"Four Chinese Scholars"

“Four Chinese Scholars Discuss the Post-Election United States”[1]

Introduction and Translation by David Ownby
 
The text translated below is the transcription of an exchange among four Chinese scholars on the topic of where the United States is headed now that the American people have chosen Joe Biden as their next president.  The event, organized by the Spring and Autumn Academy 春秋书院, was held on November 26, 2020 in Shanghai, and was moderated by Xu Jilin 许纪霖, Professor of History at East China Normal University.
 
Participants included Professor Shen Dingli 沈丁立 (b. 1961), former Executive Vice President of the Graduate School of International Studies at Fudan University, Associate Professor Bao Gangsheng 包刚升 of the School of International Relations and Public Affairs at Fudan University, Professor Wang Yongqin 王永钦 (b. 1973) of the School of Economics at Fudan University, and Xu Xibai 徐曦白, a PhD candidate in political science at Oxford University in the UK.  All four have impressive CVs and publication records in English and Chinese (See Ding’s CV here, Bao’s here,  and Wang’s here.  Xu is a doctoral candidate and I did not find his CV, but he writes what appears to be an interesting blog here).
 
There is nothing particularly remarkable about the dialogue; the scholars, all of whom are deeply versed in various aspects of international affairs and familiar with life and politics in the U.S. and the U.K. are giving their off-the-cuff impressions of where America has been and where it is going.  Three things struck me.  One is that three of the four scholars seem quite distressed with the declining quality of American democracy, a theme the journalist Chris Buckley also sounded in a recent article in the New York Times (“China’s Combative Nationalists See a World Turning their Way”).  Buckley’s nationalists were, of course, crowing about U.S. decline, while the presumably more liberal Shanghai scholars were not, but all seem to be more or less on the same page when it comes to how they view what is happening in the United States. 

The second thing that struck me was the scholars’ focus on racial and ethnic questions in the U.S.  Although the four disagree on certain things, in general, they repeat the argument I have run across frequently in Chinese intellectual circles over the past few months (see here and here for example) that identity politics—which they see as being at the core of the platform of the Democratic Party—threatens the consensus that makes American (and European) politics work. 

The third thing that struck me was the absolute lack of animosity toward the U.S. expressed in the course of the dialogue.  This is of course in stark contrast to the Wolf Warrior tone with which we are familiar, but I can’t help but wonder if an event of this nature held in the U.S., addressing Chinese themes, could display such equanimity, or if the participants would feel compelled to express anti-China views.  We think of China as being a highly ideological society, but on some topics I’m not sure we don’t have the “upper hand.”
 
Favorite quotes 
 
“The U.S.’s problem truly is that it is like a pendulum that swung to Obama in 2008 and then to Trump in 2016, and in 2020 it looks like it has swung back toward Obama.  At the moment, it’s like Biden slammed on the brakes, but it's not clear which way the pendulum will swing later on.  My concern is that after Biden's four years are over, the U.S. may swing even more violently toward Trump's side."

"During the years of Trump's administration, his continued attacks on the American system have become increasingly visible, including his current rejection of the election results and his claims to have found abundant evidence of election fraud perpetrated by the Democrats. This is actually a blow to the very roots of American democracy, because democracy is, after all, a political culture, the rules of a political game on which everyone agrees. If all of a sudden a large part of the public does not accept the election results and their legitimacy, then it will be difficult to sustain the democratic system. In the U.S. Congress, especially in the Senate, the confrontation and the completely uncooperative tactics adopted by the Republican Party have also made the U.S. government very inefficient—we’ve even seen shutdowns—leading to a further deterioration in the quality of American democracy. From these perspectives, I think the situation is actually not very optimistic.”
 
“More than 200 years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that American society was characterized by two things: the first was equality of economic conditions, and the second was trust between people in civil society. Both of these are now problematic, so I am cautiously pessimistic about the United States.”
 
“In the future, under Biden's presidency, in an ideal situation, we will see something like the G2 that Professor Niall Ferguson of Harvard University once proposed, that is, China and the U.S. will consult one other, negotiate with each other, and avoid confrontation with each other.  China and the U.S. will be able to find a way to consult with each other and work together in various aspects of global governance. Although neither the Democratic nor the Republican party wants to see China and the United States become more equal, I am afraid that this scenario is a more realistic one for the United States to maintain its world leadership in the future.”
 
“In the face of the challenges posed by immigration, I think there are probably two or three different options for European and American societies. The first is the program of assimilation, but at present assimilation is becoming more and more difficult because the number and proportion of immigrants are too great. For example, if 100 members of the original society receive one or two immigrants, then the immigrants will be easily assimilated. But with 20 immigrants coming in at once, combined with their high fertility rate, then great pressure is needed for assimilation to occur. The second option is the cultural pluralism advocated by the Democratic Party. But the challenge this option faces is the question Samuel Huntington raised in 2004:  if cultural pluralism is allowed to grow unchecked, will it lead to the fall of European and American civilization in the coming decades? The third path is the turn toward conservatism, including Britain's choice to leave the European Union, Trump's various approaches to the wall and immigration issues, and the tone of French President Macron's policy on religion today. But this turn is now facing challenges in terms of political correctness.”
 
Translation
 
Now that the election is over, are we entering the Biden era, or the post-Trump era?
 
