WEBVTT - The Lunar New Years Special: Is China Maoist? 0:00:01.800 --> 0:00:02.920 Also media. 0:00:05.120 --> 0:00:08.039 Welcome to the very special lunar New Year's episode of 0:00:08.119 --> 0:00:11.639 vik kadapp Here. I'm your host, Mia Wong, and today 0:00:11.720 --> 0:00:15.000 we're talking about China, and more specifically, we are talking 0:00:15.040 --> 0:00:17.919 about the Chinese state and the persistent question that haunts 0:00:17.920 --> 0:00:21.360 American national security experts and leftists on social media alike, 0:00:22.239 --> 0:00:26.479 is China maoist? Now, if you, gentle listener, are not 0:00:26.560 --> 0:00:29.360 embroiled in a kind of running turf war with American 0:00:29.440 --> 0:00:33.040 China watchers like I am, you may rightly be asking, wait, 0:00:33.120 --> 0:00:37.000 what people actually believe this? And the answer, unfortunately is yes, 0:00:37.520 --> 0:00:40.519 yes they do. And those people get to write in 0:00:40.600 --> 0:00:44.920 major media outlets. Here's the New York Times how she 0:00:45.159 --> 0:00:48.279 returned China to one man rule. For decades, China has 0:00:48.280 --> 0:00:51.040 built guyard rails to prevent another Mao. Here's how Shi 0:00:51.120 --> 0:00:54.400 Jimping has dismantled them and created his own machinery of power. 0:00:55.160 --> 0:00:57.680 Here's also the New York Times. This one, I guess 0:00:57.720 --> 0:01:01.760 technically is from the opinion section, but h Xi Jiping 0:01:01.960 --> 0:01:04.560 is the second coming of Maosee Dung. Here's the Wall 0:01:04.560 --> 0:01:07.560 Street Journal. China wants to move ahead, but Shijimping is 0:01:07.560 --> 0:01:11.160 looking to the past. As China's leader embraces more elements 0:01:11.160 --> 0:01:14.240 of Maosee Dung's rule, its people are confronting a more 0:01:14.319 --> 0:01:19.280 uncertain future. Lest you think this is purely an American phenomena, 0:01:19.840 --> 0:01:21.920 here's Al Jazeera, which was funded by the government of 0:01:22.000 --> 0:01:26.800 catter is hijimping China's new Maosee Dung, which she casting 0:01:26.880 --> 0:01:31.520 himself as a twenty first century Mao. China risks arbitrary rule. 0:01:32.520 --> 0:01:36.840 Here's foreign policy, the Maoist roots of She's economic dilemma. 0:01:38.400 --> 0:01:41.840 In contrast with Dang, she has embraced a distinctly Maoist 0:01:41.840 --> 0:01:46.800 socialism that emphasizes personal sacrifice for the collective good, HARKing 0:01:46.840 --> 0:01:49.960 back to the Cultural Revolution of the nineteen sixties and seventies. 0:01:51.160 --> 0:01:53.680 The British, of course, are also not immune to this 0:01:54.720 --> 0:01:58.080 Mao derangement syndrome. I guess I would call it Chi 0:01:58.200 --> 0:02:02.320 Jimping's pilgrimage to Red Meha brings back the Mao factor. 0:02:04.560 --> 0:02:08.320 So you know this is this is a very very 0:02:08.360 --> 0:02:12.919 common sentiment. It's been a very common sentiment for most 0:02:12.960 --> 0:02:16.320 of the last decade. I I haven't even done some 0:02:16.440 --> 0:02:18.880 of the most common ones, like if you if you 0:02:18.960 --> 0:02:22.639 expand a little bit out from just Xi Jimping is 0:02:22.639 --> 0:02:24.560 the new Mao ones, you get a lot of like 0:02:24.680 --> 0:02:28.640 Xi Jimping is the most powerful leader since Mao, which 0:02:29.080 --> 0:02:32.480 is kind of true. And I think this is part 0:02:32.520 --> 0:02:37.040 of why this sort of strategy works, because people do 0:02:37.120 --> 0:02:42.880 not want to actually differentiate between different kinds of authoritarian systems. 0:02:43.760 --> 0:02:47.680 There are many, many different kind sentatorships and people people 0:02:47.760 --> 0:02:51.640 are just loath to actually look at the differences. And 0:02:51.880 --> 0:02:53.480 you see this. This is not just the sort of 0:02:53.520 --> 0:02:57.000 American media class thing. You see this in political science 0:02:57.040 --> 0:03:00.600 literature all the time. Political science literature, especially in the US, 0:03:00.639 --> 0:03:03.600 has this tendency to divide the entire world into this 0:03:03.720 --> 0:03:08.280 sort of neat classification of dictatorships and democracies. And as 0:03:08.280 --> 0:03:10.320 a product of this, I have had to read some 0:03:11.040 --> 0:03:16.520 truly truly appalling articles that were published in peer reviewed 0:03:16.600 --> 0:03:20.240 journals on my my absolute I don't know if favorite 0:03:20.280 --> 0:03:22.880 is the right term, or the most cursed one that 0:03:22.960 --> 0:03:27.120 I ever saw was it was an article about like 0:03:27.760 --> 0:03:30.440 the read the quote unquote resource curse and this argument 0:03:30.480 --> 0:03:33.760 about whether like having a bunch of oil means that 0:03:33.800 --> 0:03:36.960 you were inherently going to have an authoritarian government or whatever. 