Tyler Cowen recently linked to a New Yorker interview of Liu Cixin, author of the acclaimed sci-fi trilogy “The Three Body Problem.” These books are of very high quality, and rely heavily on ideas from the social sciences, particularly game theory. So you’d think that if any artist would be good at politics, it would be Liu Cixin. Just the opposite is true:
I decided to inch the conversation toward politics, a topic he prefers to avoid. His views turned out to be staunch and unequivocal. The infamous one-child policy, he said, had been vital: “Or else how could the country have combatted its exploding population growth?” . . .
Liu took a similarly pragmatic view of a controversial funeral-reform law, which mandates cremation, even though the tradition of “returning to the ground” has been part of Chinese culture for thousands of years. . . .
When I brought up the mass internment of Muslim Uighurs—around a million are now in reëducation camps in the northwestern province of Xinjiang—he trotted out the familiar arguments of government-controlled media: “Would you rather that they be hacking away at bodies at train stations and schools in terrorist attacks? If anything, the government is helping their economy and trying to lift them out of poverty.” . . .
“If China were to transform into a democracy, it would be hell on earth,” he said. “I would evacuate tomorrow, to the United States or Europe or—I don’t know.” The irony that the countries he was proposing were democracies seemed to escape his notice. He went on, “Here’s the truth: if you were to become the President of China tomorrow, you would find that you had no other choice than to do exactly as he has done.”
I was surprised by the weakness of his arguments. The US has suffered far more from Muslim terrorism that China, and we don’t put a million Muslims in “reeducation” camps.
I’m old enough to remember when intellectuals would tell me that democracy could not work in Asia, Africa or Latin America. If I mentioned Japan, they’d wave that away, suggesting it was imposed by the US. When South Korea and Taiwan became successful democracies the argument shifted. Now it was “China’s different, it’s much larger and poorer.” But Korea and Taiwan were just as poor as China is now when they became democratic, probably poorer.
Some argue that a democratic system would effectively turn the Chinese government over to the large masses that live in the countryside, which would vote against the interests of the urban elite. I understand that argument, and indeed I’ve often speculated that China would not become democratic until the urban middle class formed a majority. This also explains why Thailand lost its democracy, as the Bangkok elite resented the fact that they kept losing elections to candidates representing the rural masses.
But here’s what’s so disappointing about Liu’s argument. The Chinese political system should adjust policies in the direction of aiding the rural masses. China currently utilizes a “hukou” system, which restricts the ability of rural residents to move to urban areas where they could be far more productive. This is one of those areas where reforms would be a win-win, boosting both equity and efficiency in China. It’s hard to find an expert on China who would defend this system of apartheid.
It’s also possible the Chinese masses would vote for a high tax regime such as you see in Europe. But other East Asian countries have relatively low taxes.
China is now a reasonably well-educated and technologically sophisticated economy, by global standards (although rural areas still fall well short). If you look around the world, the vast majority of such countries have democratic systems, and they generally produce richer and freer societies than China. It’s possible that democracy in China would be a disaster, but I see almost zero evidence for that hypothesis. And yet Liu is so confident of that prediction that he’d flee the country. Why? FWIW, I suspect the Chinese Communist Party would win the first free election in China. But in order to do so it would adjust policy to be more favorable to rural residents, as it should.
I’m not a fan of political art. Here I’m defining “political” narrowly, as art that addresses specific public policy issues. If you want to define politics in the “everything is political” sense, then there’s obviously lots of great political art. After all, art addresses profound ethical quandaries. Art can show that cruelty is a bad thing, or that others have the same feelings as we do. And that’s useful. It’s when art tries to make specific points on specific public policies issues that it falls short.
A painting like Guernica or a novel like Animal Farm might be excellent works of art, but if so it’s not because they contain interesting political ideas. What lessons might Mao or Pol Pot have derived from reading Animal Farm? Perhaps that Stalin didn’t go far enough in producing true equality, and that the urban elite should be cut down to size, that it should be sent to the countryside to suffer with the peasants? (Maybe they did read it.) And what’s the political message of Guernica? Would the message be different if the painting were entitled Belchite?