Shen Dingli: I think that the "Biden era" we will enter into after the election will be composed of three parts: one will be a post-Obama era, another will be a post-Trump era, and perhaps there will be a little bit of a Biden era. The post-Obama era refers to an era in which Obama and Biden share common values in terms of ideas and beliefs, including human rights and international cooperation. If the U.S. gets back on track through various negotiations and adjustments, some countries will quite naturally follow the U.S. Biden has said that he wants to rejoin the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Accord, but U.S. participation in these agreements was a "legacy" of Obama and the traditional U.S. liberal international order, all of which were overturned by Trump. Trump's actions have caused great discontent among liberals in the United States, including many in the establishment and the international community, and Biden's return to “normal” represents the position of the Democratic Party.
 
In addition, I think Biden will also be somewhat influenced by Trump, in that that many Americans will still identify with the economic development under Trump and the foreign policy he pursued.
 
Both of these points have to do with what Biden will inherit from his predecessors. Beyond that, I think Biden will leave his mark on history by working with the world on the global control of the coronavirus and also by advancing his own initiatives.
 
We might also reflect on how Biden will act on issues such as North Korean and Iranian nuclear weapons.
 
So in the future, Biden will follow Obama and Trump on some issues but will also act differently from Obama and Trump. Biden in the main will cling to the Democratic Party's philosophy and maintain the Democratic Party's tradition of international cooperation. This looks like where the Biden team is currently heading.
 
Xu Xibai:  I agree with Prof. Shen that the U.S.’s problem truly is that it is like a pendulum that swung to Obama in 2008 and then to Trump in 2016, and in 2020 it looks like it has swung back toward Obama.  At the moment, it’s like Biden slammed on the brakes, but it's not clear which way the pendulum will swing later on.
 
My concern is that after Biden's four years are over, the U.S. may swing even more violently toward Trump's side. Some of the deeper institutional and cultural problems revealed during the 2016 election have not been addressed, but have instead worsened and even created new problems.
 
In addition, the popularity of social media has created an "echo chamber" effect. The spread of disinformation and conspiracy theories by the far-right media has exacerbated the problem of voter polarization. The election results also show that urban voters are more supportive of Democrats and rural voters are more supportive of Republicans, and both are increasingly intolerant and hostile toward one other. Some supporters seem to feel comfortable using violence against those with whom they disagree, and some Trump supporters even have an almost "cult-like" admiration for Trump.
 
During the years of Trump's administration, his continued attacks on the American system have become increasingly visible, including his current rejection of the election results and his claims to have found abundant evidence of election fraud perpetrated by the Democrats. This is actually a blow to the very roots of American democracy, because democracy is, after all, a political culture, the rules of a political game on which everyone agrees. If all of a sudden a large part of the public does not accept the election results and their legitimacy, then it will be difficult to sustain the democratic system. In the U.S. Congress, especially in the Senate, the confrontation and the completely uncooperative tactics adopted by the Republican Party have also made the U.S. government very inefficient—we’ve even seen shutdowns—leading to a further deterioration in the quality of American democracy. From these perspectives, I think the situation is actually not very optimistic.
 
In a recent interview on “The Democratic Party May See a Bigger Defeat in 2024,” I mentioned that the post-election situation of the Democratic Party after the election was a defeat within a victory, because while it was widely believed that Trump's approval rating should be very low given the serious state of the pandemic globally and in the United States, in fact Trump's approval rating was quite high, and he got 70 million votes. Biden is the candidate with the most votes in history, but second place on that list goes to Trump.
 
And the Democrats are now in a very bad position in both the House and the Senate. Special elections like the ones in Georgia in January will determine which party has a Senate majority. At present both sides look to be basically equal in the polls, but if you look at the situation from the perspective of the general election, the Republicans actually have the advantage. If the Republicans take control of the Senate, then Biden will have a hard time pushing through his domestic agenda.
 
By 2024, the situation of the Democratic Party may be even more dangerous. For one thing, many of the highly educated whites who turned to Biden this time were Republican voters, and while they opposed Trump this time, it was likely a one-time vote. Perhaps if the next Republican candidate is less off-putting they will go back to supporting the Republicans. In addition, minorities are now continuing to move toward Trump's positions. I'm also afraid that a turnout as high as this year's will be difficult to repeat. If the turnout decreases, especially in the youth vote, it is also very bad for the Democratic Party.
 
So overall, I think the Democrats are in a bad position in 2024, so what we are seeing now may just be a small bounce back in the direction of Obama, and four years on, the situation in the U.S. may swing more violently in the direction of Trump.
 
Bao Gangsheng: I'd like to start by discussing something Xibai said. I tend to think that the intellectual community and the media are particularly prone to overestimate the risks of the crisis at hand. In fact, in the long term, the current state of affairs facing the United States may only be a fluctuation within the norm. Democracy never means the absence of problems; democracy actually means that problems are constantly occurring and being solved.
 
The current American system today has gone through the Civil War, two World Wars, the Great Depression, and many economic crises. The major challenge that the United States faces today is the challenge of ethnic diversity and cultural pluralism, which is unprecedented in its history. But, beyond that, the current crisis the United States is facing is no more serious than many of the major crises that the United States has faced throughout its history. It is too easy to overestimate the problems that could result from the current situation, and I think that is a major flaw in the way humans think. To assess the immediate risk, we must examine it in the context of the long-term evolution of history.
 