0:03:37.520 --> 0:03:41.120 So they have this chart that's supposed to be tracking 0:03:41.360 --> 0:03:44.280 like the quote unquote time to a democratic transition of 0:03:44.320 --> 0:03:48.560 a bunch of non democratic societies by like just how 0:03:48.600 --> 0:03:53.120 much how much natural resources they have. Now this this 0:03:53.200 --> 0:03:58.120 chart has in the same category Saudi Arabia, a theocratic monarchy, 0:03:58.480 --> 0:04:02.960 and also Hoaxayest's Albania, a country whose political line was 0:04:02.960 --> 0:04:06.520 that Mao did it, Mao hard enough. And these are 0:04:06.560 --> 0:04:10.160 just being treated neutraally as the same type of governments 0:04:10.240 --> 0:04:15.520 because it's not a representative democracy. North Korea is another 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:18.719 good example of this. You see people in the US 0:04:18.839 --> 0:04:22.040 calling North Korea hereditary monarchy like all the time, and 0:04:22.200 --> 0:04:26.320 it just isn't. Leadership of the party state passes between 0:04:26.360 --> 0:04:29.640 members of a family. But that's not actually enough to 0:04:29.720 --> 0:04:32.160 make something a monarchy unless you're prepared to argue that, 0:04:32.240 --> 0:04:34.160 like the US is a monarchy because we had two 0:04:34.200 --> 0:04:38.200 Bushes as president. Now on the grounds that that's extremely funny, 0:04:38.279 --> 0:04:40.880 I'm not wholly unsympathetic to that argument, but it's not. 0:04:41.960 --> 0:04:44.279 Calling the US a monarchy because of the two Bushes 0:04:44.440 --> 0:04:47.599 is not a very serious academic argument. It is just 0:04:47.720 --> 0:04:51.039 a joke. And that's I think how we should be 0:04:51.040 --> 0:04:54.719 treating people like people calling North Korea a monarchy because 0:04:54.800 --> 0:04:58.720 it's not. A monarchy is not just there's a guy 0:04:58.760 --> 0:05:01.520 who's in charge and as to another person who's related 0:05:01.560 --> 0:05:03.919 to them. It's not just that there's someone who you 0:05:03.920 --> 0:05:06.560 could call a king. There is a whole political system 0:05:06.640 --> 0:05:08.880 beneath it, right, there's a whole network of like princes 0:05:08.920 --> 0:05:11.920 and courts and land titles and inheritances and who and 0:05:12.000 --> 0:05:15.159 who doesn't have royal blood, and there's there's you know, 0:05:15.200 --> 0:05:18.360 there's a whole you know, and the economic system of 0:05:19.080 --> 0:05:22.160 a monarchy as has changed over time. Right, monarchies are 0:05:22.240 --> 0:05:25.960 very old, you know. We now have like capitalist monarchies 0:05:26.000 --> 0:05:29.320 like the Saudis. You know, we've had feudal monarchies, we've 0:05:29.320 --> 0:05:33.080 had sort of pre feudal monarchies. But you can't simply 0:05:33.160 --> 0:05:38.960 reduce monarchy to one guy in charge. That is absolutely absurd. 0:05:39.240 --> 0:05:41.600 But people just do this all the time. Now, North 0:05:41.640 --> 0:05:44.239 Korea is organized along the lines of a party state, 0:05:44.279 --> 0:05:46.400 where this is you know, a sort of shortening of 0:05:46.440 --> 0:05:50.360 one party state. Technically speaking, there are actually other parties 0:05:50.400 --> 0:05:52.880 in North Korea, and this is true of China as well, 0:05:53.480 --> 0:05:58.279 but they don't really do anything. And this is not 0:05:58.360 --> 0:05:59.839 the episode where I'm going to have to try to 0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:02.000 and the difference between the United Front and the United 0:06:02.000 --> 0:06:06.000 Front Works Department, that's another time. But they are functionally 0:06:06.040 --> 0:06:08.320 one party states. There is one party that actually does 0:06:08.360 --> 0:06:10.000 the ruling, and then there's a couple of other parties 0:06:10.040 --> 0:06:13.200 that keep around for appearances, who might do consultative stuff. 