining wide social acceptance. 
 
What marks the emergence of post-modern society is different from pre-modern and modern society in that it is no longer defined by a certain production technology, productivity level, or material product, but instead by the emergence of new values, a shift of the basic values of human society from a material focus to a spiritual focus. Postmodern values are mainly manifested in the pursuit of maximum individual experiences. According to our observation and experience, postmodern values have a pluralistic orientation, and this orientation also displays a common feature, which is an absolute preference for freedom, with freedom to choose as the highest value. In terms of social phenomena, postmodern values are manifested in the demands for less supervision, less centralization, and fewer demands from authorities 去监管、去中心、去权威的诉求. 
 
The Challenge of Post-Modern Values 
 
Industrialization and urbanization since reform and opening have brought extensive and profound changes to Chinese society. Once a moderately prosperous society has been constructed on all fronts, China's social structure, group relations, lifestyles, ideology, and culture will undergo huge changes.
 
Should this phenomenon become widespread in China, how would it affect current social relations, social structures, and even systems of social governance? Based on some preliminary experiences that have already occurred in developed Western countries and in our society, we believe that there will be two trending changes. 
 
One, From Satisfying Needs to Changing Needs, and by Changing Needs, Satisfying Needs
 
Satisfying needs by changing needs can solve some of the basic problems of modernity that society faces today. The issue of modernity continues to occupy an important place among the major problems currently facing human society. Modern society can be understood as industrial society since the 19th century, and from the 19th century to the 20th century, human society in general entered the stage of industrialization and modernization. This period saw the construction of two basic ideological systems and ideologies, which gave rise to two major institutional systems, commonly known as capitalism and socialism.

In the 20th century, after the October Revolution in Russia, the socialist camp emerged, leading to the formation of two political camps, East and West.  The Cold War appeared after the Second World War.  At the end of the 20th century, the Eastern Soviet camp collapsed, and socialism, represented by China, embarked on a path of reform, resulting in profound changes in the landscape of the entire world.
 
Over the course of the 20th century, human society has undergone just such major changes, which have posed significant and serious problems to mankind in terms of intellectual and ideological systems. Capitalism and socialism, both of which revolve around the issues of social production, distribution, and consumption, as well as equality, justice, and freedom in the context of social relations and social life, are the two major solutions to human social problems that have been developed since the 19th century.  Both had a great impact on the development and changes of human society since the 19th century, but the major changes at the end of the 20th century mean that both of these two systems of thought and the solutions they propose are facing enormous problems.

In theoretical terms, the core problems of capitalism and socialism are, in the final analysis, the core problems of modern society, that is, problems of material production and life: production and distribution. The solution to the problem of material production and distribution can be reduced to the handling and balancing of the relationship between efficiency and equity. However, the practical result of the last century is that the original, primitive problems faced by both capitalist and socialist societies—social division, widening income disparity, and structural antagonisms in society—have not really been resolved. The substantive problem behind this social reality is that, as long as we are preconditioned by material values, no amount of productivity improvement and material wealth increase can fill the "gaping ravine" of human needs.
 
Classical capitalism and socialism have both been considered preferred solutions to the structural antagonisms of society. Historically speaking, both capitalism and socialism, and especially post-market reform socialism, have made historical achievements and progress in the material production and material life of modern societies; in other words, they have both been efficient in developing material production. In this sense, socialism with Chinese characteristics undoubtedly represents the efficiency of post-reform socialism. However, both capitalism and socialism have encountered an insurmountable obstacle in solving another fundamental social problem: the distribution of wealth.

China's reform and opening has resulted in tremendous material achievements and a historic leap in industrialization. Although China is developing into a society of material abundance, there are still many problems. The 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, held in 2017, proposed "three major tasks" to build a moderately prosperous society, and the first major task was to prevent and resolve major risks.
 
"The last mile is always the hardest 行百里路者半九十.”  This means that the closer we get to building a moderately prosperous society, the closer we get to the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, the more problems and difficulties Chinese society faces, and the higher the risks. At present, there are a large number of problems in Chinese society, the core of which is still "not worries of scarcity, but worries of unequal distribution  不患寡而患不均."  

Although Chinese society has experienced tremendous development for more than 40 years and its gross national product is now holding steady as the second largest in the world, and China's per capita GDP has reached $10,000, surpassing the level of medium-sized developed countries, the problems of disparity between the rich and the poor and the structural divisions of society, which are common to both capitalism and socialism, remain unresolved.
 