Take, for example, the problem of divided government that Xibai mentioned.  In the United States, divided government means that the president's party does not control at least a majority of the Senate or the House of Representatives, and in fact, divided government has been the norm in American politics since the 1970s and 1980s. The situation in which one party controls both the White House and the majority of seats in the Senate and House of Representatives has been less common than divided government during this period. So it is likely that future U.S. presidents will continue to face the checks and balances of divided government, which may well be the norm in American politics. However, despite divided government, we will continue to see the efficiency and effectiveness of the U.S. system of government.
 
In addition, I find that there is a current tendency to overestimate the severity of the crisis of democracy in the United States, both internationally and in China, which can easily affect our judgment. Nor should we forget that Trump is a charismatic politician who can inspire great enthusiasm among his followers, as well as antipathy and even hatred among those who oppose him. In the case of the Chinese community in the United States, the discursive battle between the pro-Trump and anti-Trump sides is quite intense, and this noise may well exaggerate the risks that American politics is actually facing. If you walk around Boston today, or Los Angeles, or many small towns across the United States, you may not even feel the intensity of the political conflict and the “crisis,” which may well mean that social media are overstating things. 
 
I would also like to comment on Prof. Shen's view. I think that to discuss whether the post-election future will be the Biden era or the post-Trump era, the first question to ask is whether there really is a Biden era. To some extent, I agree with Prof. Shen:  if Biden follows the same policy platform as the one he is talking about for the next four years, then there will not be a Biden era. Because so far, Biden's platform, including even his team such as announced thus far, is still basically following on that of Obama.
 
But at the same time, I also need to point out that American politicians tend to think in very structured ways, and once a candidate is elected president, lobbyists will crowd around, depositing all kinds of proposals and programs on his desk. We must also consider the fact that it is not yet known what crises and new events the U.S. will face the next four years. So I think it's hard to predict what kind of president Biden will be.
 
This is something that we have often seen in the history of the United States. For example, Abraham Lincoln seems great today, but he was an unpopular president when he was elected. His election was the result of a compromise reached by several major figures fighting one other. Yet because of dramatic changes in American politics, he made many important and difficult choices that directly changed the course of American history, at the same time creating his own greatness.
 
From where we stand now, I don't think there will be a Biden era in America, but considering the structured way in which American politicians think and the various new situations that Biden will face later on, it remains to be seen.
 
Prof. Xu just mentioned that Trump received more than 70 million votes, the second most in American history. However, if we observe the fluctuation in the number of votes in the past several U.S. presidential elections, the proportion cast for candidates from each party basically fell between 45% and 53%. Even in 2008, when the financial crisis increased the gap between the two parties, the Republican candidate received only 45.7% of the vote, and Obama nearly 53%, which was the largest gap in recent years. In most cases, the Democratic Party's share of the vote has remained between 48% and 51%, and the Republican Party's between 46-49%. So, although some Republican voters are very enthusiastic about Trump today, it's not that his share of the vote is particularly high; it's still within a normal range.
 
In general, I think the United States is now in a process of once again finding its direction, and both parties' platforms and programs have run into problems and are facing challenges. Compared to Trump, will we see future Republican candidates who are similar to the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who acts and speaks more respectably while carrying out relatively conservative policies? If such a politician emerges in the Republican Party, then he is more likely to be supported by centrist voters.
 
Wang Yongqin:  Today the main thing I would like to talk is the economy. I think the divisions in the United States have a lot to do with the 2008 financial crisis. I read a study based on questionnaire showing that the public's trust in government declined after the financial crisis, and the public's anger was manifested in phenomena such as the Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party movements. Historically, financial crises have often led to the rise of populism. The Great Depression of 1929-1933 led to the rise of Hitler and the Nazis and the outbreak of World War II, which are some of the events in history that have been significantly linked to financial crises.
 
More than 200 years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that American society was characterized by two things: the first was equality of economic conditions, and the second was trust between people in civil society. Both of these are now problematic, so I am cautiously pessimistic about the United States. If I had to sum up the principle problems the U.S. is facing, I would emphasize: internally, the widening income gap, the weakening of social organization, and political polarization; and externally, the rise of populism.
 
Looking at the income gap in the United States, the top 10% of the population has enjoyed a very high share of total income over the past 20 years, similar to the situation in the 1920s (the "Gilded Age") in the United States. It is worth noting that both periods experienced financial crises that led to many social problems: yawning social inequalities lead to debt problems, and the rich lend money to the poor, which only increases the debt. Economic studies have found that eras with the highest income disparities often have leverage problems, often resulting in financial and economic crises.
 
And both historical peaks in income disparity have been associated with globalization, which began to rise after the Reagan administration, along with economic liberalization, when income inequality began to increase. After 1980, the income gap began to increase rapidly, and then in 2008 there was a financial crisis, followed by a revival of globalization, all of which are very similar to the history of 100 years ago.
 
Princeton University professors Angus Deaton (b. 1945), the 2015 Nobel Prize winner in Economics, and his wife, Anne Case (b. 1958), wrote a book entitled Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism (2020). In it they observe that the American dream is falling apart and that while a child born around 1940 had a 90% probability of surpassing the income level of his parents, this probability has been declining ever since, and in the last few years, probably less than half will do better than their parents’ generation.  Social mobility in the United States is even lower than in Europe, which leads many people to despair.
 
