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美国反对美国
The fundamental purpose of this book, therefore, is not to explore the diverse dimensions, the colorful landscapes, and the intricate movements it depicts, but to explore the political and social management processes of American society, and although the book attempts to cover as many dimensions and topics as possible, its analysis remains consistent with these themes. The development and flux of a society is inseparable from its politics and the way it is managed. It can be said that what kind of politics and social management there is, is what kind of social development there is. It is difficult to analyze and understand the United States without this logic. I just want to answer a simple HO question by dissecting the multiple dimensions of society: "Why is there an America?" This question is simple, but it is far beyond my ability to do so, and I know it well.
349 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
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1904 people want to read
About the author
Wang Huning
2 books32 followersWang Huning (Chinese: 王沪宁; born October 6, 1955) is a leading Chinese political theorist since the 1990s and one of the top leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Since October 2017, he has been a member of the CCP's Politburo Standing Committee (China's top decision-making body) and the first-ranked secretary of the CCP's Secretariat. He also chaired the Central Guidance Commission on Building Spiritual Civilization since November 2017. He previously served as the director of the Central Policy Research Office from 2002 to 2020, the longest tenure of the office.
Widely regarded as the "Grey Eminence" of the CCP, Wang is believed to be the chief ideologue of the Communist Party and principal architect behind the official political ideologies of three paramount leaders since the 1990s: "Three Represents" by Jiang Zemin, the Scientific Development Concept by Hu Jintao, and the Chinese Dream and Xi Jinping Thought of Xi Jinping. He has held significant influence over policy and decision making over all three paramount leaders, a rare feat in Chinese politics. Wang was regarded, along with Wang Qishan, as one of the two primary advisors and decision makers for Xi Jinping.
A former academic, Wang was a professor of International Politics and dean of the law school at Fudan University.
Widely regarded as the "Grey Eminence" of the CCP, Wang is believed to be the chief ideologue of the Communist Party and principal architect behind the official political ideologies of three paramount leaders since the 1990s: "Three Represents" by Jiang Zemin, the Scientific Development Concept by Hu Jintao, and the Chinese Dream and Xi Jinping Thought of Xi Jinping. He has held significant influence over policy and decision making over all three paramount leaders, a rare feat in Chinese politics. Wang was regarded, along with Wang Qishan, as one of the two primary advisors and decision makers for Xi Jinping.
A former academic, Wang was a professor of International Politics and dean of the law school at Fudan University.
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January 8, 2022The year 1989 witnessed a number of momentous geopolitical events. The fall of the Berlin Wall marked the Soviet Union's collapse, and with it, the defeat of Eastern European communism as a serious ideological adversary to Western democracy. Communist China did not seem too far behind, with the protests at Tiananmen Square betraying a seemingly inexorable wave of pro-Western sentiment sweeping Asia as well. In the wake of the apparent victory of Western political philosophy over autocratic communism, Stanford political scientist Francis Fukuyama made the euphoric prognostication that humanity had finally discovered the final and most perfect form of political and economic organization in liberal democracy and capitalism. With no more geopolitical conflict, Fukuyama mused in "The End of History and the Last Man", history was over. Life would become decidedly boring as humanity shifts from conflict, struggle, and self-discovery to the maintenance of a perfect system.
How silly these predictions were, in retrospect. Today, the battle between authoritarian rule and Western democracy continues in full force, writ large in the ideological confrontations between the US and China, and to a lesser extent between the US and Russia. Fukuyama's 1989 prediction that economic liberalization would inevitably force autocratic regimes to liberalize politically seems like a frivolous daydream now. Today, China continues to periodically bolster and crack down on its private sector, regulating industries from gaming to college tutoring to artificial intelligence R&D, in regular shows of brutal force that baffle American commentators.
Fukuyama's essay, especially as a symbol of the zeitgeist at the time, is particularly silly when you consider the fact that just a year prior in 1988, Wang Huning, a 30-year old professor at Fudan University, spent six months in the US wandering the country "like a latter-day Chinese Alexis de Tocqueville", one contemporary article writes, developing an understanding of the mechanisms of American society and sowing the seeds for today’s geopolitical conflict. Wang would eventually become a senior-ranking official in the Chinese politburo and the ideological brains behind Xi Jinping.
This is to say that to understand China today, you must understand its ideological underpinnings and trace the origins of its political thought. Much of those origins began with Wang's foray in the US, which he documents meticulously in "America Against America". His book is an anthropological work par excellence, and for this reason, it can read a bit dry to the American reader. Much of the book is a laundry list catalog of aspects of American life that someone who grew up in the US would already be well-acquainted with: American libraries, university curricula, physical geographical characteristics, political processes, local/state/federal government characteristics, the taxation system, municipal amenities, football games, and other customs that Americans take for granted. Wang assiduously documents even the most apparently mundane details of American life in the '80s. It does not help that, linguistically, Chinese does not have the same sort of complex, compound sentence structure that English does. The net impact of his attentive documentation and potential linguistic artifacts lost in translation is that each individual sentence reads very boringly—simple descriptions of raw observations and the author's emotional reactions. Each individual bit of analysis he makes is not particularly complex. But in aggregate, the brush strokes combine to paint a fairly representative picture—not only of Wang's subject, the United States, but also of Wang's own thought, however subtle he was in presenting it.
In this respect, I was a bit surprised reading the book. "America Against America" took American media by storm this year, quickly becoming a work that journalists and public intellectuals described as a "must read" to understand the most momentous geopolitical conflict of our time. But media coverage made the book seem much more sinister than it actually was—like the blueprints of a Chinese bureaucrat's grand, elaborate espionage plan.
Certainly, there were a few sentences here or there that read somewhat eerily, given how the next few decades unfolded. But for much of the book, Wang seemed to adopt more of a tone of admiration for American society than one of censure or antagonism. For one, he seemed very impressed with the role of capitalism and American culture in creating broad-based economic prosperity, noting that it's a difficult problem for governments everywhere to make sure that economic gains are broadly distributed across demographics and regions. Wang was undeniably impressed that even the farmers in the most rural areas of the US had access to infrastructure which the most developed in the third world do not. He repeatedly credits the "commodity economy", free market mechanisms, and an indomitable American spirit of innovation and pragmatism as responsible for such accomplishments. On American attitudes toward innovation, he writes
Wang's acknowledgement of the virtues of Western thought extends far back historically as well. In the book, he regularly quotes Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, Locke, Montesquieu, Augustine, Hegel, and Marx, as well as contemporary public intellectuals from the '80s. One might say that Wang is deeply Machiavellian (i.e., a student of Machiavelli), to the extent that he views cultural phenomena like religion, superstition, presidential debates, etc., through a highly instrumental lens—that is, considering how useful they are for promoting social stability, coordination, and control.
