Creating an Ethos of Individualism in China

“Although China exhibits authoritarian characteristics, this, by no means, presupposes that liberty is incompatible with its people’s worldview.”

The Trump administration’s explicit stance against China has altered Western political discourse. Discussions on the Belt and Road Initiative and the communist state’s profuse human rights violations in Xinjiang and Hong Kong surface in the news with unprecedented frequency, heaved into the view of even the most ordinarily disinterested readers.

China is most often portrayed as a monolithic structure, a command economy, and a communitarian society, which tolerates no dissent or disobedience. Some of this view’s proponents have even posited that the Chinese model constitutes an unequivocal foil to liberal democracy, the latter of which is alleged to be incompatible with China’s local culture and history. Others, including The Economist’s Adrian Wooldridge and Bloomberg’s John Micklethwait, consider this perspective a symptom of the “fourth revolution,” destined to supplant the contemporary consensus on government. Doubtless, this image has been reinforced by the continuous failure of the United States to counterpoise China commercially and diplomatically. Similarly, former U.S. President Barack Obama’s optimistic belief in the possibility of China metamorphosing into a democratic state has been proven erroneous, to the benefit of the China hardliners within the Republican Party.

However, such conclusions are misguided. Although China exhibits authoritarian characteristics, this, by no means, presupposes that liberty is incompatible with its people’s worldview. Furthermore, liberal ideology is not exclusively Western. Taiwan amply illustrates this. The ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is advancing democracy without undermining its constituents’ cultural code. Unaware of unalienable rights, the Chinese philosophical tradition has nevertheless discussed individualism over the course of the country’s long history. In turn, this suggests China’s divergence from the West is somewhat exaggerated; it exists but is neither congenital nor absolute. What defeated the United States’ earlier attempts at spreading the message of freedom was instead its narrow-minded advertising strategy.