The deeper theoretical question behind this issue is whether we should try to satisfy needs or to change them. There is a "demand trap" problem here. From the history of the international communist movement to the construction of socialism with Chinese characteristics, there is a consensus among socialists that socialism can develop the productive forces better than capitalism. China has proven to be even more adept in developing its productive forces, creating a miracle of industrialization unprecedented in human history.

Nonetheless, despite China's extremely rapid industrialization and modernization, in a huge country with a population of 1.4 billion, it is still failing to fully satisfy the needs and aspirations of its people for a better life. Human values were formed over a long period of time in industrial and even pre-industrial societies. The lack of material goods led people to nourish unlimited material needs; as the saying goes, “avarice knows no bounds.”  The richer the material wealth is, the greater the demand will be, resulting in a new shortages. This is what we call the "demand trap."
 
The goal of socialist development is that of achieving great material abundance, but if people's needs and desires increase faster than the speed of economic development, then the boat merely rises with the water. Moreover, one law of economic development is that of decreasing marginal returns, and the speed of economic development will decline after reaching a certain level.  Currently China has entered a period of economic compression which will constitute the "new normal," and if people's needs and desires continue to increase, this will create more social problems.

Faced with such problems, solutions have been sought for nearly a hundred years, from Karl Marx to Ronald Coase (1910-2013). Judging from current development trends, the emergence and development of postmodern values may provide a new way of thinking—minimalism as a way of solving problems.   Along with the emergence of postmodern values, the value of material wealth will gradually decrease, and spiritual life and peak individual experiences will gradually rise as human values and an important means to satisfy needs, which may enable human beings to break out of the "demand trap" of man-made material servitude. 
 
The new social trend that is emerging in developed countries deserves attention. International observation tells us that in more developed and wealthy countries, such as Japan and the countries of Northern Europe, the people's lives are becoming simpler, and we even note social trends such as “decluttering 断舍离.”[3] This is a trend of returning to the basics.

If this trend continues, it will lead to a profound change in the pattern of human needs. Such a change could mean a decrease in the desire to possess material resources and material wealth. From the point of view of society as a whole, change in people's needs and values could lead spiritual needs to gradually overtake material needs, which in turn could enhance social values without the need for more natural resources and material wealth; if the denominator decreases, the value of the fraction goes up.  Post-modern society achieves social affluence, material abundance, and thus increased happiness through changes in values and needs. This can be seen as a solution to the problems of modern society.
 
Two, From Singular to Plural:  Social Governance Will Soon Face the Challenge of Liberalization 

Post-modern values, or individualized peak experiences and pluralistic values, have positive significance and "positive energy" for promoting equity and harmony in human society and resolving the conflict between efficiency and equity in social conflicts. However, post-modern values also pose great challenges to traditional social governance systems and models. 
 
The political systems and governance models of traditional societies have been conditioned by the mainstream values and unified patterns of behavior in those societies, which means that society needs to construct mainstream values that fit with the political and governance systems. Throughout Chinese history, the philosophy of politics and governance that served as a basis for the long-lasting stability of traditional society was a synthesis of virtue and law. This philosophy appeared in the early Han Dynasty and took final form during the reign of Emperor Han Wudi (156-87 BCE).

Throughout history, the implementation of social governance begins with the construction of social narratives and discourse, the construction of mainstream values, which then become of norms of popular behavior. There are no exceptions to this rule, and while in the West, religion was partly responsible for the construction of mainstream values, in ancient China, the official education system, including the use of the imperial examination system, was used to solidify China’s system of government.
 
Modern social governance also needs to follow this model. Identities based on cultural values are the prerequisite and guarantee of the effectiveness of national and social governance. In other words, any system of national governance needs to be compatible with the dominant values and the dominant culture.

However, the problem that society will face in the future is that, if postmodern values become a trend and people increasingly pursue individualized peak experiences, such a trend will certainly work against the unified mainstream values of the modern society and the modern state. The consequence will be that people and society will also be divided by differences in values, separated by individualized, pluralistic values, and in turn the moral values, moral standards and behavioral norms of the whole society and people will change accordingly.
 
Moral standards and behavioral norms and patterns are based on values. This was Max Weber’s argument in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Alexis de Tocqueville stated more directly that religion is a political tool. Religion provided the common values for the industrialization of European and American societies. Similarly, the Confucianism of traditional Chinese society and the core values of contemporary socialism have provided the convictions underpinning social morality in different eras.

