Ren Jiantao, "Chinese Values and Utiltarianism"

Ren Jiantao, “Let’s Not Simply Misunderstand China as a ‘Utilitarian Society’”[1]

Introduction and Translation by David Ownby
 
Introduction
 
Ren Jiantao (b. 1962) is a well-known political scientist in China, having recently moved to the prestigious Tsinghua University after having taught at Zhongshan University and Renmin University.  In terms of ideological orientation, Ren is a social scientist and “conservative liberal” like Gao Quanxi (b. 1962) (the constitutional scholar and Trump supporter) and Xu Zhangrun (the legal scholar, also formerly of Tsinghua, who has paid very heavily of late for daring to criticize Xi Jinping); the three are friends and have published together.
 
Whatever his “orientation,” Ren is an extremely energetic scholar and addresses a wide variety of subjects in his writings and talks.  A quick glance at his Aisixiang page reveals articles on topics as diverse as:  Confucian thought, power and transcendence, contemporary Chinese concepts of internationalism, the indigenization of the social sciences in China, artificial intelligence and social control, and a third Confucian way outside of Mencius and Xunzi—among many, many others.
 
The text translated here is not a scholarly piece but instead a talk Ren gave at the Longway Foundation 修远基金会 in Beijing on January 28, 2021, subsequently published in the online version of Beijing Cultural Review.  Ren’s theme is the state of contemporary Chinese values, something that many Chinese people worry about, and intellectuals particularly like to wring their hands over.
 
I find Ren’s text interesting for its defense of “utilitarianism,” a conservative liberal’s way of defending self-serving behavior.  Ren admits that values are in flux in China, with many types of values jockeying for position.  He insists, however, that the pursuit of freedom has become the driving force in Chinese values over the course of the period of reform and opening, by which he clearly means entrepreneurship (presumably including his own—he was likely paid for his talk at the foundation, and such activities are extremely common in the contemporary Chinese intellectual world). 

Ren argues that utilitarianism should not be condemned, but should be understood sympathetically.  Moreover, the state should invest its energy in building structures and systems that will properly channel the utilitarian urge so that its expression takes a healthier turn.  The state should also reign in its own “utilitarian activities” (i.e., corruption and cronyism) which contribute to the general distaste for self-serving behavior.  What China wants and needs, Ren concludes, is freedom with rules.  The people are ready; the state is dragging its heels.
 
I have no opinion as to truth value of Ren’s claims.  This is a talk given at a foundation, not a research piece, and Ren provides no evidence.  I find it nonetheless interesting that he defends “freedom” at the dominant value in China, particularly in light of contemporary Western depictions of China, and I have little doubt that he is sincere.
 
Favorite Quotes

“First, contemporary Chinese values have a distinctly marginal character. By ‘marginal,’ I mean that there are many values—traditional, contemporary, and normative—seeking, without much success, to define their boundaries at the margins.  It is somewhat like value systems existing elsewhere, but is still in flux. As such, the values are not norms, and in China, all values wander at the margins.

For example, people say that there is no concern for the collective in China, but Chinese people are ultimately more concerned about the collective than are Westerners.  People also say that that Chinese people are purely utilitarian, but people engage in frequent acts of altruism.  People say that Chinese people are purely out for themselves, but people are quite active in public welfare causes.  People say that the Chinese people show an overwhelming preference for narrow self-interest, but they also pursue justice in defending their rights.  People say that there is no institutionalized equality in China, but a strong desire for equality has undoubtedly become a mainstream value.

That said , it would be premature to assert that the basic modern values of freedom, equality, fraternity, democracy, rule of law, and science are so clearly embedded in the world of Chinese values that they can be used to measure the value structure of China today.”
 
“Thus the characteristics of contemporary Chinese values are that they marginal, ambiguous, and uncertain. But this does not mean that there are no outstanding core concepts that guide people's behavioral choices. Although the core values that emerge are unclear and even sometimes contradictory, the basic contours of the values are still visible.  First, contemporary Chinese people pursue freedom as a mainstream value. Freedom is a leading, core value among all human values. Freedom is also a core value in what we call China’s 60-year, 100-year, and 5,000-year traditions in China, i.e., the Marxist tradition, the modern Western tradition (once it arrived in China), and in the classical Chinese tradition. The difference between the three is simply the way in which freedom is realized.”
 
