Wang Huning’s Assessment of the U.S. Managerial State

Part III of ‘An American reads America against America’

[Photo Credit: By Billie Grace Ward CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=92349496]

Wang Huning is the ideological advisor to China’s current president, Xi Jinping, and he served in an analogous role on behalf of the previous two Chinese communist party leaders. We have every reason, therefore, to treat Wang as China’s most influential contemporary thinker.

In Part I of this series on Wang’s philosophical travelogue, America against America, I situated his work among several other Chinese anthropologists, sociologists and observers of America as part of a genre. In that first essay, I also noted my broad agreement with Dr. Jeffrey Sachs’s benign interpretation of China’s intentions. I see China as assertive, but only in the sense that it is very jealous of its sovereignty and dislikes being lectured to. China is not, however, interested in making hostile moves against America's internal security or meddling in its domestic affairs.

In Part II, I delved into the book itself, offering a more granular engagement with Wang Huning’s assessment of American culture and ‘the American spirit’. In the present essay, I continue that engagement by turning to Wang’s assessment of America’s apolitical (that is to say, economic, regulatory and technological) systems of social control.

In this middle section of his volume, Wang’s perspective often mirrors contemporary critiques from such Westerners as Neil Postman, Christopher Lasch and John Kenneth Galbraith (the last of whom he cites explicitly), and it anticipates those of Angela Nagle, Catherine Liu and Musa al-Gharbi. Perhaps surprisingly, Wang’s tone, compared with the Westerners, is decidedly more neutral and detached.

His first observation about the ‘invisible hand’ of the market in America is that it actually isn’t all that invisible. Of course, as an abstraction of market logic beyond actual markets, the ‘invisible hand’ is a useful fiction. But Wang observes that the American state, though not intervening or visibly participating in the market process, nevertheless makes its presence visibly felt there. He talks about his experiences in San Francisco’s Chinatown, and the fierce competition between the Chinese travel agencies there for market share—usually on price points and offered services. A travel agency which cannot offer low prices, special offers or service accommodations to its customers will soon go out of business. But in the event that airlines – as the result of state action -- become an oligopoly or a quasi-monopoly, for example, the potential of the travel agencies to compete with each other is visibly restrained.

On another level, the American economy is subject to certain undeniably ‘visible’ constraints. Although the government does not actively participate in the market, it nevertheless sets boundary conditions on entry and comportment within it. The government requires all private firms to register, usually for a fee. It also regulates and taxes all economic activity. And actually, the ‘invisible’ management of American markets requires sophisticated and well-developed mechanisms of informal social coordination. Here, Wang’s observations bear a marked resemblance to those of American institutional economist Thorstein Veblen.

Wang uses an analogy of locomotives and freight cars to draw a comparison between America’s economic system and China’s. In America’s system, the economic ‘train’ is hooked to two locomotives, the ‘private sector’ and the economic-regulatory system; whereas in China’s system, the ‘train’ is coupled to a single locomotive: the state. America’s two locomotives can share or trade the burden of driving the train, and thus America’s system has the advantage of speed over China’s. On the other hand, America’s system, with two locomotives at work rather than one, might find it difficult to coordinate action or change tracks quickly. China’s advantage is that its single locomotive can keep the train moving in a regular direction, or change directions decisively when needed. However, the economic-regulatory system in America is sophisticated and multilayered. Wang attempts to ‘open the hood’ and peer inside the engine to see how the locomotive runs.

The American monetary system is a key component in the economic-regulatory apparatus, he notes Under capitalism, the adage is often taken for granted that the people are free to manage ‘their own’ money. Yet what appears to be the case for Wang is that money is rather used to manage people. The omnipresent need for money drives people to acquire it through work, and often significant life decisions are made on the basis of how profitable they will be. This is the case even for public servants, teachers, librarians, firefighters and so on.

