Sun Liping,  "Trump’s Attack on Political Correctness"

Sun Liping, "The Whole World May Have Missed This Signal: Trump’s Attack on Political Correctness”[1]
 
Introduction and Translation by David Ownby
 
Introduction
 
Sun Liping (b. 1955) is Professor of Sociology at Tsinghua University and a leading public intellectual in China.  Over the course of his long and prolific career, his research has focused on a wide variety of issues, most related to the question of the effects of China’s economic transformation on China’s society.  He writes as a liberal, as illustrated by his well-known 2009 essay, “The Biggest Threat to China is not Social Turmoil but Social Decay,” in which he interrogates the cost of the state’s overweening emphasis on “stability.” Several of Sun’s texts are readily available in English translation on the web; your favorite web browser will find them for you.
 
Sun is also a frequent blogger, or WeChat user, and my impression is that the text translated below came from his WeChat channel, although I have been unable to trace it all the way back to its origin; it is widely available on the Internet in any event. 
 
Sun’s message is seemingly simple:  American President Donald Trump is attacking political correctness, and this is a good thing.  Sun’s framing of his comment is equally simple:  he was writing a piece about the importance of the “liberate thought” movement to the success of reform and opening in the early 1980s, and realized that Trump was attempting to “liberate thought” in the United States.
 
Most of the rest of Sun’s text reads to me like filler.  His insights into the origins of political correctness are not overwhelming, and are largely limited to his observation that political correctness has become a sort of “ideological shackle” for the United States, limiting freedom of thought and action.  It is entirely possible, of course, that Sun is engaging in the ancient Chinese strategy of “pointing at the mulberry tree but cursing the locust tree 指桑骂槐,” or criticizing under cover of analogy.  Arguably, the burden of “political correctness” is much greater in Xi Jinping’s China than in Donald Trump’s America, particularly for liberal intellectuals like Sun.  Readers will make up their own minds.
 
Translation
 
A few days ago, I was writing an essay and was in the middle of this sentence :  “Forty years ago, in the process of reform and opening, how did we break through our ideological shackles, and what prospects did the destruction of our ideological prison open up for this process?”

As I was writing this, it suddenly occurred to me that a similar thing is happening right now.  What thing?  Well, yes, it’s Trump and his attack on political correctness.  This is very similar to the movement to liberate thought in our early reform and opening period, that broke through our intellectual shackles. 

I should note that Trump’s attack has been commented on superficially in the media and by scholars, but the true significance of the attack seems to have been underestimated throughout the entire world.  I’ll put it this way.  If you still don’t understand this, or if you are like some people and talk about this mockingly or sarcastically, then you may well wind up being an object of ridicule yourself.

You know that with this attack, a profound change in the social and intellectual culture of the United States may be taking place. And this transformation will have a crucial impact on the future direction of the United States and even on the evolution of the entire world scene.

Let me back up and give you a little background to Trump’s challenge.
We all know that the United States is a unique country, a country that is both young and mature.  In terms of youth, America was founded only in 1776, which means that its history is only a little more than two centuries old.  Among the great powers of the world, America’s history is the shortest, and we can say that America is a young country.

Yet from another perspective, America is a fairly mature country.  This maturity is not only expressed in the institutions created by the deep reflections of America’s founding fathers, but also in the fact that in recent years, particularly after WWII, America became the world’s most important leader, or perhaps its sole leader, and in this process accumulated important cultural achievements.  This accumulation is embodied in the results produced by American civilization, but at the same time stands out as a responsibility that America, as an overweening power, owes to the world.

From another perspective, however, this accumulation has, by now, slowly turned into a burden, a kind of shackle America has placed on itself, a kind of self-inflicted bondage.

An important part of this has been the emergence of the idea of what is called “political correctness.”  The strength of political correctness is such that going against it is practically a taboo.  In 2016, when Trump was nominated at the Republican National Convention, he said:  “I will present the facts plainly and honestly. We cannot afford to be so politically correct anymore.”  What he said shows the relationship between what Trump plans to do and the destruction of political correctness.

And in fact we have seen that in policy-making as well and in his campaigns, Trump has frequently taken aim at political correctness.  He stated very clearly that he rejects political correctness.   In addition he links the rejection of political correctness with making America great again.   After the Orlando shooting [in June, 2016], he said:  “I refuse to be politically correct.  I want to do the right thing. I want to straighten things out and I want to make America great again.”

What is extremely unfortunate is that, at the time, the whole world failed to truly understand Trump’s words and his meaning.  Even today, we are ignoring this signal.

Even today, there are still people who see these words as nonsense, as irresponsible, and there were people who predicted that voters would reject someone who opposed political correctness.  In fact, this series of gestures Trump made is extremely important for the United States—I said, for the United States.

Above I compared Trump’s opposition to political correctness to the thought liberation in China at the beginning of the period of reform and opening, as both represented a return to normal.  Some friends might find this strange, or say that this comparison is inappropriate.  If fact, I am speaking in terms of the role both played, arguing that Trump’s attack on political correctness has a similar significance to the attack on the rigid dogma of the past carried out by the campaign to liberate thought at the beginning of reform and opening period.
We can look at concrete examples of how Trump has opposed political correctness.

We all know that at the outset, what we call political correctness was basically concerned with issues like equality, and developed out of questions having to do with respect for minority groups, but in fact that is not all there is to it.  In today’s world, things like globalization have largely become something that is politically correct.  Another example is free trade.  Another is the responsibility of great powers, their obligations to their allies, which in the last few years seems also to have become part of political correctness.

Of course, there are more and more taboos on topics like immigration, religion, ethnic minorities and other traditional areas of political correctness.  There are even some people who think saying “Merry Christmas” is politically incorrect, and want people to say “Happy Holidays” instead.

What does all this mean for America?  America’s burden is getting heavier and heavier, its freedom of action more and more limited.  Americans have no choice but to do many things that they don’t want to do, and certain things they should do are neglected out of concern that they will be labeled politically incorrect, or even if they go ahead and do them, they don’t feel good about it.

This is why I say it is a lot like the situation in China before reform and opening.  Political correctness has turned into dogma, reducing the country’s range of choices—you can’t do this, you can’t do that—and you wind up passive as the path before you narrows.

So what then is the meaning of Trump’s attack on political correctness in the past few years?  I think that is a movement of deep thought liberation.  Certain untouchable taboos from the past have been attacked, a certain number of previously impossible choices have been made.  There is a new standard for judging things, and the range of choices is larger.

So we can foresee that deep changes will occur in American society once it goes through Trump’s attack.  We might say that once America has gone through this series of attacks, attacks represented by Trump’s “craziness,” the country will become younger, more dynamic.  We might even call this experience a process of rebirth.

This should remind us that in today’s world, in today’s era, should we liberate thought?  Or shackle thought?  Should we cling to ossified dogma?  Or open a future of limitless choice?  Should we remain chained to taboos, or stride bravely forward once we have broken those chains?  Should we decide the fate of our country?  Or should we decide the shape of the world?

Notes

[1] 孙立平, “整个世界可能都忽视了这个信号——谈特朗普对政治正确的冲击,” originally published, I believe, on Sun’s WeChat channel in early February 2019, and available online, for example here.