“The most important change in Chinese values over the course of the 40 years of reform and opening is that the market economy has freed people from increasingly burdensome subsistence labor, and humanity, individuality and pluralism have become mainstream socio-political values. In today's China, the core value of freedom has become the most important value force. Without the pursuit of freedom as a core value, it is extremely difficult for the Chinese to understand the modern qualities of their country and the nature of their own their personal choices. In this regard, we must seek out the core, most cohesive, and most inspiring aspects of 40 years of value changes, those which represent the characteristics of this era.”
 
“But while contemporary China has fully affirmed the value of utilitarian behavior, it has not developed equal, rule-based utilitarian values. Utilitarianism is power-determined, in the sense that either a collusion between power and money, or power by itself, often winds up only protecting the utilitarian pursuits of some of the people, while others have no chance to fulfill their utilitarian needs.  Or in some cases, power simply pursues its own selfish utilitarianism, and the manifest corruption becomes an important reason for people to condemn utilitarian values. Today, people's strong resentment of the pursuit of utilitarianism is because of the inequality and irregularity of the pursuit of utilitarianism and the unsatisfied distribution of justice, which in turn leads to the return of egalitarian value and a certain nostalgia for the values of absolute equality.”
 
Links to other texts on the site
 
Click here for texts related to democracy.

Click here for texts related to liberalism.
 
Translation
 
Flirting with Relativism: Looking Closely at Contemporary Chinese Values
 
In the 1960s and 1970s, Westerners experienced the most severe test since World War II in terms of the collapse and reconstruction of basic values: the student revolts of 1968, a combined reflection on the Vietnam War and on society as a whole that led to the disintegration of the modern values that had been firmly embraced in the West since the Enlightenment.  The values of rationalism, progressivism, and universalism were comprehensively challenged, producing cracks in the foundations of the modern value constructs that undergirded Western self-confidence, and which had been invested with near absolute faith.

What followed was a mixture of rational and irrational, progressive and reactionary, universal and particular values based on a foundation of relativism. For a time, the confusion of values in the Western world sparked a passion for discussion and reflection. On this basis, the American scholar Luther J. Binkley (b. 1926) wrote Conflict of Ideals: Changing Values in Western Society (1969) which provides a comprehensive description and analysis of the state of values in the West from a relativist perspective, and paints a picture of the tense reconfiguration of Western values at the time.

This book was translated into Chinese by the famous translator Wang Taiqing 王太庆 (1922-1999), and published by the Commercial Press in 1994. The book struck a nerve in China. Chinese society had just emerged from the era of absolutist values and was gradually entering the world of relativist values, and people were eager to understand the rapid changes in values and to find the path of modern value reconstruction. Hence this book became popular.
 
Over the years, the Chinese seem to have forgotten the value of Binkley's book. However, the country’s overall transition from a condition of material poverty to that of a moderately well-off society, as well as the profound value problems encountered in the process of modernization compel us to observe, describe and analyze the value changes of contemporary Chinese in accord with Binkley’s relativistic thinking.
 
Misunderstanding Values: Setting the Record Straight before Describing the World of Contemporary Chinese Values
 
Over the course of the past 40 years, the world of Chinese values has experienced many fractures, but whether our goal is to carry out empirical studies or to make general assessment of the subject requires that we establish appropriate premises for observing, describing, and analyzing contemporary Chinese values. However, certain presuppositions stand in our way.

First, generally speaking, the change of values in contemporary China is a process of the collapse of traditional values and the establishment of a modern value system. However, people increasingly seem to expect a modern value system with "Chinese characteristics." Does there exist a value system that is distinct from that all modern countries and possesses Chinese national characteristics? The world of values is some kind of reflection of the real world, and the general trend of social change in China over the past 40 years has determined the overall direction of the change in Chinese values.

