I Used to Say: “Sacrifice Is Unavoidable”

Original post can be found here.

Each and every generation navigates its own path to self-salvation, and hope arises from nowhere except humans ourselves.

—Luo Xin

Translators: 菁，悦馨，Tam, Samuel

Originally Published by: 剩余价值 Surplus Value

Editor’s Note:

Luo Xin (罗新) is a professor at Peking University whose work mainly focuses on how dynasties founded by ethnic minorities have shaped Chinese history. Born in Hubei province, Luo and his family were impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak. “剩余价值Surplus Value” is a culture podcast program created by three female media practitioners. In February, Surplus Value invited Luo for a conversation. They spoke about what was happening then in Hubei, as well as plagues in history, militarized language, nationalism and internationalism. “Humanity” is the point where all these ponderings eventually led them. As was written in the original Surplus Value post:

We are talking about humans as bearers of rights, not units of profit . . . We are talking about humans as alive in the real world rather than exploited by institutions . . . We are talking about humans as those ordinary people who deserve our respect despite having few commendable achievements. They are not abstract symbols, but concrete existences, divided by no border . . . We talk about humans because we believe that they are fundamental to modern civilization. Each and every generation navigates its own path to self-salvation, and hope arises from nowhere except humans ourselves.

“I Used to Say Sacrifice Is Unavoidable”

Interviewer: How are you doing in the days of self-quarantine during the epidemic?

Luo: Like most of us, in the beginning I spent all my time on Weibo (a Chinese microblogging platform) and WeChat (a Chinese social media platform), hoping to gather as much information as I could. But that obsession could not last long. After about a week, I forced myself to reduce screen time and focus on reading. After a while I managed to return to my work and started writing.

My reading relates in varying degrees to what concerns me at this stage: the epidemic. For example, I read Plagues and Peoples (W. H. McNeill, 1976) again, and finished The Great Leveler (W. Scheidel, 2018), the book I have recommended to many people but only just finished myself during quarantine. This book posits plague as one of the four ways whereby inequality might be lessened in human societies.

Interviewer: We have also gone through a process that started from an intense bombing of information, then collapsed into an emotional breakdown and loss of speech, and restored gradually to a calmer state of mind. During this process, we were sensing a certain danger: the normalization of the “state of exception.”

Luo: We are still at the margins of our trauma, yet to reach the most dangerous and dreadful moments. But we also know that “pain is forgotten where gain follows.”

Compared to what happened during SARS in 2003, the virus seems to have hit us harder and caused worse pain this time. Many people’s mentalities have also changed, especially those well-educated intellectuals. The “anger” we talk about is not mainly about being assaulted by the virus per se, but more about witnessing the other side of a world the virus has torn open. From this perspective, people will end up with a mental state different than in the case of SARS.

Although this epidemic may end in a few months, humanity usually lapses into a rather long period of psychological trauma after suffering from non-war, non-political misfortunes (mainly famine and plague) as severe as this. Psychological trauma may bring about lots of changes, including cultural change in many places. So what will happen to our nation and our society? In an age where national boundaries matter very little, this is probably a question addressed not only to China, but to the whole world.

Interviewer: Have you ever been through any trauma similar to what we are facing at the moment?

Luo: I have. What happened to the 25 or 26-year-old me has left a huge and life-long impact. But this current trauma is different from pure political trauma. It rather makes you think, “Why are human beings so vulnerable? Why is society so vulnerable?”

I am a historian, and I have read many similar stories in history. But reading stories is very different from experiencing those stories myself. I used to say, “Sacrifice is unavoidable. The progress of human beings is always built from sacrifices.” But now, I have become the victim. Well, if it is just me it would probably be fine. But if it were my family, my son, my parents, can I still accept it? Would I be able to say, without the slightest hesitation, “Let them be sacrificed, and let history progress at their expense?” I need to confront this question right now, because my family is facing this very threat at this very minute. They are in Hubei province, right there in Wuhan.

“Military Language Seriously Jeopardizes Our Culture”

Interviewer: How did you feel when you first learned about the lockdown of Wuhan? It does not seem like a commonplace decision in the administration of modern cities.

Luo: What we are witnessing here is unprecedented in the world and in human history. In the past, plagues usually happened in small communities, and the infected areas were dealt with brutally, as one might have expected. The historical archives from the recent couple of centuries have told us that typically in China, an infected village would be locked down and burned to ashes, even if many residents remained healthy. Those who escaped would also be captured and burned to death.

You could withhold your sympathy and contend that those are necessary precautions to stop plagues from spreading. But locking down a city of 10 million people is simply unbelievable. That number is equivalent to the population of the whole country in the Three Kingdom Period (c. 25 AD-220 AD). Furthermore, the lockdown was later extended to the entire Hubei province, and even to individual residential compounds in Hubei and other provinces. This measure is unlikely to be followed by many countries worldwide, since in Western democratic countries, it would be a legal issue, not under the jurisdiction of a provincial officer.