If we analyze the death rate per 100,000 people, we find that people without a college degree make up the majority of those who “die of despair,” most of whom die of suicide, drugs, and alcohol abuse; a large percentage of these people are also Trump supporters. If we differentiate by race, we find that whites are more desperate than Blacks. Blacks have historically risen in social status, while whites without a college degree feel they have lost their dignity, their social status, as well as their political status, and they face the difficulties that come with unemployment. Many of them come from the central and southern Rust Belt states, including Texas, Michigan, Mississippi, and Nebraska.
 
Looking at society, you can see the decline in participation in associations, and as participation declines, civil society falls apart, which is very worrisome. Second, the rate of union membership has also continued to decline, which leaves workers increasingly vulnerable; the number of people attending church and the marriage rate have also declined. All of this started in the 1960s, so it's not entirely a force of economics, but rather a decline in trust in society as a whole.
 
On the other hand, the polarization of political positions is also very evident, and the number of crossover votes in Congress has decreased. A crossover vote is where, in the past, a member of one party would support a bill of a member of the other party. In 1988, 25 percent of party members would cast such votes, which transcend party ideology. But such behavior is hard to find today, and instead of representatives crossing over the line to support one another's bills, they strategically oppose them, in an attitude of "Whatever you are for, I’m against.”
 
I would like to briefly talk about three reasons that might have given rise to these phenomena from the perspective of economics. The first reason is globalization, and the impact of globalization is mainly manifested in trade. Let's make a comparison with the wave of globalization before World War I. Globalization before World War I was chiefly manifested in the export of final products.  An example would be if China makes cell phones, manufacturing everything in China and then selling them to other countries.  In this case, all profits from the entire value chain will remain in China. 

By contrast, globalization now consists of global outsourcing, in which aspects of the production process are outsourced to countries that can produce the item in question at the lowest cost. This leads to more unemployment in the United States, because many links are outsourced to other countries. It is not the final goods that are traded between countries now, but the intermediate links. This is completely different from before World War I and has led to an even greater income gap.

The previous globalization led to a widening of the income gap in developed countries and a decrease in the income gap in developing countries; however, the present wave of globalization has led to a rise in income inequalities in all countries. In addition, we have seen a decline in the contribution of labor to GDP and an increasing power of capital. At the same time, the manufacturing sector in some of the American states with the highest penetration of Chinese trade imports has declined so much that residents of these states have begun to oppose globalization, trade, and immigration.
 
So why has Europe not experienced the same negative impact? This is because Europe has a more ethnically homogeneous and does not have America’s problem with slavery—America’s original historical sin. In addition, social welfare and social security in the United States, including health care, are not as good as in Europe. Many southern states in the U.S. oppose universal health care because they don't want to provide coverage for Blacks, for historical racial reasons, which means that poor whites suffer as well. So this is one of the reasons why the United States has not succeeded in making an effective response to globalization, automation, and finance capitalism金融化, which also leaves low-income whites unprotected and ignored.
 
The Democrats are not unaware of this. During the Obama administration, the big banks did not help lower middle-class whites suffering the effects of globalization, automation, and finance capitalism.  Obama did not actually push through a lot of effective social reforms during his time in office, and didn't address these fundamental problems. Although Trump's policies are very ultra-nationalist, at least at the superficial level he has appeased these groups.
 
I think America needs a progressivist political program in the future, a solution to the income disparity problem, and a way to compensate people whose rights have suffered. I think America actually needs someone like FDR to solve the income inequality problem and to fight monopolies; including the monopolies of various large consortia, many financial institutions, industrial organizations, and Internet companies. In general, I think what America needs now is a progressive, FDR-like solution, not a far-right leader.
 
Question:  If you were Biden or Trump, how would you address economic and racial issues?
 
Bao Gangsheng:  On these two issues, I still say the same thing: we always tend to overestimate the severity of the current crisis, which is characteristic of how human’s think.
 
Two years ago, I spoke at a seminar at Renmin University in Beijing about a problem called “Three Crises and Three Transformations in the History of Western Democracy.” In history, there are many times when we encounter problems that seem unsolvable, but then they end up being solved quite well. The first crisis was a crisis of class politics. With the rise of class politics, people discovered that the inclusiveness of the democratic system was problematic. The second crisis was the crisis of economic instability represented by the Great Depression, which resulted in the rise of interventionist government. The third crisis was the crisis of war and conflict between nations. Eventually the West figured out a way to reconcile domestic and international institutional arrangements to solve the problem. 
 
In my view, that one of the biggest problems facing the United States and Europe today is the impact of ethnic and religious pluralism on their original social structure and the relatively balanced situation of their original political systems. I believe that many of the problems raised by Prof. Wang do indeed exist in American society today, such as market-induced problems of inequality and the slowing of social mobility.  But I have always argued that the impact of ethnic and religious pluralism on American and European societies is a more critical issue. If we plot the curve of social inequality coefficients in the United States and Europe over the past 200 years, we see that it goes up and down, decreasing from about roughly the 1940s through the 1970s, and increasing beginning in the 1980s. Thus due to the changes of many internal and external factors, inequality in European and American societies is actually rising and falling.
 