Artists are good at illustrating moral dilemmas. Sci-fi artists are especially good at identifying new dilemmas that will be created by technological innovations. But when artists try to make specific political points on public policy issues, the art collapses. Asking an artist to write about politics is like asking a plumber to play a violin concerto.
PS. The US does not have a hukou system. We have zoning. And border controls.
READER COMMENTS
Lawrence D'Anna
Jun 26 2019 at 3:47pm
Maybe the weakness of the arguments is the point.
Maybe what he’s really saying is “If you ask me about Chinese politics I will only give you lame hostage-video answers”.
Airman Spry Shark
Jun 26 2019 at 3:59pm
I found the second book in his trilogy to be unreadable due to the straight-from-the-CCP positions his characters espoused, so I’m not remotely surprised his own political opinions are similarly blinkered.
Scott Sumner
Jun 26 2019 at 8:07pm
I thought the second book was much better than the first. I have no problem with the books from a political angle.
Brian Donohue
Jun 26 2019 at 4:57pm
There’s no reason to think that artists (or doctors, or any group, perhaps even students of politics) have any particular insight into politics.
I think you are spot on that democracy will come to China once the middle class reaches “some” threshold that allows for effective coordination of enough people. Maybe the threshold is higher in China than, say, South Korea, because the incumbent regime has historically been more authoritarian/totalitarian than the Korean generals, but there is a tipping point.
This idea runs counter to the new conventional wisdom that says we were wrong about China democratizing. It’ll happen.
Benjamin Cole
Jun 26 2019 at 7:17pm
As Westerners, we keep expecting the rest of the world to democratize, particularly if living standards rise.
That has not been the case through much of the Middle East extending through to Indonesia, and also in mainland China. In these large swaths of the world the march towards democracy has become a retreat, and for decades.
And one may well wonder why Russia, Africa, and Latin America seem prone to collapse and constant reverses.
The wait for global democracy could be measured in centuries or perhaps millenia.
Do not be too hard on Liu. He could be afraid to speak his mind. In China, even security analysts are thrown in prison for speaking their minds on the prospects of a company.
Scott Sumner
Jun 26 2019 at 8:11pm
Ben, You said:
“That has not been the case through much of the Middle East extending through to Indonesia”
India and Indonesia are two of the world’s three largest democracies. So your facts are wrong.
You said:
“Do not be too hard on Liu. He could be afraid to speak his mind.”
In China you are perfectly free to say nothing to western reporters. So no, that doesn’t explain his comments.
Benjamin Cole
Jun 27 2019 at 2:19am
https://www.afsa.org/democracy-indonesia-progress-report
Well… pretty muddy situation in Indonesia. I wish the best for the Indonesians.
I did not mean to include India in this swath that runs from Instanbul through to Jakarta.
Scott Sumner
Jun 27 2019 at 1:34pm
So the article you link to says:
“Those who had faith in the promise of Indonesia’s democratic experiment have largely been vindicated.”
I’ll take that as vindicating my previous claim.
Benjamin Cole
Jun 27 2019 at 7:21pm
OK, let’s put Indonesia into the democracy column.
I stand corrected.
Weir
Jun 26 2019 at 8:43pm
Liu Cixin is in the same awkward spot that Dmitri Shostakovich was in. Or at least the Shostakovich character in the novel by Julian Barnes: “Being a hero was much easier than being a coward. To be a hero, you only had to be brave for a moment — when you took out the gun, threw the bomb, pressed the detonator, did away with the tyrant, and away with yourself as well. But to be a coward was to embark on a career that lasted a lifetime. You couldn’t ever relax. You had to anticipate the next occasion when you would have to make excuses for yourself, dither, cringe, reacquaint yourself with the taste of rubber boots and the state of your own fallen, abject character. Being a coward required pertinacity, persistence, a refusal to change — which made it, in a way, a kind of courage. The pleasures of irony had not yet deserted him.”
Scott Sumner
Jun 27 2019 at 1:36pm
China is a long way from Stalin’s Soviet Union. Liu doesn’t have to say anything about politics.
John Alcorn
Jun 26 2019 at 10:13pm
Kazuo Ishiguro’s excellent historical, psychological novel, An Artist of the Floating World, is a work of art, partly about pitfalls of political art.