In the transition from tradition to modernity in China, the rise of the market economy, the construction of democratic politics, and the enrichment of social life—in other words, the overall advancement of China's social changes toward modern forms—inevitably meant that China's values would evolve toward modern values. The core concepts of the modern value system are "liberté, égalité, et fraternité,” which were widely adopted throughout the world after the French Revolution in 1789. In this sense, all countries attempting to become modern adopt these values, and there are no country-specific modern values.  Nor is China an exception. Chinese characteristics are found not in the promise of unique values, but rather in the way that these values function.

Second, the basic situation in terms of value change in contemporary China is a lack of values or value confusion among the Chinese people. This is a negative assessment of value changes in contemporary China. After thirty years of reform and opening, China is an industrial and commercial society. Compared with the period prior to reform and opening, the stable value system of agricultural society has collapsed, and the value guidance of revolutionary society has been lost. Despite the disappearance of the "old" values, however, "new" values have yet to appear. Subjectively, people feel that values have been completely lost, and China has fallen into the pit of value nihilism.

This has given rise to two tendencies in the search for the criteria of modern Chinese values, one of which is to measure modern values through the lens of traditional values. In addition, there are two kinds of traditional Chinese values: classical Chinese traditional values and the values of the new Marxist tradition. The classical Chinese spiritual values focus on individual cultivation; Marxism emphasizes collectivism. The former is somewhat weak in terms of the real world support it offers, and the latter has lost much of its practical appeal. As a result, we feel quite sad in the face of loss of our past mainstream values, and harbor a sense of plaintive rejection in the face of the values that reign in today’s world.
 
The second tendency is to examine the changing structure of Chinese values through the lens of modern value norms. Modern Western values evolved over hundreds of years before reaching their final form.  The Chinese cannot do the same thing over night. The state of values in China is fluid, and latches onto signs and signals from both the past and the present without fully conforming to either one or the other. This is the reason why we often experience a sort of “value aphasia” when we try to understand and generalize about the Chinese value world today. For example, today almost all Chinese people pursue wealth, with wealth being understood as money, which has a dominant influence people's behavior, and is a value choice guided by the logic of survival. To fail to see the value concept behind this pursuit is to ignore the factual or material basis of the dignity of life. For this reason, by all means we must not simply misunderstand China as a utilitarian society.
 
The Paradoxical Mix of Contemporary Chinese Values
 
It is possible to grasp the structural characteristics of contemporary Chinese values.

First, contemporary Chinese values have a distinctly marginal character. By “marginal,” I mean that there are many values—traditional, contemporary, and normative—seeking, without much success, to define their boundaries at the margins.  It is somewhat like value systems existing elsewhere, but is still in flux. As such, the values are not norms, and in China, all values wander at the margins.

For example, people say that there is no concern for the collective in China, but Chinese people are ultimately more concerned about the collective than are Westerners.  People also say that that Chinese people are purely utilitarian, but people engage in frequent acts of altruism.  People say that Chinese people are purely out for themselves, but people are quite active in public welfare causes.  People say that the Chinese people show an overwhelming preference for narrow self-interest, but they also pursue justice in defending their rights.  People say that there is no institutionalized equality in China, but a strong desire for equality has undoubtedly become a mainstream value.

That said , it would be premature to assert that the basic modern values of freedom, equality, fraternity, democracy, rule of law, and science are so clearly embedded in the world of Chinese values that they can be used to measure the value structure of China today.
 
Second, the values of the contemporary Chinese people reflect the ambiguity of their behavioral orientation. In contemporary China, there is a sense of uncertainty as to what values, motives, and desires underlie one's actions. In other words, people are not clear about the value judgments of right and wrong, about what trade-offs to make in the real world, about decisions that balance profit and harm—in short, they are not clear on what principles should guide their choices. 

​The ambiguity of values has produced a certain hesitation in their judgement of others’ behavior and values.  In the 1990s, Wang Meng (b. 1934) preached “avoidance of the sublime” and Wang Shuo (b. 1958) depicted “hooligan culture,” which already reflected the Chinese people's distance from issues of value.[2] This distance is entirely due to the paradoxical situation in which certain value needs are not met, but value guidance is still required in everyday behavior, resulting in a state of value disorientation. Wandering among various values seems to be the “choice” of the contemporary Chinese.
 