The current wave of fluctuation is mainly caused by globalization, which allows capital to seek out market opportunities all over the world.  This is something that labor cannot do, so globalization produces a relative separation of capital and labor in developed countries, in which capital continues to reap higher profits and the relative interests of labor suffer. However, once globalization develops to a certain extent, the rate of change may decline, but there is no way to know when this will happen. 
 
Moreover, new technologies are still continually emerging. So, will the emergence of labor-replacing technologies--such as AI-driven smart manufacturing—bring changes to the global industrial investment model, leading to the pursuit of something other than low labor costs?  This is also an important question, one that we should pay attention to.
 
As for the impact of smart manufacturing on employment, some of the more optimistic economists would argue that labor factors will be reallocated optimally through relative price adjustments, which would mean that we do not need to worry whether smart manufacturing technology will cause unemployment. The more pessimistic scholars argue that with the arrival of smart manufacturing, many people will necessarily lose their jobs because the new wave of AI-driven technology will completely upend the current relationship between labor and capital.

In this regard, my two basic views are: first, artificial intelligence and intelligent manufacturing will indeed trigger a change in the pattern of globalization; second, the broad use of artificial intelligence technology in the U.S. and Europe will not result in massive unemployment.  Instead, existing jobs will be transformed and new jobs will be created at the same time that the old ones disappear.  In other words, pain is unavoidable, but in the long run things will reach a new equilibrium.
 
Therefore, based on Prof. Wang's analysis, I would also like to talk about my view of the basic situation in European and American society at present. Is it indeed the case that the West has entered a relatively pessimistic development path? In my opinion, not completely. One of the main reasons is that, viewed over the long term, the inequality coefficient of Western society has always been fluctuating, and now it is simply increasing a bit. Another reason is that we should not underestimate the flexibility and adaptability of their system. As I already pointed out, their system has faced three crises in the past, and the system was ultimately able to resolve them. So, one of my thoughts is that we should not misjudge the current situation of European and American societies because of this.
 
For me, I am afraid that the more serious challenge for European and American societies is whether ethnic and religious pluralism will have an impact on their current political and social order. The challenge facing the United States today is that visible minorities occupy an ever greater percentage of population; in twenty years or so whites will no longer make up the majority. The challenge facing Europe today is the rapid rise in the Muslim population, as noted by conservatives. For example, many of the outbursts we have seen in French political life in the last month are a manifestation of this phenomenon.
 
Shen Dingli:  I think the U.S. currently has two economic problems.  Let’s first do a horizontal international comparison, which shows that it is rapidly losing its global advantage. In 2000, the U.S. GDP was $10 trillion, ten times China's $992.2 billion at the time; by 2019, the U.S. GDP was $21.4 trillion, just 1.5 times China's $14.4 trillion. From 10 times to 1.5 times is a rapid loss.
 
Second, let’s make a comparison at the U.S. domestic level. While the U.S. economy has been growing between 2000 and 2019, and its GDP increased by 100% during this period, internal inequality grew during the same period. There are two general forms of dissatisfaction among Americans: one is dissatisfaction with their country, and the other is dissatisfaction with the loss of their country's dominant power in the world. Both of these grievances are related to globalization. The wealth and development of the United States has reduced its overall competitive advantage in manufacturing costs.
 
The U.S. is a highly open society where capital flows out, taking jobs out with it, and there is a lack of government regulation, so a significant portion of capital flows to China. In this instance, we have a win-win situation for both the US and China. U.S. capital gains maximum expansion and increased purchasing power for the same dollars; China gains foreign investment and technology as well as export markets. In this scenario, China achieved rapid development, which can be said to be caused by globalization.
 
Wang Yongqin:  I would like to add something. If we look at the historical battle for economic hegemony, what ultimately matters is the competition over two standards. The first is recognition of technical standards, which have a winner-take-all character. The second is the competition for financial hegemony. Generally speaking, once a country reaches the top in terms of GDP and becomes the world's greatest trading power, its currency will become the dominant world currency. When United States supplanted the United Kingdom as the world hegemon, the dollar became the dominant world currency, bringing with it the rights of seigniorage 铸币权, which I think will be the most worrisome problem for the United States in the future [i.e., if the dollar loses its status as the de facto world currency].
 
During the Obama era, the U.S. was overly concerned with identity politics, displayed little concern for poor whites who had lost their way, failed to solve the problems caused by globalization, and lacked awareness of international competition. Now the U.S. is facing a paradox of development: if the U.S. wants to follow the path of globalization, it has to insist on full openness; but once it opens up, it has to face competition.
 
Xu Xibai:  I would like to respond rapidly to a few points that Prof. Bao just made. One is that he thinks we may have someone exaggerated the problems of the U.S.  My thought is that we have not exaggerated, but the U.S. is not about to collapse either. 
 
From the perspective of political development, the decline of the American democratic system is very obvious. Mr. Bao mentioned that the phenomenon of Congress and the president being ruled by two different parties as having been very common in history, and he also gave the example of the U.S. government as it functioned in the 1970s. However, I think the operation of the U.S. Congress in the 1970s and the degree of cooperation between the two parties at that time are quite different from the mode of political operation in the 1990s, following the Gingrich Revolution, and the extremely polarized conditions that exist now. Many scholars of congressional politics believe that the problem of polarization in the U.S. Congress, including the dysfunctional nature of the entire system brought about by mutual antagonism, is probably the most serious in decades.
 