Scott Sumner
Jun 27 2019 at 1:37pm
I certainly believe you can make art about politics. It’s political art that I am skeptical of.
Mark Z
Jun 27 2019 at 5:57am
Great post, completely agree. Political art generally strikes me as essentially masturbatory in nature (I now wonder if this will make it past moderation). It’s rarely very persuasive to people who don’t already agree with it, least of all rational people. Bland as it is to admit, prose arguments are a far more effective means of conveying the merits or flaws of a policy than art is.
Robert EV
Jun 27 2019 at 9:31am
There is a dystopian element to his novels of the government and/or small groups of people making huge decisions that effect everyone in gigantic ways.
In at least one instance the then protagonist is comforted for their horrible decision (inability to fulfill their role with MAD) by “the people elected you because of your gentleness, this is what they wanted” (paraphrased gist).
Mark
Jun 27 2019 at 10:47am
Regarding the article, I thought the journalist was a little unfair in pushing Liu on his political views when his books were not about politics; it felt like he was being asked to defend Chinese policies just because he’s Chinese.
On the substance of the political views, I agree that China should abandon its hukou system (and it has made significant reforms in that direction). But, if China were a democracy, I think that the “libertarian” solution to rural poverty of abandoning the hukou would be far less likely to gain traction than solutions like massive new transfer payments or infrastructure projects like the huge projects being done now to divert water from the Yangtze to the North. Our democracies usually result in restricting supply and subsidizing demand; I see no reason why China would not fall into the same problem; in fact, given its history (the hukou has existed since ancient times, and so have massive government infrastructure projects to transfer resources from the coast to the interior), I suspect China would go even further in that direction.
Scott Sumner
Jun 27 2019 at 1:40pm
I agree with your first paragraph. As far as the hukou system, it would be hard to maintain under a democratic regime.
JFA
Jun 27 2019 at 10:58am
Scott, can you explain what is good about these novels? I read the first one and about 20 percent of the second. I found them juvenile with lackluster characters (it felt like mid-20th century American sci-fi in the strength of its characters), fanciful technology (that stupid nano-wire at the end of the first book that could cut anything except for whatever held it (that is certainly not explained)), and even more fanciful politics (somehow the UN and Venezuela are both powerful entities in the second book). While I don’t really get hung up on strong vs. weak female characters (especially, if the book is idea rich), the presentation of the female characters was pretty laughable and hard to ignore. The only good thing in there was the tangible paranoia that occurred in Mao’s cultural revolution and the impact of Marxism/Maoism on science in China.
I really wish I knew what people actually thought was a strength of these books, giving specific examples.
Scott Sumner
Jun 27 2019 at 1:48pm
JFA, I was not all that fond of the first book, and only persevered because the series had gotten good reviews from people like Tyler Cowen. I liked the second and third books.
I don’t read much sci-fi, and certainly don’t expect deep insights into character. I found the plot to be increasingly interesting. In sci-fi, one looks for interesting alternative worlds.
Again, it’s not a great work of literature (like Calvino’s “Invisible Cities”), but it’s better than some of the famous sci-fi I read when young.
ChrisA
Jun 28 2019 at 7:44am
My belief is that different books appear differently depending on your speed of reading. I am a fast reader and I enjoyed Liu Cixin, but I could see how more careful and slower readers would find it a bit hokey. Films are sometimes a bit like this, if they are fast paced you don’t notice the holes.
Amy Willis
Jun 28 2019 at 8:29am
That’s a really interesting point, Chris. I’m a pretty fast reader of ‘funb’ books, but I also purposely slow down for different sorts of books- particularly if they’re work related. I wonder what would happen to my perception of either if I changed? This whole conversation also makes me think we should add some fiction to the #EconlibReads queue…Maybe this one?
ChrisA
Jun 28 2019 at 2:39pm
Great idea. I am always looking for new reading ideas. I probably have about 50 books on my kindle, but when I finish a book I scan the other ones left and wonder why my reading range is so restrictive.
chris
Jul 3 2019 at 4:27pm
I’m currently near the beginning of the third book and, so far, have enjoyed them for their relatively realistic take on how humanity would react to the situation, both on a personal level and societal level. In this respect, the books are great science fiction. The large scale social impacts, the factioning, and the applications of game theory feel uniquely accurate compared to other, similar novels.