Yet instead of a diatribe against the evils of money, we see Wang peer into the money mechanism with curiosity and even admiration. He very quickly grasps that banks are in fact institutions of social control, precisely because they are tasked with protecting and handling people’s money, and giving them access to money. Obviously, carrying around large amounts of cash on one’s person is dangerous; banks thus offer security and peace of mind to people with large amounts of money to worry about. And banks distribute monetary instruments to their clients: cheques, travelers’ cheques (here Wang’s analysis shows its age!), debit cards and credit cards are given out to banks’ clients to more efficiently and safely access ‘their’ money.

Note, however, how Wang effectively describes banks as institutions of social control. In order to access banking services, each individual citizen is given a credit score by three private firms, which score is then used to allot, monitor and (if necessary) restrict access to banking amenities and monetary instruments. Even though the ‘credit score’ is typically not considered an instrument of coercion or compulsion, it is still, and to a very noteworthy extent, a means of managing citizens’ behavior. Access to money, after all, is a necessity for survival in America—and access to credit as much as if not more so, for the purposes of buying something like a car or a house. Thus, it is practically unheard-of for an adult American citizen not to have, or worry about maintaining, a credit score.

A slight editorial digression is needed at this point, for reasons that will soon be obvious. Now, Wang’s book was of course written well before the Chinese government ever dreamed of adopting a ‘social credit’ system. But his description of America’s credit system as an instrument of social control and economic-regulatory management is nonetheless illuminating. One is left with the distinct impression that China’s leaders, reading Wang’s book, were attempting to come up with an alternative to the credit score that would play the role of encouraging pro-social, ‘good citizen’ behavior rather than a desired economic form of behavior.

Another instrument of social management that catches Wang’s attention is the standardized test. Chinese observers would naturally be hyper familiar with standardized tests: the standardized test is indeed a Chinese invention, with the first such exams (called keju) being held under Liu Heng, the Civil Emperor of the Han Dynasty in 165 BC.

But there are important differences.

Up until the 1950s, Chinese standardized tests were used to regulate and perpetuate the educated elite class, the literati. They were not needed as a tool of broad social control. Wang looks specifically at the ACT, and admires how the ACT Corporation not only administers over 40 different exams, but also directly coordinates its examination structure with colleges and universities throughout the country as well as with professional associations and government institutions, allowing for test scores to be disseminated nationwide and across dozens of economic and social sectors.

Everyone in America has to take standardized tests, and in this manner standardized tests create a universal measure of a person’s employability and capability to fill specific economic roles. Test scores contribute to economic efficiency in that a company, when making a hire, knows exactly what kind of person to look for to fill a particular role. What’s more, these scores can be carried with the test-taker no matter where they go in the country. Standardized test scores thus contribute not only to social mobility but also to physical mobility. If in the past it was often the case that one’s job prospects were tied to one’s local credentials or one’s standing in one’s physical community, such connections, community ties and personal references are no longer as important in the hiring process now that an ACT score of 33 taken in, say, Wichita, has just as much validity in San Francisco, New York or Washington DC. In short, standardized tests are therefore not an instrument of quality control among the elite class, but of broad cultural homogenization. As Wang himself puts it: standardized tests create standardized people.

Let us now take a look at the infamous modern mainland Chinese test called the gaokao -- a topic, incidentally, I became well familiar with during my years of teaching English in China. The gaokao has been implemented only since the end of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1977, and it does share some definite similarities with American standardized tests. The gaokao is, for one thing, a high-pressure, high-stakes test. It is in fact much more grueling and much more comprehensive than the ACT or SAT, spanning thirteen hours of sit-down testing time over three days. Whereas American standardized tests cover mostly mathematics and verbal reasoning skills, the gaokao features additional sections on foreign languages, science, arts and humanities knowledge. It is also true that gaokao scores are used as the primary means of determining eligibility for post-secondary education; indeed, in this respect they are of far more decisive importance than the SAT and ACT tests. In the U.S., institutions of higher learning typically have multiple additional admissions criteria besides the standardized test score. Gaokao scores thus often serve as rigid determinants of a student’s social mobility.