Interviewer: Let us shift from the topic of city lockdown to the language crisis amid this epidemic. Public discourses are crowded with terms such as “state of war” and “battling the epidemic.” We have also noticed narratives used by some media such as “the production line is also the front line,” “we shall win this hard battle soon,” “fighting this epidemic is a war for the people, a nationwide war, a sniper war, one that must be won.” A public health emergency has been phrased as a state of war, with militarized language frequently used. What do you think of this?

Luo: The invasion of military terms into everyday language has been happening for a very long time. This is probably typical of the 20th century. It also has to do with the fact that China has always been in an actual state of war throughout the history of building the nation state. For both the Chinese Nationalist Party and the Chinese Communist Party, military campaigns were always very significant, which brought about the increasing worship of military culture. That is the reason why we use military language very often in everyday life.

The intrusion of such military language seriously jeopardizes our culture as a whole. We should first and foremost refrain from using such militarized words in our own language. We have enough vocabulary and phrases to express our thoughts. We do not need this categorical and exclusive militarized language. Although institutional systems have their own inertia that is hard to change, individuals ought to stay alert to that sort of language.

When one emphasizes the “state of war,” in effect, one not only opens up the opportunities for the public authorities to exercise maximum power but also allows the hoodlums the chance of doing ill. In the videos circulated on Chinese social media platforms, we can see that people who gathered for Mah-jong games were herded out to be shamed publicly on the streets.

Interviewer: Even when it comes to small uncivilized behaviors such as spitting, slogans can resort back to words like “absolutely without mercy” and “thoroughly eliminate.”

Luo: This is ridiculous vocabulary. It totally ignores humanity. Some may think that humanity can be sacrificed at these crisis points. The ideal state of control those people wish for reflects the mindset of the planned economy – (to go for) the most rational solution. They think that since quarantine is considered to be the most effective measure — one that’s scientifically and medically sound — why don’t we just impose the quarantine on its largest possible scale?

They fail to realize that the most rational measure in theory is not achievable in the real world. Human beings cannot be purely rational. We are complicated beings with both reason and sensibility. That is why the planned economy could never work. There are indeed scientific grounds for a planned economy, but those involved are human beings, not figures. If we do not even think twice before allowing tens of millions of people to sacrifice for a larger purpose, how can we claim that we are even human?

Interviewer: Apart from military and nationalist discourses, we also noticed the popularity of fan-like discourses on social media (fans use different techniques to help push certain people or events to the top of rankings — editor’s note). A typical example is the live stream of the Leishenshan Hospital construction provided by China Central Television (CCTV). The viewers posted live comments, gave nicknames to each forklift and bulldozer, and even created a ranking for these machines.

During the epidemic, some people nicknamed the coronavirus “Conori” (“a guan 阿冠”) and Wuhan “goofy little thing,” (“xiao ben dan 小笨蛋”) as if telling stories to children. Such use of childish language disguises harmful and dangerous things as harmless ones. Psychoanalysis asserts that people tend to exhibit childish behavior if their parents are relatively dominant, arbitrary, and narcissistic. This is because those kinds of parents hope to prevent their children from growing up and seek to exert more control over them.

The thinking behind the fans’ ranking also reflects the logic of capital, one that says: I like you, so I support you, and I will give you money. The logic behind this type of language is dangerous, as it idolizes a nation and turns its citizens into fans. While militarized discourse uses simplistic and violent language, fan-like discourse represents that simplicity and violence in a different form. Sounding cute and harmless, it communicates things that are absolutized and superficial, disassociated with what is vital and essential.

“The Nature of Communism Is Internationalism”

Interviewer: Recently, many people have compared this epidemic with Chernobyl. One post on Weibo suggests that the reason why the Soviet people were finally saved, and why Chernobyl was given great attention and handled seriously, was that everyone knew the accident could destroy all of Europe, and the Soviet Union could not afford to do that. So in the face of that grave crisis, it was actually internationalism that saved the people of that country. But at this moment in China, there is not even the presence of internationalism.

Luo: Communism as it is known in contemporary China has been very different from classical communism. You can say it has Chinese characteristics, but we would say it is actually nationalism in the name of communism. This is because the nature of communism is internationalism, which underlines the equality of every one of us. This is most clearly stated in the Communist Manifesto: “Proletarians of all countries, unite!”

In internationalism, there is hardly any room for nationalism, or the assumption that one is the best, the most unique, and the most superior. Regardless of the extent to which internationalism was actually practiced in the Soviet Union, it at least constituted a great part in their ideological propaganda. But in contemporary China, internationalism no longer exists. Even though we still see the massive scale of China’s aid to impoverished countries, this is not necessarily motivated by communism, but other considerations.