Thus the characteristics of contemporary Chinese values are that they marginal, ambiguous, and uncertain. But this does not mean that there are no outstanding core concepts that guide people's behavioral choices. Although the core values that emerge are unclear and even sometimes contradictory, the basic contours of the values are still visible.  First, contemporary Chinese people pursue freedom as a mainstream value. Freedom is a leading, core value among all human values. Freedom is also a core value in what we call China’s 60-year, 100-year, and 5,000-year traditions in China, i.e., the Marxist tradition, the modern Western tradition (once it arrived in China), and in the classical Chinese tradition. The difference between the three is simply the way in which freedom is realized.
 
The most important change in Chinese values over the course of the 40 years of reform and opening is that the market economy has freed people from increasingly burdensome subsistence labor, and humanity, individuality and pluralism have become mainstream socio-political values. In today's China, the core value of freedom has become the most important value force. Without the pursuit of freedom as a core value, it is extremely difficult for the Chinese to understand the modern qualities of their country and the nature of their own their personal choices. In this regard, we must seek out the core, most cohesive, and most inspiring aspects of 40 years of value changes, those which represent the characteristics of this era.
 
For a long time, people equated the spiritual value of freedom with the freedom to be disorganized, to be a sheet of loose sand, arguing that freedom would surely mean a lack of discipline, which is in fact a serious misunderstanding of Chinese values. Modern freedom is freedom with rules, that is, what Hayek called "freedom under the rule of law." In terms of personal behavior, the freedom of individuals to use their knowledge, wisdom, and wealth to connect notions of rights and prosperity has been an important reason for China's rapid development in the last 40 years. But in structural terms, even after 40 years of freedom as a mainstream value, we are still a long way from the idea of “freedom under the rules” or of abstract freedom as a value. The value orientation of freedom is clear, but remains in a state of liberation, lacking rules and awaiting norms.
 
Moreover, the behavior of contemporary Chinese people is guided by utilitarianism as their basic value orientation. Over the last 40 years, China has opened up the value space of narrow, economic choices in the world of behavioral choices, and people have begun to be able to clearly express and pursue their personal interests and desires. People today seem to hate the utilitarian behavioral value orientation of their fellow citizens, seeing it as a vulgar set of values in which people’s desires have gone wild, the world is in decline, and people have lost their traditional mindset.
 
For China, how to marshal values as a driving force for sustainable development is a question of how to effectively steer the direction of utilitarianism.  For 40 years, China's activities in the economic world have been the main source of motivation for the emancipation of humanity, which has given dignity to human life and made it clear that "a well-stocked granary is a good measure of propriety, and adequate food and clothing is a good measure of honor and shame.” Utilitarian values have been the driving force that has motived the Chinese people to rethink their values, and not a values disaster.
 
But while contemporary China has fully affirmed the value of utilitarian behavior, it has not developed equal, rule-based utilitarian values. Utilitarianism is power-determined, in the sense that either a collusion between power and money, or power by itself, often winds up only protecting the utilitarian pursuits of some of the people, while others have no chance to fulfill their utilitarian needs.  Or in some cases, power simply pursues its own selfish utilitarianism, and the manifest corruption becomes an important reason for people to condemn utilitarian values. Today, people's strong resentment of the pursuit of utilitarianism is because of the inequality and irregularity of the pursuit of utilitarianism and the unsatisfied distribution of justice, which in turn leads to the return of egalitarian value and a certain nostalgia for the values of absolute equality.
 
Notes

[1] 任剑涛, “千万不能把中国单纯误读为’功利社会,’” published online on January 28, 2021 on the site of the Beijing Cultural Review.

[2] Translator’s note:  Wang Meng and Wang Shuo are well-known Chinese authors.  Wang Shuo is famous for having pioneered an art form that might be called “Chinese noir,” peopled by thugs and gangsters.  Wang Meng’s remarks about “avoiding the sublime” were actually a criticism of Wang Shuo’s style of writing, a Harold Blum-like condemnation of declining artistic standards, although Wang Meng himself engaged in considerable experimentation in his writings.  Ren’s point is simply that “values nihilism” is not merely a contemporary phenomenon.