0:06:13.680 --> 0:06:17.800 But even in terms, even knowing that something is a 0:06:17.839 --> 0:06:21.680 party state doesn't actually tell you a huge amount about 0:06:21.800 --> 0:06:27.279 how that system actually functions. And this is where we 0:06:27.360 --> 0:06:29.960 come to the core elements of today's episode. How does 0:06:30.000 --> 0:06:32.520 the modern Chinese state operate and how is it different 0:06:32.520 --> 0:06:36.000 from previous iterations of the Chinese state. So to answer 0:06:36.080 --> 0:06:38.240 this question, we need to start. We need to start 0:06:38.480 --> 0:06:41.200 with the origins of the party state itself. And the 0:06:41.240 --> 0:06:44.720 party state really in the sense that we're dealing with, 0:06:44.920 --> 0:06:46.360 is born with the Soviet Union. Well, I mean, I 0:06:46.360 --> 0:06:48.440 guess it technically creates the Soviet Union a little bit, 0:06:48.520 --> 0:06:53.360 but it's born it's bored of the October Revolution and 0:06:53.400 --> 0:06:57.280 the Bolshevik taking and consolidation of power. On the other hand, 0:06:58.720 --> 0:07:01.120 you know, party states are not built in the image 0:07:01.120 --> 0:07:03.800 of Lenin. They're built in the image of Stalin. And 0:07:04.720 --> 0:07:07.279 the thing that makes you know, a sort of like 0:07:07.400 --> 0:07:10.640 what the party stays that come after it, what makes 0:07:10.720 --> 0:07:14.840 them function is the way that sort of Stalin consolidates power, 0:07:14.840 --> 0:07:18.280 and Stalin consolidates power by using the rules of the 0:07:18.280 --> 0:07:21.920 Bolshevik Party to maintain control over members of the state apparatus, 0:07:22.000 --> 0:07:25.160 even though technically speaking he doesn't he doesn't have like 0:07:25.200 --> 0:07:26.960 you know, he keep be doing. He doesn't technically have 0:07:27.040 --> 0:07:28.960 the formal authority to do as a member of the government, 0:07:29.000 --> 0:07:31.280 but he has the authority to do as a member 0:07:31.320 --> 0:07:33.880 of the party. And this is how Stalin consolidates his power, 0:07:33.880 --> 0:07:39.520 and soad of walls out trotsky Eta et cetera, et cetera. However, Comma, 0:07:40.000 --> 0:07:43.080 this is where people make mistakes when that when they're 0:07:43.120 --> 0:07:46.920 trying to sort of understand what Stalinism was, which is 0:07:46.920 --> 0:07:50.640 that they make this mistake of looking, you know of 0:07:50.720 --> 0:07:55.000 kind of projecting back the later Soviet Union onto you know, 0:07:55.040 --> 0:08:00.000 onto sort of like nineteen thirty's Stalinism. And the mistake 0:08:00.200 --> 0:08:03.600 they make is the assumption that Stalinism is purely a 0:08:03.600 --> 0:08:06.600 bureaucratic doctrine, right, It's purely about seizing control of the 0:08:06.640 --> 0:08:10.320 bureaucracy and using a bureaucracy to consolidate power, and that 0:08:10.480 --> 0:08:15.360 is just not true. Part of Stalin's success and you know, 0:08:15.440 --> 0:08:18.480 as bleak as that like success is. Part of what 0:08:18.520 --> 0:08:22.760 Stalin does is mobilize masses of people against parts of 0:08:22.760 --> 0:08:24.800 the party and in parts of the state bureaucracy that 0:08:24.840 --> 0:08:27.400 oppose him, that you know, to do things like denunciations 0:08:27.440 --> 0:08:30.320 to like you know, and to weaken their bureaucratic power. 0:08:30.320 --> 0:08:35.000 And this means that Stalinism is not a pure politics 0:08:35.000 --> 0:08:37.199 of state bureaucracy the way that sort of later Soviet 0:08:37.280 --> 0:08:43.120 governments are. It's a combination of bureaucratic power and also 0:08:43.240 --> 0:08:46.800 the direction of mass mobilization, of the mobilization of large 0:08:46.880 --> 0:08:50.160 numbers of people to go do a thing towards the 0:08:50.240 --> 0:08:54.679 end of consolidating power. This interplay, the control of bureaucratic 0:08:54.760 --> 0:08:58.359 power checked by mass popular and mobilizations, is the characteristic 0:08:58.480 --> 0:09:02.040 element of Stalinism. Both of these tools, both the bureaucratic 0:09:02.040 --> 0:09:09.400 apparatus and mass mobilization, are used to maintain Stalin's personal power. Now, Maoism, 0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:12.800 for all of its claims to be the direct ideological 0:09:12.880 --> 0:09:15.760 air of Stalinism, Maoism is Stallanism are not the same thing. 