I do agree that the characters are often rather undeveloped and that certain technologies seem to be thrown in to make the plot work (hibernation and the nano-thread), but I don’t think those elements are distracting enough to make the work uncompelling as a whole. In the end, I’m probably not going to remember the characters, but I am going to remember the implications of hubris and politics on humanity’s fleet (trying to stay vague to avoid spoilers), for instance.
John Alcorn
Jun 28 2019 at 9:53am
Some works of art enlarge the scope of sympathy, and heighten its intensity; and thereby kindle cosmopolitan solidarity.
Adam Smith describes the phenomenon of weak, idle sympathy:
David Hume explains that vivid portrayals can trigger and intensify fellow feeling:
Some works of art fuel Hume’s psychological mechanism enough to overcome Smith’s default psychology; for example, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
On the other hand, artistic vividness (Hume’s mechanism) can have negative effects, too. It can reinforce conflicts. And it can crowd out dispassionate numeracy, which is crucial to policy analysis.
It’s complicated!
Scott Sumner
Jun 29 2019 at 11:34am
Excellent comment
Phil H
Jun 29 2019 at 2:16am
“I was surprised by the weakness of his arguments. The US has suffered far more from Muslim terrorism that China, and we don’t put a million Muslims in “reeducation” camps.”
While this is correct, Japanese internment is still really quite recent. And British colonialism was still ongoing at the same time. Neither of these are good arguments, of course! But if you read Tibet and Xinjiang as imperial territories rather than part of the country – which I think is a very defensible reading, and is how a lot of Han Chinese citizens feel about those areas – then China’s actions there fall well within the “bad but normal” category.
“But Korea and Taiwan were just as poor as China is now when they became democratic, probably poorer.”
I think the difference is in China’s extensive information controls. What middle class Chinese people *say* is: “People in the countryside would vote in all kinds of radical leftists, it would be a disaster!” But I think what they mean is: The smart people in the cities don’t even know how to vote, because no-one knows anything about what goes on in Zhongnanhai. (The fall of Bo Xilai remains very mysterious.)
“Some argue that a democratic system would effectively turn the Chinese government over to the large masses that live in the countryside, which would vote against the interests of the urban elite…I suspect the Chinese Communist Party would win the first free election in China. But in order to do so it would adjust policy to be more favorable to rural residents”
Worth noting that China is now 50% urban. Of course only a small percentage of that population is elite, but the old image of the few in the cities vs. the many peasants is no longer accurate.
“But here’s what’s so disappointing about Liu’s argument. The Chinese political system should adjust [the] “hukou” system… This is one of those areas where reforms would be a win-win, boosting both equity and efficiency in China.”
I agree that Liu doesn’t articulate it well, but surely there is a very straightforward conservative argument in favour of his position: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
“It’s hard to find an expert on China who would defend this system of apartheid.”
Not an expert, and not committed to defending it, but I think there is a strong defense to be mounted: It worked. China avoided the problem of slums, which tend to be relatively lawless. The challenge is to both urbanise and bolster rule of law at the same time. It should be noted that despite the restrictions, China’s urbanisation has not been particularly slow. And with this system in place, China achieved very stable miracle catch-up growth for 40 years. Of course, this is pure hindsight, but what else have we got?
“China is now a reasonably well-educated and technologically sophisticated economy, by global standards (although rural areas still fall well short). If you look around the world, the vast majority of such countries have democratic systems, and they generally produce richer and freer societies than China.”
I would question the “richer” – if they’re richer than China, then they either started richer or grew faster, and none of them grew faster…
Just on the subject of freedoms: Clearly there are problems, and that’s why China has middle class flight, with massive emigration to Canada/Australia/USA/UK/NZ by those that can in search of a more stable and nurturing environment for the next generation. But that’s the top of the pinnacle. For the fat middle, life continues to become more free, not less. Compared with 20 (or even 10 years ago), a 25 year old today is more free to choose a job they enjoy, live where they want (despite the hukou restrictions), date whoever they want, watch what they want on TV/online, invest, buy property, find educational alternatives for their children. Most of this additional freedom has been brought by the expanding economy.