Despite all this, even today the gaokao is not a true national ‘standardized test’ in the sense that Wang means it.¹ The gaokao varies from province to province—the content of the gaokao a student takes is dependent on the student’s hukou or local residency paperwork. Thus, each student may only take the gaokao once per year, on the specified dates in June, and they are obligated to sit the exam at their site of local residency and nowhere else. This is markedly distinct from American standardized tests, which one may sit anywhere and at any time, as long as one can pay the fee.

Wang -- a Libertarian?

Another thing that may come as a surprise to the American reader of America against America is Wang’s seemingly-libertarian attitude toward America’s regulatory culture. Wang intuits that America’s cultural ‘glue’, not being as obvious as that which obtains in states with longer histories and civilizational continuity, rests in the civic-religious pride of place given to the U.S. Constitution: that is, not merely the system of law it provides, but the constitution’s functionality as symbol of America’s commitment to the ideal of freedom. That said, Wang is also often taken aback by the degree of ‘street-level’ impingement on personal liberties permitted under the regulatory regime he encountered in American public spaces.

He notes, for example, how the consumption of alcohol and tobacco are curbed with remarkable sharpness in American public spaces, and in ways that would simply be unthinkable in an East Asian country like China. Incidentally, Wang is quite right about this. As recently as my most recent visit to China, less than a year ago, my hosts would often casually light up and offer me cigarettes in office lobbies and restaurants, something I still find a bit of a culture shock. Likewise, the yanjiu shangdian—the smokes-and-booze shop—is very much still an institution in any Chinese commercial district – and they are usually open late, seven days a week.

Traffic laws and regulations in the U.S. are also, by his lights, remarkably strict. Here his analysis might be a bit dated. China’s public roads are remarkably complex, and traffic enforcement is similarly so, and regulations have had to keep pace with the sheer burgeoning number of vehicles on the roads in recent years. Even so, I did note to my chagrin that parking in China is often quite haphazard. Wang similarly complains at one point that even American “dogs and cats are not free,” and he points to the myriad regulations that regulate pets in American public places and even private apartment complexes.

Wang searches for the reasons for this contradiction between America’s apparent devotion to freedom and the omnipresence of rules. One possible explanation he considers is that America is a young country without a single strong parent culture. In older European countries, strong class consciousness and a sense of historical continuity provide the basis for a common understanding of what things ought to be done in public and what things ought not. One’s cultural status, one’s class standing and one’s degree of political power determine the public comportment one is expected to follow. Since America has no such historically determined ‘humanizing’ constraints, Wang surmises that the regulatory culture acts as a replacement for such social acculturation practices. This hypothesis is bolstered, in his view, by the expectation of civic and legal egalitarianism: it doesn’t matter what social status or degree of wealth or privilege you have—in America, everyone is expected to abide by the common regulations in public areas.

Technology as a Rule

Another explanation he contemplates, one hearkening back to his earlier analysis, is the technological advancement Americans have achieved and come to expect as normative. Precisely as technology becomes more advanced, regulations become much easier to impose and enforce in a uniform manner. Traffic cameras to mind as an example of this phenomenon. It becomes much easier to prove an infraction and identify an offender when time-stamped digital photos provide clear evidence and the license number of the offender’s vehicle. The police department can get involved in far fewer chases and far fewer courtroom appearances— it becomes a matter of simply mailing out the invoice for the fine along with copies of the evidentiary photos.

To be sure, Wang’s effort at drawing a contrast between America and China in this respect is far less valid today. America might have traffic cameras and surveillance cameras as well as neighborhood watch and other such methods of enforcement. However, China’s advances in facial-recognition software (the so-called shua lian system which caused me so much frustration when I was in China last year) have actually outstripped America’s broad level of public regulatory and surveillance technology.