0:09:17.320 --> 0:09:19.880 In sort of like Mao era China, And you know, 0:09:21.840 --> 0:09:25.680 you can trace this towards from sort of like Mao's 0:09:25.720 --> 0:09:28.000 insurgency era through the time he's in power to the 0:09:28.080 --> 0:09:32.319 end of the seventies. During that period, China is if anything, 0:09:32.640 --> 0:09:36.240 even more prone to mass popular and mobilization as a strategy. 0:09:36.320 --> 0:09:40.960 Some of this is ideological. Maoism is to a large 0:09:40.960 --> 0:09:44.880 extent a kind of internal critique of Stalinism that you know, 0:09:45.000 --> 0:09:48.400 I mean, like so people in like you could argue about, 0:09:48.520 --> 0:09:52.080 you know, how good were the intentions of the people 0:09:52.240 --> 0:09:54.520 who are in charge of the Chinese Communist Party in 0:09:54.559 --> 0:09:58.160 like the twenties and thirties, right, But they're not They're 0:09:58.200 --> 0:10:01.840 not stupid, right, These people are smart. These people understand 0:10:02.360 --> 0:10:04.559 that there are a lot of problems with the Soviet system. 0:10:04.600 --> 0:10:06.880 These are people who watched a bunch of their comrades 0:10:06.880 --> 0:10:10.440 get murdered because the Soviet's fucked up. So these are 0:10:10.440 --> 0:10:15.000 people who understand the threat of bureaucratization to a revolutionary 0:10:15.040 --> 0:10:17.560 movements and the formation the potential formation of a new 0:10:17.640 --> 0:10:21.320 ruling class composed of sort of like management and bureaucratic cadres. 0:10:22.040 --> 0:10:25.520 But on the other hand, because it's an internal critique 0:10:25.520 --> 0:10:28.239 of Stalinism, and not like an external critique of Stalinism, 0:10:29.000 --> 0:10:31.960 Baoism is utterly unwilling to try to solve these problems 0:10:31.960 --> 0:10:35.679 by actually giving like workers or peasants, like any kind 0:10:35.920 --> 0:10:39.240 of autonomy or democratic control over anything, except for like 0:10:40.080 --> 0:10:47.480 the most trivial minutia of like shop floor bullshit. And 0:10:47.800 --> 0:10:51.520 the result of this is that, you know, you can't 0:10:51.520 --> 0:10:55.320 defeat the bureaucracy with democracy, so how do you actually 0:10:55.360 --> 0:10:57.280 deal with it? And the result is what's called campaign 0:10:57.320 --> 0:11:03.880 style mobilization. These are mass mobilizations of extraordinary large numbers 0:11:03.880 --> 0:11:06.480 of people to do it, you know, to to do 0:11:06.559 --> 0:11:08.079 a task right. There's a lot of different sort of 0:11:08.120 --> 0:11:10.000 things they try to do with this. Sometimes they're tried, 0:11:10.120 --> 0:11:13.400 they're used for economic ends. This is like the Great 0:11:13.440 --> 0:11:16.160 Leap forward, which is this mass mobilization of people to 0:11:16.200 --> 0:11:20.400 increase productive capacity is a fiasco. Now, part of this 0:11:20.480 --> 0:11:23.080 also was political, right, Partly this is now trying to 0:11:23.200 --> 0:11:26.360 use mass mobilization against the bureaucracy in a way reminiscent 0:11:26.400 --> 0:11:29.960 of stalin but any much much larger scale. And the 0:11:30.040 --> 0:11:32.320 other you know, part part of what's going on here 0:11:32.440 --> 0:11:35.680 is that the bureaucracy of the Soviet Union is much 0:11:35.720 --> 0:11:38.760 stronger than the bureaucracy of China, right because you know, 0:11:39.800 --> 0:11:44.120 the Bolsheviks kind of have a state like bureaucracy sort 0:11:44.160 --> 0:11:46.440 of intact that they're able to sort of graft themselves onto. 0:11:47.080 --> 0:11:51.280 China like doesn't have like a functioning government at all, 0:11:51.360 --> 0:11:53.439 Like there's no functioning central state in China when the 0:11:53.480 --> 0:11:57.640 Maoist eventually like knock off the Nationalists, So you know this, 0:11:57.640 --> 0:12:00.319 this this always means that the level of bureaucracy station 0:12:00.400 --> 0:12:04.760 