That being said, modern China is ideologically Marxist, and Wang's method of analysis reflects this. It's clear that Wang (and the CCP today) continue to think of historical development as an unfolding of Marx's dialectical materialism. This manifests in the writing in a few ways. First, for every political or sociocultural phenomenon, there is always a discussion of the good and the bad of the issue. Take the quote above, for instance. His admiration of American innovativeness does not come without a soberminded understanding of the consequences of innovation for its own sake—destabilizing inequality, centralization, alienation, and loneliness. This stands in stark contrast to the highly ideological and adversarial nature of American political discourse.
Secondly, implicit in his metaphysics is the view that historical conflicts are "contradictions" that get resolved in each subsequent world era, a quintessential mechanism in Marxist/Hegelian historical analysis. For instance, he mentions that the "contradictions" caused by industrial capitalism (e.g., alienation, modern loneliness, overworking, the erosion of the family unit) have been temporarily smoothed over by Keynesian welfare policies from the federal government ("the inhuman phenomena of capitalist society depicted and criticized by Marx, Engels, and Lenin have now only been resolved by the government")—but even this edifice stands on shaky ground, when considering the myriad social burdens that it creates. Other dialectical tensions and "contradictions" that he comments on include: the tension between diversity (affirmative action) and excellence, the inherent antagonism between democratic values and the highly centralized and hierarchical nature of America's political parties, the proper role of decentralized resource allocation (vis-a-vis capitalism and "the commodity economy") in relation to centralized government (a regulatory body, rather than an active body), individualism and collectivism (individualism is better for innovation, but collectivism is better for economic mass production), and the conflict between individualism and the disappearing family unit ("the question is how to reconcile the evolving social spirit with the family", "is human nature adapted to living a life with or without family emotions?", and "what kinds of emotions should human society maintain in addition to sexuality?")
The Marxist historicist approach is certainly compelling, and his book is prescient for a couple of reasons. First, he accurately diagnoses many of the US's recurrent problems: he notes the exhaustion and fatigue of factory workers in the 1980s (which mirrors today's conflict between warehouse workers and Amazon, the corporation), the disintegration of the family unit and subsequent loss of social stability (which proponents of liberal modernity push as evidence of "progress"), drugs and crime (which progressives have relentlessly campaigned to legalize), and the "black challenge" (which describes the racial discrimination which allegedly motivated the protests and riots following the death of George Floyd).
It is also prescient because, with respect to the negative facet of each "dialectic", China has also made strategic adversarial moves in recent decades. In the final chapter detailing the undercurrents of American crises, Wang points out major problems facing the US. He mentions the American drug epidemic, and compares it to the historical export of opium to China—a period which still animates the CCP and appears as a point of humiliation in official documents (see "The Governance of China") to this day. Today, China allegedly is a major black market exporter of fentanyl to the US. In a chapter on the American education system, Wang mentions the virtues of American museums, which attract children and inspire a love of technology; conversely, Wang describes the erosion of American ethical values through spiritual loneliness. Today, Tik Tok allegedly shows Chinese children cool science experiments to try at home, while inundating American teens with eating disorder videos.
He concludes with a brief commentary on Japan, which was the single biggest threat to American economic dominance in the 1980s (at least, before the Japanese asset price bubble popped). The "Empire of the Sun" may not overtake the US in the near future, Wang notes. But in a previous chapter, he ominously predicts:
The "market for radicals" has no doubt emerged in our fractured political landscape, so it may seem that the Marxist analysis was not altogether wrong. But somehow it still misses some crucial components of history... Yes, the contradictions of each world era set the stage for future developments, but perhaps the innovative role of the individual remains under-appreciated.
How silly these predictions were, in retrospect. Today, the battle between authoritarian rule and Western democracy continues in full force, writ large in the ideological confrontations between the US and China, and to a lesser extent between the US and Russia. Fukuyama's 1989 prediction that economic liberalization would inevitably force autocratic regimes to liberalize politically seems like a frivolous daydream now. Today, China continues to periodically bolster and crack down on its private sector, regulating industries from gaming to college tutoring to artificial intelligence R&D, in regular shows of brutal force that baffle American commentators.
Fukuyama's essay, especially as a symbol of the zeitgeist at the time, is particularly silly when you consider the fact that just a year prior in 1988, Wang Huning, a 30-year old professor at Fudan University, spent six months in the US wandering the country "like a latter-day Chinese Alexis de Tocqueville", one contemporary article writes, developing an understanding of the mechanisms of American society and sowing the seeds for today’s geopolitical conflict. Wang would eventually become a senior-ranking official in the Chinese politburo and the ideological brains behind Xi Jinping.
This is to say that to understand China today, you must understand its ideological underpinnings and trace the origins of its political thought. Much of those origins began with Wang's foray in the US, which he documents meticulously in "America Against America". His book is an anthropological work par excellence, and for this reason, it can read a bit dry to the American reader. Much of the book is a laundry list catalog of aspects of American life that someone who grew up in the US would already be well-acquainted with: American libraries, university curricula, physical geographical characteristics, political processes, local/state/federal government characteristics, the taxation system, municipal amenities, football games, and other customs that Americans take for granted. Wang assiduously documents even the most apparently mundane details of American life in the '80s. It does not help that, linguistically, Chinese does not have the same sort of complex, compound sentence structure that English does. The net impact of his attentive documentation and potential linguistic artifacts lost in translation is that each individual sentence reads very boringly—simple descriptions of raw observations and the author's emotional reactions. Each individual bit of analysis he makes is not particularly complex. But in aggregate, the brush strokes combine to paint a fairly representative picture—not only of Wang's subject, the United States, but also of Wang's own thought, however subtle he was in presenting it.
In this respect, I was a bit surprised reading the book. "America Against America" took American media by storm this year, quickly becoming a work that journalists and public intellectuals described as a "must read" to understand the most momentous geopolitical conflict of our time. But media coverage made the book seem much more sinister than it actually was—like the blueprints of a Chinese bureaucrat's grand, elaborate espionage plan.
Certainly, there were a few sentences here or there that read somewhat eerily, given how the next few decades unfolded. But for much of the book, Wang seemed to adopt more of a tone of admiration for American society than one of censure or antagonism. For one, he seemed very impressed with the role of capitalism and American culture in creating broad-based economic prosperity, noting that it's a difficult problem for governments everywhere to make sure that economic gains are broadly distributed across demographics and regions. Wang was undeniably impressed that even the farmers in the most rural areas of the US had access to infrastructure which the most developed in the third world do not. He repeatedly credits the "commodity economy", free market mechanisms, and an indomitable American spirit of innovation and pragmatism as responsible for such accomplishments. On American attitudes toward innovation, he writes
The development of a society cannot be achieved without the spirit of innovation. The promotion of the spirit of innovation requires a society that encourages and accepts new and innovative ideas. At the same time, the continuity of values is essential for any society otherwise social stability is unsustainable.