So I think the phenomenon of democratic decay does exist, but it doesn't mean that the United States is about to collapse. Because political decline can be an extremely long process.  For example, the decline of the Soviet Union started very early, but continued for decades before the regime finally disintegrated. The quality of democracy in the United States is definitely declining, but it will probably be in this in-between state of declining but not collapsing for some time. In the last decade or so, signs of global democratic decay have been clear, and many "third-wave" democracies have morphed into hybrid or authoritarian regimes. Therefore, we cannot assume that because American democracy has survived past fluctuations and crises that it will be able to do the same this time. Democracies are fragile, and they often collapse more easily than we think.
 
Also, on the issue of U.S. foreign policy, we see that Biden has recently nominated several candidates, including for the positions of Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, and so on. I think these nominations are a post-Trump "return to normal," which we see in concrete terms on three fronts.    One is that he has restored diplomatic experts in the U.S. State Department who had been marginalized under Trump, and returned to a policy of governance by experts. In addition, he clearly wants to end Trump's isolationism and anti-globalization, restore U.S. global participation, and restore the American leadership position.

​Third, he wants to repair the domestic system, strengthen the American middle class, deal with the problems of racial communities and economic inequality. He hopes to start by strengthening education and health care and improving the global competitiveness of American enterprises, and thus allow domestic developments to drive foreign affairs. Biden's platform states repeatedly that the way for U.S. play a global leadership role is for the U.S. to take care of itself and serve as an example, rather than imposing its example through the extension of power.
 
Bao Gangsheng:  I also agree with the international mainstream media that the quality of American democracy has been declining over the years and that the political divide between American voters and the two parties is on the rise. However, I believe that the problem is far from being as serious as the media is currently making it out to be. I pointed out in a brief article I published in the past that the confidence index of democracy in human society and in many countries constantly fluctuates in cycles of some 25 to 30 years.  At present we have reached a new low point. 
 
If you look at the past, you will see that, in the 1920s and 1930s, human society in general was very pessimistic about the prospects of democracy, while following the end of World War II, the optimism index of democracy reached a high point.  In the 1970s, after coups in any number of countries, humanity once again felt pessimistic about the prospects of democracy, and in the 1990s, following the end of the Cold War, confidence in democracy soared yet again.
 
We see similar things in the U.S., when Prof. Ezra Vogel (b. 1930) wrote his Japan as Number One during a moment of decline in U.S. manufacturing.  Yet by the 1990s, with the great development of the information industry and the rise of the Internet economy, the United States revitalized itself. Therefore, I feel compelled to remind you that the United States is a country that is constantly taking stock and adjusting in order to solve its problems, and we should not lightly overestimate the severity of its problems and underestimate its ability to solve them.
 
Moreover, the government may from time to time face the problem of divided government we mentioned earlier, which political scientist Francis Fukuyama (b. 1952) even called a “vetocracy,” where Congress and the president deny one another’s initiatives through mutual vetoes. But from a different perspective, even if Congress and the White House veto one other, meaning that the U.S. White House cannot act effectively, the original U.S. system of rule of law, the basic administrative system, remains in place. I recently introduced a concept called "the conservative gene of the U.S. political system," by which I mean that even if you do nothing, and just maintain the status quo, as long as the basic rule of law and the administrative system continue to function, things in society cannot get that out of hand. One of my feelings is that today we have a lot of inappropriate expectations of politics in Europe and the United States, that is, we always expect a great deal from executive power, but very often, even if the executive power attempts great things, it does not always produce great results. Very often, mutual checks and balances and inaction are inherent in the design of the U.S. system itself. This design actually contains a strong conservative gene.
 
Wang Yongqin:  I want to talk about this from an economic perspective. We saw that after the Great Depression of 1929-33, and the financial crisis of 2008, policy interventions were required to find a solution to the problem of income inequality. Two key policies were Roosevelt’s New Deal, which included social reform, Social Security, and the estate tax. Another example would be the social reforms associated with LBJ. 
 
But I also think there is no need to be too pessimistic. Because of the civil rights movement, the United States in the 1960s and 1970s seemed to be in a state of racial division. At the time, the results of a questionnaire asking whether interracial marriage was possible were 80 to 90% negative, while now perhaps they would be 80 to 90% positive.  So American society has changed a lot, and it is moving forward. So I'm still optimistic, I think the income inequality problem can be addressed through politics, although of course Biden will have to do a lot of work in this area.
 
What will be the difference between Biden and a Trump-led order in international relations?
 
Shen Dingli:  I would like to start with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement that Trump withdrew from at the beginning of his administration, but that Biden may return to in the future. There are two versions of the TPP, one that was originally signed with the participation of the United States, in which there were 12 members, accounting for 40% of the world's GDP and 30% of foreign trade, but Trump withdrew from that version. After the United States withdrew, that left Japan and 10 other countries, and the overall economic volume was reduced by half. Without the U.S., its attractiveness and influence in general were reduced.
 
Comparing the member countries of TPP and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), some of these countries, such as Japan, were originally in the RCEP, which was made up of 16 countries at the outset, including India.  India needs to protect parts of its economy, which meant that it could not meet TPP’s very high standards on that front, but the RCEP did not factor this in for the time being.
 