is lower in China, but you know, it's still it's 0:12:04.800 --> 0:12:07.280 it's still that's still like the state building process is 0:12:07.280 --> 0:12:09.360 still one of the things that Maoists are trying to do. 0:12:10.920 --> 0:12:12.240 And this is you know, this is sort of what 0:12:12.280 --> 0:12:15.680 Mao is tending to check. But this doesn't work. The 0:12:15.679 --> 0:12:20.520 Culture Revolution ultimately fails, and part of its failure is that, 0:12:20.640 --> 0:12:22.400 you know, Okay, so in order in order to like 0:12:23.720 --> 0:12:28.200 stop the dread specter of like democratic election of factory 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:32.840 councils and shit, Mao like cobbles together this coalition of 0:12:32.880 --> 0:12:35.160 soldiers like loyalist Red Guard factions and some of the 0:12:35.160 --> 0:12:37.480 pre existing bureaucracy. And these people are these are people 0:12:37.480 --> 0:12:40.240 who end up running the country through the seventies, and 0:12:40.520 --> 0:12:43.160 that is just another bureaucracy. And through this whole period, 0:12:43.240 --> 0:12:47.520 Trya continues to get more and more bureaucratic. Now, this 0:12:47.600 --> 0:12:49.720 is the most cliche thing that you can possibly say, 0:12:49.760 --> 0:12:52.200 but unfortunately I do have to say it. The Culture 0:12:52.240 --> 0:12:56.960 Revolution had a massive impact on subsequent Chinese policy. Every 0:12:57.040 --> 0:13:01.000 Chinese leader from Dan Jouping on, including Xijianping, and this 0:13:01.040 --> 0:13:03.600 is something that is not very well covered in the 0:13:03.640 --> 0:13:06.800 American press, but every single one of these people agrees 0:13:06.840 --> 0:13:09.280 that the Culture Revolution was a mistake. And you can 0:13:09.360 --> 0:13:14.520 see the results of this analysis in how the modern 0:13:14.559 --> 0:13:18.480 Chinese state mobilizes resources. Now, do you know how you 0:13:18.520 --> 0:13:22.959 can mobilize resources. It's by buying the products and services 0:13:22.960 --> 0:13:23.960 contained in these ads. 0:13:34.760 --> 0:13:36.480 We are back. 0:13:36.559 --> 0:13:38.120 I don't know why I'm saying we. It is kind 0:13:38.120 --> 0:13:40.800 of just me and you the listener, But I guess, 0:13:40.800 --> 0:13:44.520 I guess, I guess that's technically plural. So let's get 0:13:44.559 --> 0:13:49.120 into how the modern Chinese state is very, very different 0:13:49.600 --> 0:13:52.320 from the previous kind of Chinese state, right, because you know, 0:13:52.480 --> 0:13:56.520 like the Mao era, for everything that goes wrong with it, right, 0:13:56.679 --> 0:13:59.160 for all of the reality that is an absolute disaster 0:14:00.240 --> 0:14:02.199 is based on in a lot of ways, what we 0:14:02.280 --> 0:14:06.120 would call grassroots style organizing. Right, It's based on getting 0:14:06.160 --> 0:14:11.360 a bunch of people to go out and do a thing. Now, 0:14:12.200 --> 0:14:16.480 the modern Chinese date doesn't do this in the same way. 0:14:16.800 --> 0:14:18.920 The closest thing that they have to sort of like 0:14:19.000 --> 0:14:24.360 Maoist mobilizations are you know, there is still a thing 0:14:24.400 --> 0:14:28.200 that's called a campaign stylen mobilization, but it's not the 0:14:28.280 --> 0:14:32.400 same thing at all as the Maoist system. So let's 0:14:32.480 --> 0:14:35.200 ask the question, what the fuck is campaign style mobilization? 0:14:36.000 --> 0:14:38.480 So I'm going to go to the academic literature on this. 0:14:39.040 --> 0:14:42.880 A group of professors writing for the journal Public Administration Review, 0:14:44.040 --> 0:14:49.000 in a very colorfully named article called Campaign Style Enforcement 0:14:49.080 --> 0:14:54.640 and Regulatory Compliance, describe it thus, following the literature, we 0:14:54.760 --> 0:14:58.320 define campaign style enforcement as a type of policy implementation 0:14:58.480 --> 0:15:04.360 involving extraordinary mobilezation of administrative resources under political sponsorship. Now 0:15:04.920 --> 0:15:08.960 this definition is very interesting because if you look at 0:15:09.080 --> 0:15:12.440 what is being mobilized here, right, it is not masses 0:15:12.440 --> 0:15:15.480 of people. You're not trying to do mass popular mobilizations. 