Wang's acknowledgement of the virtues of Western thought extends far back historically as well. In the book, he regularly quotes Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, Locke, Montesquieu, Augustine, Hegel, and Marx, as well as contemporary public intellectuals from the '80s. One might say that Wang is deeply Machiavellian (i.e., a student of Machiavelli), to the extent that he views cultural phenomena like religion, superstition, presidential debates, etc., through a highly instrumental lens—that is, considering how useful they are for promoting social stability, coordination, and control.
That being said, modern China is ideologically Marxist, and Wang's method of analysis reflects this. It's clear that Wang (and the CCP today) continue to think of historical development as an unfolding of Marx's dialectical materialism. This manifests in the writing in a few ways. First, for every political or sociocultural phenomenon, there is always a discussion of the good and the bad of the issue. Take the quote above, for instance. His admiration of American innovativeness does not come without a soberminded understanding of the consequences of innovation for its own sake—destabilizing inequality, centralization, alienation, and loneliness. This stands in stark contrast to the highly ideological and adversarial nature of American political discourse.
Secondly, implicit in his metaphysics is the view that historical conflicts are "contradictions" that get resolved in each subsequent world era, a quintessential mechanism in Marxist/Hegelian historical analysis. For instance, he mentions that the "contradictions" caused by industrial capitalism (e.g., alienation, modern loneliness, overworking, the erosion of the family unit) have been temporarily smoothed over by Keynesian welfare policies from the federal government ("the inhuman phenomena of capitalist society depicted and criticized by Marx, Engels, and Lenin have now only been resolved by the government")—but even this edifice stands on shaky ground, when considering the myriad social burdens that it creates. Other dialectical tensions and "contradictions" that he comments on include: the tension between diversity (affirmative action) and excellence, the inherent antagonism between democratic values and the highly centralized and hierarchical nature of America's political parties, the proper role of decentralized resource allocation (vis-a-vis capitalism and "the commodity economy") in relation to centralized government (a regulatory body, rather than an active body), individualism and collectivism (individualism is better for innovation, but collectivism is better for economic mass production), and the conflict between individualism and the disappearing family unit ("the question is how to reconcile the evolving social spirit with the family", "is human nature adapted to living a life with or without family emotions?", and "what kinds of emotions should human society maintain in addition to sexuality?")
The Marxist historicist approach is certainly compelling, and his book is prescient for a couple of reasons. First, he accurately diagnoses many of the US's recurrent problems: he notes the exhaustion and fatigue of factory workers in the 1980s (which mirrors today's conflict between warehouse workers and Amazon, the corporation), the disintegration of the family unit and subsequent loss of social stability (which proponents of liberal modernity push as evidence of "progress"), drugs and crime (which progressives have relentlessly campaigned to legalize), and the "black challenge" (which describes the racial discrimination which allegedly motivated the protests and riots following the death of George Floyd).
It is also prescient because, with respect to the negative facet of each "dialectic", China has also made strategic adversarial moves in recent decades. In the final chapter detailing the undercurrents of American crises, Wang points out major problems facing the US. He mentions the American drug epidemic, and compares it to the historical export of opium to China—a period which still animates the CCP and appears as a point of humiliation in official documents (see "The Governance of China") to this day. Today, China allegedly is a major black market exporter of fentanyl to the US. In a chapter on the American education system, Wang mentions the virtues of American museums, which attract children and inspire a love of technology; conversely, Wang describes the erosion of American ethical values through spiritual loneliness. Today, Tik Tok allegedly shows Chinese children cool science experiments to try at home, while inundating American teens with eating disorder videos.
He concludes with a brief commentary on Japan, which was the single biggest threat to American economic dominance in the 1980s (at least, before the Japanese asset price bubble popped). The "Empire of the Sun" may not overtake the US in the near future, Wang notes. But in a previous chapter, he ominously predicts:
If one day the economic level between the East and the West is reversed, I am afraid that they will have to be regulated. In fact, we won't have develop beyond them, just pull even, and the ideological battle may rise again. A friend says that this is a good point, and that with a few more serious recessions, there will be a market for radicals.
The "market for radicals" has no doubt emerged in our fractured political landscape, so it may seem that the Marxist analysis was not altogether wrong. But somehow it still misses some crucial components of history... Yes, the contradictions of each world era set the stage for future developments, but perhaps the innovative role of the individual remains under-appreciated.
March 3, 2022
This work is an interesting historic observation and analysis into 'life' as it was in the USA when Wang Huning, the most influential public intellectual alive today, lived in the Capitalist society of USA. Wang Huning is a member of the CCP’s seven-man Politburo Standing Committee, is China’s top ideological theorist, and credited as being the 'ideas man' behind Xi Jinping’s assertive foreign policy, signature political concepts, including the China Dream, the anti-corruption campaign, and the Belt and Road Initiative, and even Xi Jinping Thought. Though the USA has declined in most every area Wang experienced and writes about, this work remains of importance to anyone abreast of the USA's sociopolitical history and/or the downfall of societies throughout millennia.
One gets the feeling that Wang's observations could have easily made a fine viewpoint for areas with which to politically 'target' USA's society in order to unhinge them, the unhinging that we see so prevalent today, or, more accurately, the systematic dismantling of the historic checks, balances, educational institutions (see: 2. The Ignorant Generation), drug use escalation, and the moral fiber and integrity of society at large, just to name a few. "The system that produces the poor also produces the power to delegitimize itself... The American system, which is generally based on individualism, hedonism and democracy, is clearly losing out to a system of collectivism, self-forgetfulness and authoritarianism. Perhaps Americans would rather lose out economically than give up their institutions."
Mr. Huning observes: "The donkey is the symbol of the Democratic Party and the elephant is the symbol of the Republican Party... both parties represent the ruling class of society and control politics... neither party has a set system of membership... her party has a systematic theory... neither party has a complete platform... neither party has a tight organization... This shows that the concept of two parties is very different from that of a normal political party... In fact, there are not only the two parties, there are also many small parties, such as the Socialist Workers Party, the American Party, the People's Party, the Communist Party of America, etc. But they have never become a major party that can compete with the Republican and Democratic parties. One of the important reasons is that the two parties do not have clear boundaries, including a lot of "dissidents", There is no need for them to take refuge in others or occupy the top of the mountain because they are excluded."
- and...
"The Constitution, election campaigns, separation of powers, citizen participation in politics, and so on and so forth show one side of this system, but on the other side, can each commoner really dominate the politics of this country? My analysis in this book shows that the powerful groups that dominate politics are above the common people. The constraints of private property on political democracy in the capitalist system of the United States cannot be ignored. Even American scholars have said that a political democracy cannot function properly where the differences in economic power are so great that one group can use non-political means to determine the woes of another group."
"Grass-roots Politics, can be translated as [基层政治], or [草根政治]."
- and...
"Can the United States maintain its current position in the world? Where will the United States go in the face of challenges from Japan and Europe, and possibly from China? How will the U.S. choose when the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries pose a challenge to the United States on all fronts?"
"The problem is that the existence of all the mutually exclusive factors and forces in American society, if they continue to move in this way, will not only make their advantages unavailable, but will also constitute an unstoppable undercurrent of crisis."