I do think that the amount of media coverage of national politics has decreased in China, so we are less free today to comment on and discuss Xi Jinping than we were Hu or Jiang, and the failure to cover Xinjiang is of course Orwellian. But for the majority, freedom is increasing, and the very sophisticated discussions about absolute freedoms for dissidents and terrorists that drive U.S. policy have never happened here. They will, eventually.
Scott Sumner
Jun 29 2019 at 11:40am
I actually agree with many of your points, such as that China is now freer for average people to pursue their lives.
I would point out that urban “slums” (which do exist on the edges of Chinese cities, but less so than typical of LDCs) are temporary engines of upward mobility, and thus quite useful to people (even if unsightly.)
Phil H
Jun 29 2019 at 2:22am
Oh, on the subject of political art, specifically – I think there are at least a couple of political movements in which art has played an important part. One is the social reforms in Britain in the 19th century – Dickens and others were highly motivated by the plight of the poor, and their art does seem to have been both good art and effective politics. (Potential US equivalent: Uncle Tom’s Cabin? I don’t know enough about US history to know if that makes sense.)
A second movement was the formation of national consciousness in ex colonies. I’m thinking specifically of African and Caribbean ex-colonies here, because I love Chinua Achebe and reggae music, but I’m sure there are many other examples.
Possibly feminist literature as a third example? Not so sure that it was effective, though.
Scott Sumner
Jun 29 2019 at 11:44am
Elsewhere I’ve argued that narrative arts tend to advance liberalism by extending our sympathy for others, and cite Uncle Tom’s Cabin. But I don’t think art is very good at addressing public policy issues beyond the most basic (don’t be cruel to innocent people.) That’s not of much use today, where the issues are more complex.
Weir
Jun 30 2019 at 8:04pm
Republicans had Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Democrats had Birth of a Nation.
Thomas Schelling: “We often think of trust, reliable communication, and enforceable contract as good things. We like people to overcome distrust, confusion, and competing interests and reach an outcome beneficial to both. In the literature of social psychology I notice a greater interest in building trust than in collapsing it, in promoting co-operation than in frustrating it. But when we turn to the Ku Klux Klan, corruption in the police force, extortion in the junior high schools, or the silent conspiracy that keeps non-Aryans out of a medical school or an oil company, our concern is to spoil communication, to create distrust and suspicion, to make agreements unenforceable, to undermine tradition, to reduce solidarity, to discredit leadership, and to sever any moral bond that holds the conspirators together.”
Slavoj Zizek: “There is no ethnic cleansing without poetry.”
John Alcorn
Jul 1 2019 at 10:05am
@ Weir,
Might you share the reference for the quotation by Thomas Schelling?
Thank you.
Weir
Jul 1 2019 at 7:18pm
Choice and Consequence, page 211.
Mike W
Jun 30 2019 at 10:43am
This is one of those areas where reforms would be a win-win, boosting both equity and efficiency in China.
Where would these masses if rural migrants live, work and go to school? For example, the metro area if Beijing is half that of NY city but the population is twenty percent greater. I think your academic solution under-appreciates the existing realities.
Weir
Jun 30 2019 at 8:11pm
Hitchcock talks about the scene in Psycho when Norman is watching the car sink, and the audience is watching with him. But then it stops sinking. A lot of the audience is going to get caught short by that. It’s not that Norman is a great guy and a hero, but he is the protagonist at that point in the story, and audiences are going to side with the guy who is trying to accomplish a goal, no matter what that goal is. They want the car to sink and disappear into the swamp because they’re with him, and that’s what he wants. Their sympathy is with the guy who is vividly in front of them, and that’s because sympathy is amoral. Sympathy on its own isn’t virtuous or vicious. It’s just a knife. It’s just a stone.
John Alcorn
Jul 1 2019 at 10:25am
The ambiguous moral value of sympathy is compounded by a framing effect in everyday ethics. Abstract moral theories—the categorical imperative, utilitarianism, the maximin principle, love thy neighbor—are universal. Each theory is grounded in a deep-seated intuition: What if everyone did that? Consequences matter. Protect the weak. Good will. But most people usually apply these intuitions only to in-groups, which are shaped by institutions, culture, salience, and the workings of sympathy.
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