In the current state of affairs, the TPP includes 11 countries, and the RCEP 15 countries, some of which are present in two different Free Trade Agreement (FTA) organizations. Through RCEP, China has indirect FTAs with Japan and South Korea, which she did not have before. Of course, China, Japan, and South Korea are continuing trilateral negotiations to attempt to reach a more in-depth FTA. Not only have China’s export prospects increased, China has also opened up more markets for Japan and South Korea to export to China, and this RCEP agreement does not include the U.S. RCEP members account for 30% of the world's GDP, so it is not as large a market as the original TPP market that contained the U.S.; but because the U.S. withdrew from the TPP, RCEP became the bigger of the two. By joining the RCEP with Japan and with South Korea, China gains some of the advantages of cooperation and makes up for some of the competitive disadvantages due to not yet being in the smaller TPP (known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership-- CPTPP).
 
This puts the United States in an awkward position. Biden has not decided that the U.S. should return to the (CP)TPP as soon as possible; his first priority is to return to the Paris Climate Change Accord and the World Health Organization, and then to consider returning to the Iran nuclear agreement, so the TPP issue is not on the agenda at present. By way of comparison, China has recently indicated that it is considering linking to 对接 the CPTPP.
 
What is happening is that the U.S. does not have enough world power and its authority is not what it used to be. Because of the Iraq war, the financial crisis, and American withdrawal from numerous instances of international cooperation, U.S. global authority has declined. Obviously, Trump has paid the price of weakening U.S. world leadership in order to maintain his so-called "America First” policies.
 
Even if Biden makes changes, the United States will not return to the pinnacle of world authority immediately. In my view, the United States will never return to the good old days.

In the future, under Biden's presidency, in an ideal situation, we will see something like the G2 that Professor Niall Ferguson of Harvard University once proposed, that is, China and the U.S. will consult one other, negotiate with each other, and avoid confrontation with each other.  China and the U.S. will be able to find a way to consult with each other and work together in various aspects of global governance. Although neither the Democratic nor the Republican party wants to see China and the United States become more equal, I am afraid that this scenario is a more realistic one for the United States to maintain its world leadership in the future.
 
Wang Yongqin:  I strongly agree with Prof. Shen's viewpoint, and I would like to add two points.  First, global multilateral trade agreements are definitely on the decline, and now all countries are seeking regional FTAs, so the GDP of Asia, including Japan, China, Korea, and several neighboring Asian countries, currently accounts for about 30% to 40% of the world economy. It is expected that in the next 10 to 20 years, Asia's GDP will make up more than half of the world's total GDP, and Asian cooperation will become increasingly close. Second, I that think because climate warming is an important issue in Biden's campaign, he will have to cooperate with China in the future. Because in dealing with global warming, it is impossible to leave out China.
 
In fact, the relationship between China and the United States is more complementary than competitive in many aspects.  For example, in commodity markets, among others, China exports cheap goods to the United States, which keeps U.S. inflation rates low, which is actually a win-win strategy. Of course, there is also potential competition on the financial front, as we see with technology, so it will be a relationship with both competitive and cooperative aspects.  How to build this strategic partnership in the future will be a challenge for Biden, I'm afraid.
 
Ethnicity and Immigration in the United States
 
Xi Xibai:  Just now I heard Prof. Bao say that he thinks the U.S. had once achieved an equilibrium on ethnic issues. My view is that there has never such an equilibrium, from the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s to the more recent leftist cultural movements and sexual liberation, such conflicts have always existed. By contrast, the issue of economic inequality has changed greatly over time.  As Prof. Wang just illustrated, the problem of economic inequality was relatively moderate in the post-war period, and began to worsen after the 1970s and 1980s, and the same disheartening trends have continued in recent decades, so I think the economic issues are more important.
 
Regarding race in the United States, I think there are two points that we should pay attention to regarding white people’s feelings of racial anxiety. One is that many whites grew up in a state of racial near-segregation, and they have not themselves been exposed to racial issues. So they do not believe that the United States is still a country of institutionalized racial discrimination, having gone through years of civil rights movements and reforms.  They say, "I do not practice racial discrimination against anyone,” and when others point out the racial problems in the United States, they become very defensive or self-protective.
 
In addition, it's easy for the left to call someone a white supremacist or a racist.  To some lower-class whites, charges of racism are perceived as a deliberate attempt to ignore the real economic problems they are facing. Because when poor whites bring up these issues, the left answers:  “You guys are racist, you have white privilege, why are you still talking about this? Look at how much better off you guys are than those Black people.” But in reality, "racial advantage" is no match for "class disadvantage." This discourse completely ignores the plight and anxiety of the white working class, which is one of the reasons why this group is so put off by racist discourse.
 
There is no way to completely separate race from economic issues. Because these economic problems that whites are experiencing now are not caused by race, but by globalization. But it's easy for people like Trump and the right-wing media to find a scapegoat and blame these problems on immigrants or say that it's a problem caused by minorities, thus shifting people's attention to racial issues.
 
In my view this is ultimately an economic issue, and to resolve the sense of anxiety currently generated by racial issues, the most important approach is actually to do what Prof. Wang just suggested:  eliminate inequality, both between races and within races, create a new common prosperity and more equal society.  This is the only way to eliminate the fears surrounding racial issues.  I think this is a necessary condition for a positive solution to the racial problem. 
 