On a lighter note, Mr. Huning was surprised how easy it was for him, being a foreigner, was able to get a drivers' license... "This license can be used as an "ID card" and is valid throughout the United States. No one asked me why I needed this ID card. No one said that a foreigner could not get one either." In today's California world, Huning would also be automatically registered to vote! Unbridled corruption.
- Other Excerpts:
"At the University of California, Berkeley, there is a place called "People's Park". The so-called "People's Park" was originally an empty lot on Berkeley's campus, but it was later occupied by homeless people. When I was there, there were hundreds of homeless people dressed in rags who spent the night there every day, some with small tents made of rags, others with newspapers on the ground, sleeping on the ground. The dirty, filthy, listless appearance of these Americans did not fit the concept of America in any way. Church charities came to give out breakfast each morning, and the university swimming pool was regularly opened for them to wash their bodies."
"The development of the United States today, with its economic prosperity, its political process, its way of life, and its international status, has created a great deal of doubt in the world today. People in the developed world carry this deep-rooted doubt: Has the development of human technology and material life reached this point? Is it against the nature of man? Will it lead to the depletion of the earth's resources? Will it eventually lead to the destruction of mankind?"
"In today's world of pluralistic interests, ideological barriers and conflicts, it is true that the UN does not play the role it should... Looking at the statue of a sword turned into a plow in front of the United Nations building, one wonders what methods one can use to melt the sword."
"What are the main characteristics of the American people's spirit... There is a nightmarish belief that they despise other nations and peoples almost to the point of paranoia. They believe that their country is superior and that they are superior to others, and this sense of superiority produces a natural sense of mission and a belief that they are the highest hope of the world... One of the major reasons why Europeans look down on Americans is that Europeans believe that Americans do not have a long cultural tradition and are uncivilized, like a group of "hicks" who have suddenly become rich."
"In terms of taxation, I am afraid that there are the most detailed regulations... the average person would have to study them for a long time. There are rules for every detailed aspect. If you violate these rules, you can be punished very severely....In this respect, Americans are the least free."
"Aristotle said more than 2,000 years ago that the family is the cell of society. In the years since the war, the cell, the family, has disintegrated in the United States. On the surface, the family is still the cell of society, but in reality, the real cell of society in the United States is the individual... Aristotle said more than 2,000 years ago that the family is the cell of society. In the years since the war, the cell, the family, has disintegrated in the United States. On the surface, the family is still the cell of society, but in reality, the real cell of society in the United States is the individual."
"Victor Hugo's monumental "Notre Dame de Paris" depicts the suffering and life of beggars in Paris... Strangely enough, when walking in the United States today, which is the first country of the twentieth century with the greatest wealth, one always feels that there are many people who resemble this image. They are dirty, filthy, poorly dressed, dull-eyed, slow-moving, and with a pathetic look on their faces that they cannot forget. Such a number of people, constitute the twentieth century in the United States of the eighties beggar kingdom, also constitute a major social problems in the United States. The official newspaper term for these people is Homeless, which means people who do not have a place to live... The crime situation of the whole society can be ranked among the top in the world, and blacks are especially strong. I heard a lot of stories about black people robbing Chinese people. A friend said that once he accompanied a colleague to a restaurant and met two black people on the stairs with knives demanding money." Imagine the shock Huning would have today!
- Works that may be of interest to you:
The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek (1944)
The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt (1949)
China's Hundred Weeds: A Study of the Anti–Rightist Campaign in China (1957–58) by Naranarayan Das
1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows: A memoir by Ai Weiwei (2021)
Putin's Playbook: Russia's Secret Plan to Defeat America by Rebekah Koffler (2021)
-Another book Huning refers to in his work here is:
"The Closing of The American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished The Souls of Today's Students" by Allan Bloom
"What is Bloom's main argument? Bloom's main idea is that today's university education no longer enables its subjects to grasp the traditional values that founded Western society. The development of the university in modern times is increasingly moving towards a kind of cultural relativism and spiritual openness. Cultural relativism requires spiritual openness. But implicit in this cultural relativism is the logic that there are no absolute values in the world and that everything is acceptable or unacceptable. This notion becomes a virtue... In many societies, the problem often lies not in the institutions, but in the decline of the value system. A society without a core value system encounters the greatest political coordination and management difficulties."
One gets the feeling that Wang's observations could have easily made a fine viewpoint for areas with which to politically 'target' USA's society in order to unhinge them, the unhinging that we see so prevalent today, or, more accurately, the systematic dismantling of the historic checks, balances, educational institutions (see: 2. The Ignorant Generation), drug use escalation, and the moral fiber and integrity of society at large, just to name a few. "The system that produces the poor also produces the power to delegitimize itself... The American system, which is generally based on individualism, hedonism and democracy, is clearly losing out to a system of collectivism, self-forgetfulness and authoritarianism. Perhaps Americans would rather lose out economically than give up their institutions."
Mr. Huning observes: "The donkey is the symbol of the Democratic Party and the elephant is the symbol of the Republican Party... both parties represent the ruling class of society and control politics... neither party has a set system of membership... her party has a systematic theory... neither party has a complete platform... neither party has a tight organization... This shows that the concept of two parties is very different from that of a normal political party... In fact, there are not only the two parties, there are also many small parties, such as the Socialist Workers Party, the American Party, the People's Party, the Communist Party of America, etc. But they have never become a major party that can compete with the Republican and Democratic parties. One of the important reasons is that the two parties do not have clear boundaries, including a lot of "dissidents", There is no need for them to take refuge in others or occupy the top of the mountain because they are excluded."
- and...
"The Constitution, election campaigns, separation of powers, citizen participation in politics, and so on and so forth show one side of this system, but on the other side, can each commoner really dominate the politics of this country? My analysis in this book shows that the powerful groups that dominate politics are above the common people. The constraints of private property on political democracy in the capitalist system of the United States cannot be ignored. Even American scholars have said that a political democracy cannot function properly where the differences in economic power are so great that one group can use non-political means to determine the woes of another group."
"Grass-roots Politics, can be translated as [基层政治], or [草根政治]."
- and...
"Can the United States maintain its current position in the world? Where will the United States go in the face of challenges from Japan and Europe, and possibly from China? How will the U.S. choose when the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries pose a challenge to the United States on all fronts?"
"The problem is that the existence of all the mutually exclusive factors and forces in American society, if they continue to move in this way, will not only make their advantages unavailable, but will also constitute an unstoppable undercurrent of crisis."
On a lighter note, Mr. Huning was surprised how easy it was for him, being a foreigner, was able to get a drivers' license... "This license can be used as an "ID card" and is valid throughout the United States. No one asked me why I needed this ID card. No one said that a foreigner could not get one either." In today's California world, Huning would also be automatically registered to vote! Unbridled corruption.