Wang believes that the regulatory culture has a degree of influence on America’s cultural character. On the surface, he says, Americans are much quieter in public and much better-behaved than their counterparts in China and other parts of East Asia. There are also fewer public fights and disruptive arguments in the U.S. And yet this only carries so far. Americans still enter into disputes with their fellow citizens, but they do so within the boundary conditions of the regulatory regime. Wang’s point here is confirmed by countless examples, certainly right up to the present moment (I was very struck by the 2018 incident in which the CEO of a cannabis-products company called the police on a young African-American girl selling lemonade on the sidewalk).

Another point Wang raises regarding American regulatory culture will come as a shock to many: Wang states that, by contrast with America, “there is no regular, universal personal income tax system” in China. Even I was utterly astounded by this, and yet it turns out Wang is, in fact, technically correct, even if somewhat misleading. China actually does levy a targeted individual income tax (IIT) on high-earning Chinese residents and has done so since about 1980. However, the revenue generated from this tax accounts for less than 7% of the national government’s total tax receipts; most of China’s tax money comes from indirect taxes like VATs. The earnings threshold for the IIT is fairly high (RMB 5000 – about $700 -- or above per month), and it doesn’t apply at all to earnings in the informal sector of the economy. The informal sector in China accounts for over four trillion US dollars - roughly 12% of the total economy.

Wang is nonetheless correct that the U.S. taxation system is both more sophisticated and more powerful than China’s. The U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has created a tight organizational linkage between an individual’s tax accounts, official employer and social security numbers. American IRS officials wield an immense degree of political power and potential for social control in comparison to other government officials. But the same cannot be said for China.

Wang Huning pulls all these strands together to create an intriguing picture of American technocracy. U.S. cultural individualism is in many ways mediated by the degree of technological sophistication embraced here. The resulting greater diversification of labor and social roles creates a far greater potential for designing and curating an individualistic persona as opposed to developing a class consciousness. It is in this context that Wang once again draws on the analysis of Herbert Marcuse, and mentions the latter’s linkage between technological sophistication and economic alienation. However, Wang also draws on the critique of the technostructure voiced by John Kenneth Galbraith (and paralleled in some ways by his contemporary Neil Postman). Galbraith points out that it is easier to get people to accept dictates argued on the basis of technological necessity than it is to get them to accept political or legal commands. Whereas the former are seen as logical, efficient, and impersonal – and therefore fair – the latter are suspected of being arbitrary or tyrannical. And yet the results are often exactly the same!

He also gives voice to the observation, by no means unique to him, of America’s self-organization around a symbolic managerial class. This echoes the sociological works of Michael Lind and the psychological-cultural critiques of Christopher Lasch, critiques which, in the present day, have been brilliantly articulated by Angela Nagle and Catherine Liu.²

Although Wang, astutely, raises the question as to whether it is possible to make the choice to use all these technologies without, in turn, being used and mastered by them – by the technologies themselves – in the end he is more of a technological optimist than the above-listed authors.

Wang accepts as a given that a certain degree of social stratification is simply the price to be paid for the benefits of greater technological sophistication. He seems relatively unconcerned that technocratic forms of social control will devolve into a Black Mirror-style dystopia. I wonder whether his optimism is warranted. Given my recent experience in China, and the growing use there of the shua lian facial-recognition technology and increased use of (albeit still experimental) automated retail, the use of technology in China may have already outstripped the state's, and the society's, ability to keep humans in control.

1. The Chinese and foreign language sections of the test are, however, subject to national content standards.

2. Nagle’s Kill All Normies presents an extremely incisive critique of Internet-driven culture. Catherine Liu’s equally astute excoriation of the professional-managerial class can be found in her Virtue Hoarders. Cf. also Musa al-Gharbi’s recent book We Have Never Been Woke, which explores the development of a symbolic capitalist class which appropriates the causes of socially marginalized groups in order to cement their own standing and privileges.