“Universal kinship” (“bo ai 博爱”) has always existed in modern Chinese discourse, but is now nowhere to be seen in us. Deep in the hearts of many generations of Chinese people, there has been a lack of this kind of “universal kinship” characterized by the equal, respectful, and empathetic treatment of people from other countries. There is no unconditional love, no absolute love, only class-based love — these are what have been emphasized all the time since 1949. Since the phrase “universal kinship” has been stigmatized and completely ruined, the absence of real internationalism comes as no surprise.

“Power Has Been Gathered into One Single Thread”

Interviewer: When our freedom of speech is deprived, how are we going to resist and fight for our rights to speak the truth?

Luo: As I posted on Weibo, it is colder and darker before dawn. That is to say, you might think you empathize with others, that others are as outrageous as you are, they share your emotions and views, and they are even as determined as you are to make a change, but what follows might be very disappointing to you. You will no longer hear any of the voices from those people, and you will never feel their impulses. What you may feel is more powerful oppression.

It is very likely that in the days to come – maybe not just a few months, one year, two years, but rather a long period of time – things will become even darker and worse. So, why did I write that “All the things I have learned have been for this moment?” (“yi sheng suo xue, zhi wei ci ke 一生所学, 只为此刻”) It means to wait. How are you going to spend this moment? Therein lies our challenge.

Interviewer: There is too far a distance between anger and real action.

Luo: Yes. Under modern institutions, how are individuals or anyone who lacks sufficient resources capable of action? I think it is hard to take any other action besides striving to be a righteous person yourself. The age of immediate street politics is over, I am afraid. And given the grid management (endnote) of residential communities, which has been very extreme, it is really difficult for a large crowd to take any effective action.

Interviewer: The epidemic has brought to light many imbalances in the governance of our country. For example, when you buy train tickets or plane tickets, you have to provide your mobile number and your ID number, and even go through the facial recognition systems when getting on the train. But why is it now so hard to locate a possibly infected person on a train? This is because the information is held in the hands of the public security system but not the public health system. And it takes rather long procedures for the public health system to access this information. This makes us feel hopeless. We have handed in our information and given up our rights in the hope that we will be better served and protected. In fact, the information turns out to be completely useless when we actually need protection.

Luo: This is actually what Prof. Zhou Xueguang (周雪光, Kwoh-Ting Li Professor in Economic Development and a professor of sociology at Stanford University — editor’s note) meant in an interview: when centralized power is constantly strengthened, local governance becomes paralyzed. Local governments have so many resources yet are unable to make any use of them. Power has been gathered into one single thread. When the centralized power pulls everything towards itself from up above, all the strings down there will be tightened straight, which leaves not a single string that could operate horizontally. Yet such horizontal power is precisely what we need when something goes wrong in our society.

Interviewer: Li Haipeng (李海鹏，former Southern Weekly journalist and editor-in-chief ofPeople Magazine – editor’s note) posted on Weibo a while ago, saying that after the virus gets wiped out, many Chinese people will be likely to sing praise to our strong and powerful government without whom, they will say, the virus would not have been under control. The risks lurking in a state-run system will eventually be turned into the victories of a state-run system.

“Every Generation Can Come to Their Own Rescue”

Luo: Every generation claims that the children of their time are beyond help. When I was in school, those who graduated in 1977 and 1978 were saying, “Look at those who are going to graduate after the 1980s, what hope does China have?” When in college, I would burst into tears upon hearing the national anthem or the “The Internationale.” And the word “nation” (“min zu 民族”) would thrill me beyond description.

When I read together with my son, I find that there is so much he does not know. He does not know what a grinder is, what a millstone is, and what a sickle is. Nor has he ever seen these objects. I used to think, what will the next generation become?

Actually, it doesn’t really matter. Every generation is incredible and can come to their own rescue in some way. Self-education is deeply embedded in human nature, though as humans we can sometimes get fooled. The hope is that we also have the potential to break free from lies.

According to one old saying, wherever there are human beings, there is hope. That is to say, it matters little that young people nowadays look gullible or say foolish things. They will, in the future, grow up to be more or less like us. Of course it is our responsibility to help them, just as it is their parents’ responsibility to educate them, but they will also find their own way out, just as we found our way out through self-education when we were young.

Interviewer: Do you believe that we can empathize with people who are higher up in the bureaucratic hierarchy?

Luo: We historians study people who are different from us all the time. We study emperors and nobles, leaders and generals. If we were thrown back in history, we must be the miserable ones whose opinions were censored and whose accounts were banned, and we would not even be written into history books. What we find in history books are people within the system, regardless of whether they succeeded or failed. You will find, though, that these people were just like us. They were also struggling.

Interviewer: If we can nurture such “universal kinship,” will we be able to move from anger to action?

Luo: Defending human interest is the most important action we need to take. If my rights are violated, I must resist. That is the foundation of our action. Meanwhile, I cannot deprive others of their rights just because I am fighting for my own.