- Other Excerpts:
"At the University of California, Berkeley, there is a place called "People's Park". The so-called "People's Park" was originally an empty lot on Berkeley's campus, but it was later occupied by homeless people. When I was there, there were hundreds of homeless people dressed in rags who spent the night there every day, some with small tents made of rags, others with newspapers on the ground, sleeping on the ground. The dirty, filthy, listless appearance of these Americans did not fit the concept of America in any way. Church charities came to give out breakfast each morning, and the university swimming pool was regularly opened for them to wash their bodies."
"The development of the United States today, with its economic prosperity, its political process, its way of life, and its international status, has created a great deal of doubt in the world today. People in the developed world carry this deep-rooted doubt: Has the development of human technology and material life reached this point? Is it against the nature of man? Will it lead to the depletion of the earth's resources? Will it eventually lead to the destruction of mankind?"
"In today's world of pluralistic interests, ideological barriers and conflicts, it is true that the UN does not play the role it should... Looking at the statue of a sword turned into a plow in front of the United Nations building, one wonders what methods one can use to melt the sword."
"What are the main characteristics of the American people's spirit... There is a nightmarish belief that they despise other nations and peoples almost to the point of paranoia. They believe that their country is superior and that they are superior to others, and this sense of superiority produces a natural sense of mission and a belief that they are the highest hope of the world... One of the major reasons why Europeans look down on Americans is that Europeans believe that Americans do not have a long cultural tradition and are uncivilized, like a group of "hicks" who have suddenly become rich."
"In terms of taxation, I am afraid that there are the most detailed regulations... the average person would have to study them for a long time. There are rules for every detailed aspect. If you violate these rules, you can be punished very severely....In this respect, Americans are the least free."
"Aristotle said more than 2,000 years ago that the family is the cell of society. In the years since the war, the cell, the family, has disintegrated in the United States. On the surface, the family is still the cell of society, but in reality, the real cell of society in the United States is the individual... Aristotle said more than 2,000 years ago that the family is the cell of society. In the years since the war, the cell, the family, has disintegrated in the United States. On the surface, the family is still the cell of society, but in reality, the real cell of society in the United States is the individual."
"Victor Hugo's monumental "Notre Dame de Paris" depicts the suffering and life of beggars in Paris... Strangely enough, when walking in the United States today, which is the first country of the twentieth century with the greatest wealth, one always feels that there are many people who resemble this image. They are dirty, filthy, poorly dressed, dull-eyed, slow-moving, and with a pathetic look on their faces that they cannot forget. Such a number of people, constitute the twentieth century in the United States of the eighties beggar kingdom, also constitute a major social problems in the United States. The official newspaper term for these people is Homeless, which means people who do not have a place to live... The crime situation of the whole society can be ranked among the top in the world, and blacks are especially strong. I heard a lot of stories about black people robbing Chinese people. A friend said that once he accompanied a colleague to a restaurant and met two black people on the stairs with knives demanding money." Imagine the shock Huning would have today!
- Works that may be of interest to you:
The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek (1944)
The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt (1949)
China's Hundred Weeds: A Study of the Anti–Rightist Campaign in China (1957–58) by Naranarayan Das
1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows: A memoir by Ai Weiwei (2021)
Putin's Playbook: Russia's Secret Plan to Defeat America by Rebekah Koffler (2021)
-Another book Huning refers to in his work here is:
"The Closing of The American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished The Souls of Today's Students" by Allan Bloom
"What is Bloom's main argument? Bloom's main idea is that today's university education no longer enables its subjects to grasp the traditional values that founded Western society. The development of the university in modern times is increasingly moving towards a kind of cultural relativism and spiritual openness. Cultural relativism requires spiritual openness. But implicit in this cultural relativism is the logic that there are no absolute values in the world and that everything is acceptable or unacceptable. This notion becomes a virtue... In many societies, the problem often lies not in the institutions, but in the decline of the value system. A society without a core value system encounters the greatest political coordination and management difficulties."
Want to read
March 3, 2023https://www.newyorker.com/books/secon...
UPDATE
"Economic decision-making in the United States is largely controlled by private consortia. Is this democratic? Is it undemocratic? I’m afraid it can’t be answered in a single word. Paradoxes like these abound. "
"[Allan] Bloom cites numerous facts to illustrate what he calls the end of the American spirit,"
"Bloom calls this general trend of development Nihilism. Nihilism has become the American way, which is a fatal shock to cultural development and the American spirit, and as a result of this development, the American value system is declining and the entire democratic system is taking a huge hit."
https://www.tagesspiegel.de/internati...
UPDATE
"Economic decision-making in the United States is largely controlled by private consortia. Is this democratic? Is it undemocratic? I’m afraid it can’t be answered in a single word. Paradoxes like these abound. "
"[Allan] Bloom cites numerous facts to illustrate what he calls the end of the American spirit,"
"Bloom calls this general trend of development Nihilism. Nihilism has become the American way, which is a fatal shock to cultural development and the American spirit, and as a result of this development, the American value system is declining and the entire democratic system is taking a huge hit."
https://www.tagesspiegel.de/internati...
November 14, 2025
Wang Huning’s America Against America (《美国反对美国》, 1991) occupies a distinctive place in modern Chinese political thought and comparative sociology. Written after Wang’s extended fieldwork in the United States during the late 1980s, the book offers a wide-ranging, interpretive examination of American society at a moment of economic dynamism yet acute social fragmentation. Although often mined today for clues about the worldview of a senior Chinese political theorist who later rose to prominence within the Chinese Communist Party, the work stands on its own as an analytically rich contribution to the study of modernity, institutional culture, and the contradictions of liberal capitalism.
At its core, America Against America argues that the United States is riven by profound internal contradictions—economic dynamism coexists with moral and social dislocation; political freedom is accompanied by institutional paralysis; and a powerful national ethos of individualism generates both innovation and structural fragmentation. Wang approaches these tensions not from a polemical standpoint, but from the perspective of a comparative sociologist seeking to understand how American institutions reproduce both extraordinary vitality and pervasive dysfunction.
One of Wang’s key analytical threads is the relationship between culture and structure. He contends that American society is organized around a deeply rooted individualist ethos, which sustains entrepreneurialism, scientific innovation, and a flexible labor market. However, the same ethos undermines social cohesion, erodes shared values, and weakens collective capacity. Wang interprets phenomena such as urban decay, homelessness, racial inequality, and declining public trust as manifestations of cultural fragmentation rather than as isolated policy failures. This cultural reading distinguishes his work from more conventional political–economic critiques of American inequality.
Methodologically, Wang combines ethnographic observation, historical inquiry, and institutional analysis. His notes on American universities, corporate governance, social service organizations, and local communities blend empirical detail with high-level conceptual interpretation. The book’s engagement with Western thought—from Tocqueville and Weber to mid-century American sociology—reflects Wang’s intellectual cosmopolitanism and his effort to place the United States within a broader theoretical discourse on modernity.