0:15:15.680 --> 0:15:19.360 You're mobilizing administrative resources. And this is something that becomes 0:15:19.480 --> 0:15:21.240 very clear the more you look into the sort of 0:15:21.280 --> 0:15:25.160 literature here, I'm going to quote from a piece called 0:15:25.240 --> 0:15:29.600 Revised Blue Sky Fabrication in China by Yongdongshen and Anna 0:15:29.760 --> 0:15:35.640 l Ahlers during the Mao era, this is campaigns down 0:15:35.640 --> 0:15:40.880 mobilizations aimed at nothing less than mobilizing society as a whole. 0:15:41.560 --> 0:15:45.560 While when they occur today, political campaigns are usually foremostly 0:15:45.600 --> 0:15:49.120 addressed at the state apparatus i e. Especially party and 0:15:49.160 --> 0:15:53.480 government organizations, at all levels of the political hierarchy, and 0:15:53.600 --> 0:15:58.000 ultimately at cadres in other words, the implementers of the 0:15:58.000 --> 0:16:01.760 policy goals at stake. According to Elizabeth Perry has called 0:16:01.760 --> 0:16:07.360 this transformation quote from mass campaigns to managed campaigns. Moreover, 0:16:07.760 --> 0:16:12.440 contemporary campaigns, or better campaign style politics mainly take the 0:16:12.480 --> 0:16:17.240 form of a disciplinary, supervisory and sanctioning campaigns such as 0:16:17.240 --> 0:16:22.360 anti crime campaigns or the recently reinforced corruption campaign or 0:16:22.720 --> 0:16:28.080 b regulatory enforcement or policy goal attainment acceleration campaigns. So, Okay, 0:16:28.120 --> 0:16:31.080 that's kind of a lot, but I think I think 0:16:31.080 --> 0:16:34.120 it's worth actually, you know, taking this in a little 0:16:34.120 --> 0:16:38.200 bit of detail. That same article defines up like the 0:16:38.280 --> 0:16:41.400 characteristics of what campaign style. A campaign style mobilization is 0:16:42.160 --> 0:16:46.040 so they have a defined goal, they have political sponsorship, 0:16:46.320 --> 0:16:49.400 there's a high degree of urgency, there's a defined period 0:16:49.400 --> 0:16:54.400 of time, tightly coordinated operation, the pooling of extraordinary resources, 0:16:54.400 --> 0:16:58.720 and public involvement. So that article of the one about 0:16:58.720 --> 0:17:03.600 blue sky fabrication is studying the twenty sixteen G twenty 0:17:03.640 --> 0:17:07.040 meeting in Hangzhou where the government sets out to make 0:17:07.080 --> 0:17:10.199 sure that there is actually like a blue sky for 0:17:10.280 --> 0:17:14.480 the event. Now, this is a massive undertaking because Chinese 0:17:14.560 --> 0:17:18.840 air pollution is fucking atrocious. This is something that I 0:17:18.920 --> 0:17:21.040 might do you another fall episode about this at some point. 0:17:21.480 --> 0:17:26.080 Chinese air pollution is unbelievably bad. It kills unfathomable numbers 0:17:26.080 --> 0:17:28.800 of people every year. It's gotten a little bit better 0:17:28.840 --> 0:17:30.359 since I was last there. But like when I was 0:17:30.440 --> 0:17:33.040 last in Beijing, like I didn't fucking I only saw 0:17:33.080 --> 0:17:35.520 the sky one time in the time I was there, 0:17:35.840 --> 0:17:38.320 because and that was only because it rained, and so 0:17:38.359 --> 0:17:41.080 after it rain, the sky was blue for like a 0:17:41.119 --> 0:17:43.160 few hours in the small just like consumed it again. 0:17:44.359 --> 0:17:46.240 So in order to make sure that there was like 0:17:46.320 --> 0:17:49.639 a blue sky for pr purposes for this G twenty meeting, 0:17:49.840 --> 0:17:53.119 because China wanted to sort of show off. There was 0:17:53.160 --> 0:17:58.879 a massive, massive deployment of resources, and this becomes one 0:17:58.920 --> 0:18:02.840 of the sort of campaigns mobilizations. And these mobilizations, you know, 0:18:03.119 --> 0:18:06.560 they may not be sort of mauise style mass mobilizations 0:18:06.720 --> 0:18:10.719 of like getting people to go do the thing, but 0:18:10.760 --> 0:18:14.280 they are massively intrusive. They include things like shuttering factories, 0:18:14.320 --> 0:18:17.840 moving millions of people, restricting like who can drive them 0:18:17.840 --> 0:18:21.280 what days, like, restricting whether or not you can like 0:18:22.000 --> 0:18:28.000 use like cooking stuff in your house. But Comma, we 