Bao Gangsheng:  In essence, I don't reject cultural pluralism, but it seems to me that there is also a question what phase we are in. The long-term prospect of humanity still lies in pluralism, but everyone in the U.S. and Europe seems to be in a difficult moment on this front.  At present, there are still great differences or gaps between different countries and places in terms of political systems, in terms of economic and cultural development levels, and in terms of civilizational traits.
 
In the case of European and American civilization, for example, we would say that we are talking about societies that combine liberal democracy with a market economy. The problem, however, is that any democratic regime is made up of a certain community of citizens. Given the great diversity of global societies and populations, it is not the case that any community of citizens can create a political system, a society, or a civilization like those of the United States or Europe.  Personally, I feel that the United States has been undergoing a massive restructuring of its immigration policy since the 1960s, and the push of globalization came on top of that, so that today, the entire political system and social order in the United States have been under relatively great pressure from ideas of ethnic and religious pluralism.
 
In the face of such pressure, I think there are two “speeds” that are racing against one another in European and American societies. The first is the speed of immigration, and the other is the speed of political and legal assimilation of immigrants in mainstream European and American societies. If the speed of immigration surpasses the speed of political and legal assimilation of immigrants, then the civilization of European and American society such as we know it today may disintegrate. If the speed of assimilation can exceed the speed of immigration, then the situation of European and American societies may escape basically unscathed, more or less maintaining the original system and model of civilization. Of course, I should add that “assimilation” is already a somewhat politically incorrect term in the eyes of the more thoroughgoing cultural pluralists in Western societies today.
 
In the face of the challenges posed by immigration, I think there are probably two or three different options for European and American societies. The first is the program of assimilation, but at present assimilation is becoming more and more difficult because the number and proportion of immigrants are too great. For example, if 100 members of the original society receive one or two immigrants, then the immigrants will be easily assimilated. But with 20 immigrants coming in at once, combined with their high fertility rate, then great pressure is needed for assimilation to occur. The second option is the cultural pluralism advocated by the Democratic Party. But the challenge this option faces is the question Samuel Huntington raised in 2004:  if cultural pluralism is allowed to grow unchecked, will it lead to the fall of European and American civilization in the coming decades? The third path is the turn toward conservatism, including Britain's choice to leave the European Union, Trump's various approaches to the wall and immigration issues, and the tone of French President Macron's policy on religion today. But this turn is now facing challenges in terms of political correctness.
 
So there are three prospects for the West on this issue, the first is cultural pluralism, the second is moderate realism, and the third is extreme xenophobia. I broadly see Britain's exit from the European Union and Trump's rise to power as a shift from cultural pluralism to moderate realism in these two countries. But if moderate realism fails to address the challenges posed by immigration in European and American societies today, Western societies cannot rule out a shift to extreme xenophobia, which will only bring worse prospects for these countries and the world at large.
 
Wang Yongqin:  First of all I don't think racism is a stand-alone issue. Some recent economics studies have found that Trump supporters have certain characteristics, first among which is that most of them come from places where China's trade has hit the hardest, so I agree that the race issue is essentially an economic issue. These people are not being compensated for what they have lost, and this is why they are against immigration. On the other hand, research in economics has found that the biggest cause of the income gap is not in fact globalization.  The biggest cause is technological progress, followed by globalization, but the problem is that we see that populist politicians grab onto the issue of immigration and will not let it go.
 
So I think the ultimate solution to this problem is to reform the economy so that everyone can share the benefits of globalization. If we make the pie bigger and then compensate everyone, then people will not oppose globalization. Research carried out this year also found that immigration in general has contributed a lot to the United States, mainly in terms of innovation, intellectual diversity, and political diversity. Studies in economics have found that diversity brings benefits to scholarship and to technological innovation, and that the United States is indeed a beneficiary of diversity.
 
Also, I don't think “white values” are necessarily right. I think the great thing about America is that its constitution is able to accommodate different voices and make everyone accept the rules of the game. So diversity is a necessary force, doing what it should do.
 
Xu Xibai:  I happened to be in the UK when the UK voted to leave the EU. In fact, the regions with the highest percentage of Brexit voters were those with a high percentage of whites, especially those where the impoverishment had been accelerated by industries moving away. As in the U.S., the Brexit propaganda machine has captured this economic anxiety and has succeeded in making it an immigration issue. Instead, in large cities with many immigrants, such as London, most people voted to stay in the EU, seeing the benefits that immigration brings to their lives.
 
Shen Dingli:  I think that different ethnic groups have their own set of language systems, cultural systems, identity perception systems, and generally speaking, they are proud of their own ethnicity. At the same time, there is a very normal competition among the world's peoples and civilizations. And, as we often see, in some cases this competition can also turn into an exclusionary egocentric identity.
 
If a great leader emerges, such as Abraham Lincoln, perhaps he will have the moral force and cohesiveness necessary to bring diverse communities back together from their current fractured state. But I worry that the age of great men has passed. Biden may not have this great ability to truly unite all parties, so that all ethnic groups in the United States can live together in peace. In this case, then, with increasing economic and social inequalities, , the United States may face more internal divisions in this era of multi-racial and cultural co-existence.

Note

[1] “四位中国学者，看大选之后的美国,” Pengpai News online, December 9, 2020.