Wang’s discussion of the U.S. political system is particularly notable. He emphasizes the tension between democratic pluralism and governance effectiveness, arguing that the proliferation of interest groups, legalism, and adversarial politics fragments decision-making. For Wang, this fragmentation represents not merely a temporary crisis but an intrinsic outcome of institutional design. The argument anticipates later debates—both in American political science and in Chinese policy circles—about the limits of liberal democratic governance in managing long-term national strategy.
Yet the book is not a celebration of alternative models, nor is it an ideological critique of the United States. Wang displays clear admiration for American scientific achievement, educational excellence, and the institutional flexibility that supports technological innovation. His analysis is animated by the conviction that understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the United States is essential for China’s own developmental trajectory—an implicit dialogue between two competing models of modernity.
From a contemporary academic standpoint, America Against America has several limitations. The book reflects its historical moment—the late 1980s—when deindustrialization, inner-city decline, and rising inequality created vivid symptoms of social stress. Its account of racial dynamics, while perceptive in places, lacks engagement with the deep historiography of race in America. Moreover, Wang’s cultural explanations sometimes risk overgeneralization, downplaying the structural role of capitalism, policy choices, and institutional path dependence. Nonetheless, these limitations are characteristic of interpretive works that privilege cultural diagnosis over causal formalism.
Despite these caveats, the book’s significance endures. For scholars of comparative politics and political theory, America Against America offers a rare example of a non-Western, non-liberal critique of American society grounded in close empirical observation rather than ideological polemic. It illuminates how an influential Chinese intellectual understood the complexities and contradictions of the United States at a pivotal historical juncture, and how those insights informed broader debates about governance, social cohesion, and national development.
Wang Huning’s America Against America remains a compelling and analytically provocative study. Its blend of sociological observation, cultural analysis, and political reflection offers a unique vantage point from which to interrogate the internal tensions of American modernity and, by extension, the global contest between divergent models of social organization.
GPT
At its core, America Against America argues that the United States is riven by profound internal contradictions—economic dynamism coexists with moral and social dislocation; political freedom is accompanied by institutional paralysis; and a powerful national ethos of individualism generates both innovation and structural fragmentation. Wang approaches these tensions not from a polemical standpoint, but from the perspective of a comparative sociologist seeking to understand how American institutions reproduce both extraordinary vitality and pervasive dysfunction.
One of Wang’s key analytical threads is the relationship between culture and structure. He contends that American society is organized around a deeply rooted individualist ethos, which sustains entrepreneurialism, scientific innovation, and a flexible labor market. However, the same ethos undermines social cohesion, erodes shared values, and weakens collective capacity. Wang interprets phenomena such as urban decay, homelessness, racial inequality, and declining public trust as manifestations of cultural fragmentation rather than as isolated policy failures. This cultural reading distinguishes his work from more conventional political–economic critiques of American inequality.
Methodologically, Wang combines ethnographic observation, historical inquiry, and institutional analysis. His notes on American universities, corporate governance, social service organizations, and local communities blend empirical detail with high-level conceptual interpretation. The book’s engagement with Western thought—from Tocqueville and Weber to mid-century American sociology—reflects Wang’s intellectual cosmopolitanism and his effort to place the United States within a broader theoretical discourse on modernity.
Wang’s discussion of the U.S. political system is particularly notable. He emphasizes the tension between democratic pluralism and governance effectiveness, arguing that the proliferation of interest groups, legalism, and adversarial politics fragments decision-making. For Wang, this fragmentation represents not merely a temporary crisis but an intrinsic outcome of institutional design. The argument anticipates later debates—both in American political science and in Chinese policy circles—about the limits of liberal democratic governance in managing long-term national strategy.
Yet the book is not a celebration of alternative models, nor is it an ideological critique of the United States. Wang displays clear admiration for American scientific achievement, educational excellence, and the institutional flexibility that supports technological innovation. His analysis is animated by the conviction that understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the United States is essential for China’s own developmental trajectory—an implicit dialogue between two competing models of modernity.
From a contemporary academic standpoint, America Against America has several limitations. The book reflects its historical moment—the late 1980s—when deindustrialization, inner-city decline, and rising inequality created vivid symptoms of social stress. Its account of racial dynamics, while perceptive in places, lacks engagement with the deep historiography of race in America. Moreover, Wang’s cultural explanations sometimes risk overgeneralization, downplaying the structural role of capitalism, policy choices, and institutional path dependence. Nonetheless, these limitations are characteristic of interpretive works that privilege cultural diagnosis over causal formalism.
Despite these caveats, the book’s significance endures. For scholars of comparative politics and political theory, America Against America offers a rare example of a non-Western, non-liberal critique of American society grounded in close empirical observation rather than ideological polemic. It illuminates how an influential Chinese intellectual understood the complexities and contradictions of the United States at a pivotal historical juncture, and how those insights informed broader debates about governance, social cohesion, and national development.
Wang Huning’s America Against America remains a compelling and analytically provocative study. Its blend of sociological observation, cultural analysis, and political reflection offers a unique vantage point from which to interrogate the internal tensions of American modernity and, by extension, the global contest between divergent models of social organization.
GPT
July 30, 2022
The English translation is pretty awful. I'm also distrustful of the way this man is getting Adam-Curtisified in lefty circles. Curtis will take complex historical phenomenon and use the documentary film format (in which he's very skilled) to reduce said phenomenon to the responsibility of a single, shadowy individual, then cue all the left media types to tweet about said individual and write "think pieces" on said individual and bring up said individual at parties "have you heard of so-and-so and did you know they..."
All that to say the mediasphere is doing this with Wang Huning now vis a vis China's current trajectory on the world stage. One of the most complex and interesting socio-economic stories is being reduced to the mysterious machinations of one obscure (not for long) man: high-ranking CPC member Wang Huning, advisor to the past several general secretaries. I suppose if one wants to sound smart about a complex issue without doing the time-consuming research, best to just throw all your chips behind one interesting person connected to the issue. But let's not pretend those who do this are more enlightened simply because they can name drop.
All that discourse baggage aside the book is OK, an interesting time capsule. Not worth all the media hype. There are better books to read to understand the current US-China tension, and its historical context. I'll continue posting and reviewing them here semi- regularly.
All that to say the mediasphere is doing this with Wang Huning now vis a vis China's current trajectory on the world stage. One of the most complex and interesting socio-economic stories is being reduced to the mysterious machinations of one obscure (not for long) man: high-ranking CPC member Wang Huning, advisor to the past several general secretaries. I suppose if one wants to sound smart about a complex issue without doing the time-consuming research, best to just throw all your chips behind one interesting person connected to the issue. But let's not pretend those who do this are more enlightened simply because they can name drop.
All that discourse baggage aside the book is OK, an interesting time capsule. Not worth all the media hype. There are better books to read to understand the current US-China tension, and its historical context. I'll continue posting and reviewing them here semi- regularly.
February 7, 2022
Very funny book, a bit along the lines of the old anthropological style of book; living with the x tribe or whatever, except its about the USA.