0:18:28.080 --> 0:18:32.760 need to look at how these things actually happen. So 0:18:33.680 --> 0:18:37.639 the way that these campaigns start basically is for for 0:18:37.720 --> 0:18:43.400 the large scale ones, you have mobilization that flows basically 0:18:43.480 --> 0:18:46.280 down the lines of the state. Right, they start from 0:18:46.280 --> 0:18:48.520 the federal governments and they go to local governments and 0:18:48.600 --> 0:18:53.240 regional governments and implementation you know, for sort of scientific stuff. Right, 0:18:53.280 --> 0:18:54.720 So if you if you look for you know, going 0:18:54.760 --> 0:18:56.560 back to the sort of example of the G twenty 0:18:57.040 --> 0:18:59.960 for you know, in order to do the scientific core 0:19:00.000 --> 0:19:03.480 coordination for it, you get a very very broad, sort 0:19:03.480 --> 0:19:08.240 of broadreaching like coalition or coordination between scientists at universities 0:19:08.280 --> 0:19:10.560 as well as at research institutes and government agencies and 0:19:10.600 --> 0:19:14.160 you're pulling them all together in order to produce like 0:19:14.320 --> 0:19:18.199 I don't know, you're like air quality measures, right, And 0:19:18.760 --> 0:19:21.640 these efforts also can very rapidly fold in the governments 0:19:21.640 --> 0:19:25.000 of other provinces. So what does it actually mean in 0:19:25.080 --> 0:19:27.919 terms of how these mobilizations work. What it means is 0:19:27.960 --> 0:19:33.639 that mobilization is a way of moving around different state 0:19:33.720 --> 0:19:37.520 and sometimes just kind of pseudo nonstate actors like universities 0:19:37.520 --> 0:19:40.840 and research institutes. It's a way of moving those resources 0:19:40.880 --> 0:19:44.879 around in such a way that you can accomplish a thing. Now. 0:19:45.560 --> 0:19:47.920 One of the kind of defining characteristics of a lot 0:19:47.960 --> 0:19:49.520 of these campaigns, and not all of them, like the 0:19:49.520 --> 0:19:52.760 anti corruption campaigns obviously are sort of different, but a 0:19:52.800 --> 0:19:57.160 lot of these campaigns rely on scientific and technical mobilization, 0:19:57.320 --> 0:19:59.800 both in the sense of what resources they're moving, right, 0:20:00.000 --> 0:20:02.560 moving you moving scientists around, but also in terms of 0:20:02.600 --> 0:20:05.359 public justification. And this is also something that's very different, 0:20:05.800 --> 0:20:08.399 Like there is ideological justification going on, but like in 0:20:08.880 --> 0:20:12.280 like a Maoist sort of like like a high culture 0:20:12.320 --> 0:20:17.000 revolution like period or even greatly forward period, you're mostly 0:20:17.200 --> 0:20:20.600 using sort of ideological like direct ideological motivation to get 0:20:20.600 --> 0:20:23.919 people to go do a thing. Here. It's very technical, 0:20:24.359 --> 0:20:29.040 it's very scientific, it's very technocratic. And one of the 0:20:29.080 --> 0:20:31.760 products of this, one of the products of sort of 0:20:31.800 --> 0:20:35.400 how technocratic everything is, is that And this is something 0:20:35.440 --> 0:20:38.040 Shen and Ahlers are very clear about. There is like 0:20:38.240 --> 0:20:40.959 there's no public comment here, right Like the way these 0:20:40.960 --> 0:20:44.199 campaign mobilizations work is the state tells you what you 0:20:44.280 --> 0:20:47.120 are doing, and you are not telling them back like anything. 0:20:47.160 --> 0:20:49.280 Like you are not negotiating with them, you are not 0:20:49.359 --> 0:20:52.800 in a dialogue, you are not submitting comments. They are 0:20:52.840 --> 0:20:54.720 just telling you what to do. And this goes from 0:20:54.760 --> 0:20:57.320 like regular people all the way up to like corporations, 0:20:57.400 --> 0:20:59.639 right like even large corporations. A lot of times with 0:20:59.680 --> 0:21:03.600 these like campaign style things don't get a like negotiate 0:21:03.640 --> 0:21:05.399 a deal or whatever the fuck, It just it just 0:21:05.440 --> 0:21:09.479 sort of happens. Now, you may have noticed in the 0:21:09.520 --> 0:21:12.200 original one of the original descriptions, I was talking about 0:21:12.240 --> 0:21:14.159 one of the things they have as part of the 0:21:14.240 --> 0:21:18.560 definition