The reason why people should abide by morality, i.e., be in "awe" of morality, is that moral behavior is not essentially the result of the constraints of moral laws, but rather the result of people following the values behind these laws. People follow moral codes and restrain their behavior because of their values, because of their reverence for ultimate values.
 
However, postmodern values are pluralistic, and at their core is the pursuit of individualized peak experiences. While Nietzsche proclaimed that "God is dead" as the West entered the industrial age, in post-modern society, everyone can create a "God" of their own liking. Once the beliefs that constitute moral values, moral standards, and behavioral norms fall apart, society as a whole will fundamentally lose its common value base, and the system of state and social governance will lose its spiritual and moral foundation.

People holding different values and pursuing individualized peak experiences will have difficulty understanding and accepting one other, to the point of becoming strangers. Following the post-modern value revolution, more and more people will disagree with the mainstream value system and live instead in a world of individuality.
 
First, the emergence of a trend toward a decentralized value system will challenge the social governance system and social structure and even political and social authority. If the values behind morality change in the direction of individualized and pluralistic values, this change will dissolve social authority, after which it will be difficult for people to comply with or obey social authority.

One prominent manifestation of this social change is the rise of populism. The Swedish "environment girl" Greta Thunberg, as well as the social movements in France and Hong Kong, can all be seen as precursors of the challenge of postmodernism. These postmodern values are characterized by the idea of "leave me alone, I will decide for myself," and by refusing to obey the social norms of behavior, moral laws, and behavioral controls.  Each person becomes the master of their own world: I have my own world, and I live in that world.
 
Second, against the backdrop of the growth of post-modern values, upholding the mainstream social values that are shared by the majority of people will gradually become an urgent reality for China's moderately prosperous society. Over the past 40 years of reform and opening, the mainstream values of Chinese society have been built on the common ideal of pursuing common prosperity. In other words, the pursuit of common prosperity is the value basis of a socialist society with Chinese characteristics.

This value system has become the conductor’s baton directing the symphony of the social movement, and the systems, institutions, mechanisms, laws, policies, and other aspects of national governance have been gradually constructed and improved in harmony with it. When people agree with the common values and follow the "baton," they join the trend of the times in a spontaneous and conscious manner. By contrast, if people's value systems are diversified and individualized, or if they disagree with or even reject the mainstream, social governance will face great challenges.
 
The process of industrialization and socialist modernization in China is currently at a critical juncture, and along with the achievement of a moderately prosperous society, China's social structure, social relations, and social thought will also change accordingly. China's process of industrialization generates new incentive mechanisms that stimulate extensive and profound social mobility. Once we enter the period of industrial transition and achieve a moderately prosperous society, the huge space created by the exponential growth in social mobility will tend toward saturation, and the speed of social mobility will slow down.

In post-modern society, there will be a trend toward the diversification of interests and values, a rise in the self-awareness of social groups, and more social problems due to the relative reduction of social mobility opportunities in the post-industrial period.  There will also be a tendency for public opinion and social mood to shift from positive to negative. These changes will present genuine challenges to China’s social stability.  In the future governance of China's state and society, the correct guidance of social thought, public opinion and social sentiment will play an important role, which is one of the most important conditions for China to achieve the goal it has set for its "two centenaries"[4] and for future socialist modernization.
 
Of course, at present all of this in the process of fermentation, and has not yet become a widespread part of social norms. But more and more phenomena and examples show that this trend is taking shape and is coming our way. The question is, are we prepared? How are we prepared to see, treat, and welcome the advent of postmodern society?
 
Notes

[1]房宁, 丰俊功, “一场潜在剧变, 将中国社会卷入两大冲击,” published online on the Beijing Cultural Review/文化纵横 platform on June 12, 2021. 

[2]Translator’s note:  The reference is to Gu Shaoqiang 顾少强, who in 2015 quit her job in a middle school in Henan simply because she wanted something more out of life.  Her resignation letter went viral on the Chinese Internet, sparking considerable commentary about the meaning of life, and making Gu a reluctant instant celebrity.  See here for details (in Chinese).

[3] Translator’s note:  This is the title of a book by the Japanese author Hideko Yamashita (b. 1954), which advocates getting rid of things you do not need.  Marie Kondo (b. 1984) in a younger example of a similar trend.

[4]Translator’s note:  The “two centenaries” are the celebrations of the hundred year anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921/2021, and that of the People’s Republic in 1949/2049.