August 13, 2022
The English translation is not perfect but I only had 2-5 situations over the whole book where it made things unclear.
Interestingly, many of the things the author wrote about Japan didn't happen, instead it happened with China. Now Chinese people are buying up properties en masse in the West.
And what is even more interesting, the man who wrote this book, Wang Huning, helped make this happen. He is one of the men behind Xi Jingping.
Interestingly, many of the things the author wrote about Japan didn't happen, instead it happened with China. Now Chinese people are buying up properties en masse in the West.
And what is even more interesting, the man who wrote this book, Wang Huning, helped make this happen. He is one of the men behind Xi Jingping.
October 30, 2021
The first and final third are an interesting piece of sociological analysis from an outsider's perspective. The middle third which details the structure of the U.S. political system is probably best skipped for those familiar with it.
July 20, 2025
A bit of a hard read because the translation is pretty rough and also whatever pdf of this I had had a horrible 1980s computer font, very hard to look at, but that’s not the book’s fault.
Anyway this is very interesting, Wang Huning is more or less the main ideological theorist behind the current era of the CPC, and here you find essentially his travel diary thoughts as he takes a trip to the US in the late 80s.
Instead of being written in an overly Marxian way, it seems Wang opts for a more pop style, a liberal style even you could say, generally reporting and seemingly taking at face value the democratic functions of government as presented to him in federal, state, and local levels (as well as general functions of day to day society in various institutions etc from everyone he meets). For this reason mainly it’ll be a boring read to most Americans as he explains glowingly how the DMV works or about his meetings with city and town level officials. He ponders (seemingly) open-endedly, on how societies move forward once they’re industrialized, asking the reader to ponder it without ever decrying it or even mentioning the alternative. In fact he actually only points to alternative societies in the final chapter and even there only really mentions Japan as having a collective culture. Wang investigates the culture and functioning of America to see, is Western democracy better? Is this culture the natural cultural progression of an industrial society, is it inevitable under capitalism dominant and “liberal democracy” dominant? In hindsight it’s clear he’s asking his audience, who like many at the time were enamored with becoming more like the West, what that might really mean for their lifestyle longterm. At the same time he’s examining many of the administrative and technological practices from a noticeably positive perspective.
He alludes to problems that will occur in the future in a culture such as the US’s based on what he sees. A degrading political culture, a lack of spiritual culture, a rejection of collective care or wellbeing (hyper individualism, including within family and partner dynamics), material and historical problems that have only gotten worse. Overall, the book’s focus on America’s lack of cultural coherence, points to exacerbating the material cracks in the foundation, as opposed to being able to fix them. In this way Wang leads the way to the solution (which you can probably see in modern day China) but without ever mentioning it. Unfortunately for us most of what he saw coming (not that he was alone in that) came to fruition. A degraded nation deep in crises, spiritual, cultural, political, economical, seemingly destined by its ethos to cannibalize itself.
Anyway this is very interesting, Wang Huning is more or less the main ideological theorist behind the current era of the CPC, and here you find essentially his travel diary thoughts as he takes a trip to the US in the late 80s.
Instead of being written in an overly Marxian way, it seems Wang opts for a more pop style, a liberal style even you could say, generally reporting and seemingly taking at face value the democratic functions of government as presented to him in federal, state, and local levels (as well as general functions of day to day society in various institutions etc from everyone he meets). For this reason mainly it’ll be a boring read to most Americans as he explains glowingly how the DMV works or about his meetings with city and town level officials. He ponders (seemingly) open-endedly, on how societies move forward once they’re industrialized, asking the reader to ponder it without ever decrying it or even mentioning the alternative. In fact he actually only points to alternative societies in the final chapter and even there only really mentions Japan as having a collective culture. Wang investigates the culture and functioning of America to see, is Western democracy better? Is this culture the natural cultural progression of an industrial society, is it inevitable under capitalism dominant and “liberal democracy” dominant? In hindsight it’s clear he’s asking his audience, who like many at the time were enamored with becoming more like the West, what that might really mean for their lifestyle longterm. At the same time he’s examining many of the administrative and technological practices from a noticeably positive perspective.
He alludes to problems that will occur in the future in a culture such as the US’s based on what he sees. A degrading political culture, a lack of spiritual culture, a rejection of collective care or wellbeing (hyper individualism, including within family and partner dynamics), material and historical problems that have only gotten worse. Overall, the book’s focus on America’s lack of cultural coherence, points to exacerbating the material cracks in the foundation, as opposed to being able to fix them. In this way Wang leads the way to the solution (which you can probably see in modern day China) but without ever mentioning it. Unfortunately for us most of what he saw coming (not that he was alone in that) came to fruition. A degraded nation deep in crises, spiritual, cultural, political, economical, seemingly destined by its ethos to cannibalize itself.
January 14, 2025
Importante obra para ver el análisis a nivel macro y micro geopolitico de EE.UU en los 90's y comparación del ala "oriental" con la "occidental".
June 3, 2023
Correctly described as a modern Tocqueville, the author is a Chinese academic who visited the US in the late 1980s and made this astute summary of American society.
A good outsider's description that helps explain the many contradictions America presents: people proud of their democracy despite the obvious irrelevance of one's individual vote, a pragmatic attitude toward everything yet still very religious, believers in meritocracy yet run by elites who take advantage of their obvious superiority.
He proposes that a key way to understand Americans is that they separate values on the one hand, from technology and material objects. As a commodity-based society, nobody cares who you are or how you got your money: anyone with the cash is free to go to any store, any hotel, restaurant, etc. This same focus on individuals and objects is the key to understanding everything from religion to political parties to big corporations.
Many of his conclusions are remarkably prescient, with his predictions about future conflicts over race and sex proving all too true thirty years after he wrote about them.
A good outsider's description that helps explain the many contradictions America presents: people proud of their democracy despite the obvious irrelevance of one's individual vote, a pragmatic attitude toward everything yet still very religious, believers in meritocracy yet run by elites who take advantage of their obvious superiority.
He proposes that a key way to understand Americans is that they separate values on the one hand, from technology and material objects. As a commodity-based society, nobody cares who you are or how you got your money: anyone with the cash is free to go to any store, any hotel, restaurant, etc. This same focus on individuals and objects is the key to understanding everything from religion to political parties to big corporations.
Many of his conclusions are remarkably prescient, with his predictions about future conflicts over race and sex proving all too true thirty years after he wrote about them.