is public mobiles mobilization of like the public. But 0:21:19.440 --> 0:21:22.879 we need to be clear about what that means so 0:21:22.920 --> 0:21:27.240 that it doesn't get confused with like maoism. So when 0:21:27.320 --> 0:21:29.840 we say there's mobilization of the public, it's stuff likely 0:21:29.880 --> 0:21:32.959 so during the G twenty campaign, they were like they 0:21:33.000 --> 0:21:36.800 would the CCP would like have old people volunteer to 0:21:37.040 --> 0:21:40.159 like walk around their neighborhoods and like snatch on anyone 0:21:40.200 --> 0:21:43.160 who was like using their cooking stove. So like that's 0:21:43.200 --> 0:21:46.040 the kind of mobilization we're talking like. These are not 0:21:46.280 --> 0:21:49.399 like these are not like Red Guard tribunals, like dragging 0:21:49.400 --> 0:21:52.120 people out of their houses. This is like a seventy 0:21:52.200 --> 0:21:55.960 year old's person incredibly nosy seventy year old going like, ha, 0:21:56.160 --> 0:21:59.080 this person using their cooking stove. You know how you 0:21:59.119 --> 0:22:01.840 can get a cooking stove that you can actually use? Uh, 0:22:02.160 --> 0:22:04.080 maybe these products and services. I don't know if we're 0:22:04.080 --> 0:22:06.240 sponsors by cooking stoves, but you know we could be 0:22:06.760 --> 0:22:08.840 there could there could be a cooking stove product and 0:22:08.920 --> 0:22:24.639 service out there waiting for you and we're back. Now 0:22:25.119 --> 0:22:27.600 we should also look more at some of the methods 0:22:27.640 --> 0:22:30.800 of how this stuff happens. Right. So one of the 0:22:30.800 --> 0:22:32.600 things that's happening as part of this campaign is part 0:22:32.600 --> 0:22:34.280 of the part of the plan to reduce pollution, is 0:22:34.320 --> 0:22:36.280 they need Chinese government wants to move a bunch of 0:22:36.320 --> 0:22:39.760 people out of out of the city. Right now, a 0:22:39.840 --> 0:22:42.840 Maui style thing would just tell the people to fucking leave. 0:22:44.119 --> 0:22:46.600 The way that the way that the modern Chinese government 0:22:46.600 --> 0:22:50.400 does this is to send people like basically free travel vouchers. 0:22:51.359 --> 0:22:54.840 Shennon Ayler's report, the value of these vouchers is more 0:22:54.840 --> 0:22:58.719 than one point five billion dollars, So like that's dollars, right, 0:22:58.760 --> 0:23:02.040 that's that's like, you know, this is this is these 0:23:02.040 --> 0:23:04.440 are very expensive campaigns. But but you know, this is 0:23:04.480 --> 0:23:08.360 the way that the Chinese state moves in a lot 0:23:08.359 --> 0:23:10.000 of these cases, right when they're trying to move, when 0:23:10.000 --> 0:23:14.000 they need to move a bunch of people, they deploy vouchers. 0:23:15.720 --> 0:23:18.720 So some of these campaigns are using even more like 0:23:18.840 --> 0:23:21.840 technocratic means to get things done. So looking back at 0:23:21.840 --> 0:23:25.080 the article of campaign style enforcement and regulatory compliance, we 0:23:25.160 --> 0:23:31.000 find examples of what is technically campaign style mobilization. Okay quote. 0:23:31.680 --> 0:23:36.560 For instance, the central government either waived the loan interest 0:23:36.640 --> 0:23:40.840 for corporate spending on basically these like desulfurization things to 0:23:40.920 --> 0:23:47.119 make industrial like exhaust not have sulfur in it, or 0:23:47.160 --> 0:23:52.720 cover these expenses using central environmental cential environmental funds. In addition, 0:23:52.760 --> 0:23:59.360 an innovative green electricity policy offered that point Zhoo two 0:23:59.560 --> 0:24:05.720 three sent price premium per kilowatt hour to power plants 0:24:05.720 --> 0:24:08.080 that installed one of these systems. So this is like 0:24:08.200 --> 0:24:11.320 exactly the opposite of how a booist campaign would do this, right, 0:24:11.520 --> 0:24:19.159 Like they are these factory people are getting like price subsidies, 0:24:19.960 --> 0:24:25.760 and like they're waiving the interest on loans. Now, we've 0:24:25.800 --> 0:24:28.399 been focusing on campaign stylen mobilization because those are the 0:24:28.400 --> 0:24:31.320 most sort of extraordinary kinds of mobilization. But most policy 0:24:31.400 --> 0:24:35.480