Andrey Ivanovich, do you think that we in Russia, if we want to build our own economic miracle, can we work as hard as the Chinese over the past decades?
Andrey Denisov: Chinese workers in the broad sense of the term are distinguished by their endurance and simplicity. It’s true. And, of course, a penchant for collectivism. The whole historical experience of the country over the millennia determines both the mentality of the Chinese and their approach to work, to the maintenance of life.
For centuries, the basis of the Chinese economy has been irrigated agriculture, the organization of which requires large labor resources, organized and directed in an extremely rigid manner. There was therefore no question in China of a kind of great landed property, of a hereditary landed aristocracy. But the state apparatus represented by civil servants has always been of paramount importance. This is why now collectivism is the basis of the Chinese worldview. Socialist and communist ideas have found fertile ground there, because they are also based not on individual freedom as a factor of social development, but on collectivism.
The experience of Chinese economic reforms, it seems to me, is generally not replicable. So the answer to our long-standing conversations about whether we could go the Chinese way is simple: we couldn’t. They couldn’t even back when we had a completely different ruling party and social order. In fact, China’s reform started with agriculture, in order to feed the country. It was dictated by the same reasons as the Leninist NEP. And it was done the same way. In China, too, they have actually moved from appropriating surpluses to taxing in kind.
If before everything was confiscated, now they started to leave something: hand over part to the state at a fixed price, keep the rest for themselves or sell it on a market basis. But the type of economy itself was different – labor intensive. Such agriculture could be divided into several stages. In China, individual farming did not become farming because people specialized in certain technological operations. Someone germinated, someone planted, cared for, collected, stored, processed, exported, sold. All this was done within the framework of family contracts and a general process of production.
The most accessible in the Chinese form of economic reforms, and probably what we can really borrow from China, is the method of verification by experience which has been mastered there since ancient times and which has proved its worth over the course of reforms. . When certain economical solutions have been proposed, they have been tested in this way. There was a result – they began to spread throughout the country. No – everything immediately fell apart. Throughout the 1980s and part of the 1990s, this approach to economic planning was the cornerstone of the success of Chinese reforms. Everything else is irreproducible.
China began its ascent, reaching the bottom, to which the country was brought by the Cultural Revolution. Russia has never known such oppressive and unimaginable poverty. We did not have the task of urgently feeding and clothing people. In China, it was believed that poverty is when a person cannot support themselves and their family with food and clothing. And there were hundreds of millions of such people. It was China 40 years ago.
Do the richest Chinese fear that the current prosperity will disappear because of the conflict with the West? Will these people leave the country in case of difficulties?
Andrey Denisov: The path of reform in China has not been easy. There were serious internal conflicts. But the overall result, of course, is positive, and the Chinese company appreciates what has been achieved. The West and the United States openly admit that they made two strategic errors with regard to China. The first concerns stereotypical ideas about the nature of China’s social development. It was believed that it was necessary at least not to interfere with the development of China, to raise the standard of living of the population and to create a middle class. This middle class, American thinkers believed, would eventually demand political representation and drive the ruling Communist Party out of power.
Chinese society has really started to live much better. There are more billionaires in China than in the United States. The rich appeared, the middle class appeared, numbering, as the Chinese themselves say, 400 million people. But nothing threatening the Communist Party’s monopoly position has happened. Here, the Americans miscalculated.
The second error was that they considered it possible, for their own benefit, to stimulate the development of economic ties with China in all fields. It was believed that the PRC would never reach the level of America in terms of technology. And they were wrong again. Already today, China in many areas – for example, quantum computing or developments in the field of artificial intelligence – has overtaken the United States.
In the Celestial Empire, the technologies of traditional agriculture coexist … and space (in the photo – the rover). Photo: Getty Images / CNSA
Over the past 40 years, a certain social contract has been implemented there, related to the peculiarities of the Chinese mentality – collectivism, an interest in wise leadership. If the Communist Party demonstrates wisdom in leading the country, ensuring progress and improving life, and it has done so for 40 years, then it suits society. The fact that before that there were disasters in China, famine and Maoist experiments, is ancient history. All of this was judged quite harshly in China itself. The Party, as the leading political force, has fulfilled its social obligations to society. And keep performing. Therefore, the idea that the formation of a middle class will have the impact Americans need on China’s social life has proven superficial.
And what would the Chinese be interested in borrowing from us? Or is it unusual for them to adopt someone else’s experience?
Andrei Denisov: In China, they think local specificity is very high. Therefore, foreign models on Chinese soil will only take root if they match the Chinese mentality. Or they will be redone. So, for example, this happened with the ideas of Marxism-Leninism, if taken in the broadest sense of the word. What could the Chinese learn from our experience? Yes, they took everything from him. Because the Chinese social model is actually built on our social model. This is why the events of 1956 (the 20th Party Congress which demystified Stalin’s personality cult) and in particular of 1991 were perceived quite painfully in China. In China, the reasons for the collapse of the USSR are seriously analyzed. Even a multi-episode documentary film has been released, which literally dissects, splits the reasons for the collapse so that it does not happen in China.
Read the latest news about science, technology, and innovations on The Eastern Herald .