March 15, 2025
my fascination with chinese history, culture, and politics runs deep; especially so hearing the words of Wang Huning, the grey eminence of Chinese politics, one of the few individuals who was able to powerfully shape Chinese politics through multiple presidencies, particularly surviving the Hu-Xi transition. especially notable is Wang's persistence through Xi's era of consolidation—not just of political power, but of his grip on the nation through powerful messaging and the establishment of Xi Jinping Thought. but the man behind all of modern China's messaging had a striking message of his own to deliver during his 1990s visit to the United States. Wang, in an official sense may only serve as the fourth ranking member on the Politburo, additionally as the chairman of the CPPCC, but his messaging and influence has shaped both China's opening, and reaction to the world, heavily influencing all decisions made throughout some of the most consequential changes ever seen in a single country. this is a fascinating and consequential insight into the thoughts and perceptions of some of the highest ranking Politburo members coming into the 21st century.
to those who say The Art of the Deal is key to understanding the current administration's decision-making, I propose America Against America to understand the domestic political climate within the Chinese Communist Party, which heavily influences decision-making within the Party.
i also propose to read this book to understand a foreigner's perspective on domestic U.S. politics, and where it is going. Wang predicts that internal strife will tear the U.S. apart, and I am worried that this harbinger will come true.
to those who say The Art of the Deal is key to understanding the current administration's decision-making, I propose America Against America to understand the domestic political climate within the Chinese Communist Party, which heavily influences decision-making within the Party.
i also propose to read this book to understand a foreigner's perspective on domestic U.S. politics, and where it is going. Wang predicts that internal strife will tear the U.S. apart, and I am worried that this harbinger will come true.
November 14, 2023
really good book by wang huning published in early 1990's, he was trying to make sense of why america a country so young was leading and dominating in the world and why china a country so ancient was lagging behind, and it was a pretty in-depth analysis of the american people, its spirit, its customs and also its corporations and the legal system.
gave a lot of information about the sigma grindset spirit of what made the americans of those times be so effective, he also had tidbits sprayed throughout contrasting with china and also japan - which had done some economic miracles in those times and was competing against america over various industries like automobiles.
it talks about the good and the bad - most of it talking about the good and what worked so well and made them lead the world and reasons why with some criticism and contemplations on the bad and the weakness along with musings on how sustainable it is.
well well well, pretty good book if you can tolerate the parts where he goes on huge detailed explanations about things like a decentralized legal, elections, and managerial systems in the middle of the book.
gave a lot of information about the sigma grindset spirit of what made the americans of those times be so effective, he also had tidbits sprayed throughout contrasting with china and also japan - which had done some economic miracles in those times and was competing against america over various industries like automobiles.
it talks about the good and the bad - most of it talking about the good and what worked so well and made them lead the world and reasons why with some criticism and contemplations on the bad and the weakness along with musings on how sustainable it is.
well well well, pretty good book if you can tolerate the parts where he goes on huge detailed explanations about things like a decentralized legal, elections, and managerial systems in the middle of the book.
March 25, 2022
(The following bio of Wang Huning is taken from my website, a critical edition featuring translation from a team of China scholars as well as extensive footnotes will be published by Tikhanov Library this summer)
A prolific writer and renowned theoretician, Wang Huning is the 5th most powerful person in the CCP. Wang is believed to have been one of the principal architects behind the official political ideologies of three paramount leaders: "Three Represents" by Jiang Zemin, the Scientific Development Concept by Hu Jintao, and the Chinese Dream and Xi Jinping Thought of Xi Jinping. He currently works as head of the Chinese Policy Research Office and chairman of the Central Guidance Commission on Building Spiritual Civilization.
To simply list his accolades, however,would not do justice to Huning's unparalleled rise to power. Seemingly a very private, intellectual, and unambitious person, Wang Huning has been a rising star since his 30's, when he became the youngest law professor in Fudan University history. Three years later he was awarded a prestigious scholarship to see the United States as a visiting scholar for six months. There is a famous anecdote from around this time that the President of Fudan University offered to promote Huning and give him a larger apartment, Huning laughed at the idea and told him that there were many scholars more deserving than him who could use the extra space.
At Fudan University, Wang Huning was well regarded as a popular and charismatic professor, who's down-to-earth teaching style attracted large crowds of students. His success in a series of international debating championships, where as coach he led the Fudan team to victory and international fame on numerous occasions, as well as his industrious work ethic, having published over a dozen books by this time, attracted attention from the highest ranks of Shanghai municipal government. Zeng Qinghong, who later became China's Vice-President, is said to have personally sought out Wang at a wedding and spent two hours chatting with him. Wang's writing was read and admired by Wang Doahan, Pan Weiming, Wu Banggou, and other members of the so-called "Shanghai Gang" which formed the base of President Jiang Zemin's power. With so many powerful admirers, Wang was invited to relocate to Beijing by Jiang Zemin himself, which Wang reluctantly accepted.
It was around this time that Wang Huning took a vow of silence in regards to the outside world. Having at this point authored over 20 books and countless papers, Wang Huning ceased all publication through non-party journals, and stopped talking with many of his foreign friends.
Wang started his career in Beijing as head of the politics group in the Central Policy Research Office, which is a branch within the CCP tasked with providing policy recommendations, developing ideologue, and drafting Party documents and speeches. He was soon promoted to Deputy Directory of the Research Office, and in 2002, during the transition from Jiang Zemin's administration to that of Hu Jintao, Wang became a member of the Central Committee. Wang Huning's meritous rise was not at all interrupted by this new era of leadership, and in 2007 he became a member of the influential Central Secretariat, which along with his directorship of the Research Office numbered him among the top 200 most powerful men in China.
The rise of Xi Jingping has not tarnished Wang Huning's good fortunes, and in 2018 he was promoted again to member of the Political Bureau, the 25-man core of Chinese leadership. This remarkable achievement, which has been widely publicized in the media, is all the more outstanding when considering the factional politics within the CCP, and the imprisonment of many notable members of the "Shanghai Gang". His remarkable career is no doubt, in part due to Wang Huning's renown as an intellectual, and many of his books, notably National Soverignity (1987) and America Against America (1991) continue to be read today.
Written from notes taken during Wang Huning's six month visit to the United States, America Against America tries to answer one single question: "Why is there an America?" The conclusion is the koan-like title of the book. Between these two seemingly simple extremes is a wonderfully complicated and nuanced journey into American society, and the multitudes of contradictions which define it. Originally a companion to Wang's more theoretical work, Comparative Political Analysis, America Against America is as much an introduction to political science as it is a travelogue. Always the professor, Wang Huning included this challenge to his readers in the original introduction to America Against America: "Sometimes people need to do a job that provides the opportunity to think, not to conclude. The various real-life accounts in this book follow my thinking and conclusions, but I have also tried to make it an opportunity for others to think." There is little doubt that America Against America is a book which people will be thinking about for a long time.
A prolific writer and renowned theoretician, Wang Huning is the 5th most powerful person in the CCP. Wang is believed to have been one of the principal architects behind the official political ideologies of three paramount leaders: "Three Represents" by Jiang Zemin, the Scientific Development Concept by Hu Jintao, and the Chinese Dream and Xi Jinping Thought of Xi Jinping. He currently works as head of the Chinese Policy Research Office and chairman of the Central Guidance Commission on Building Spiritual Civilization.
To simply list his accolades, however,would not do justice to Huning's unparalleled rise to power. Seemingly a very private, intellectual, and unambitious person, Wang Huning has been a rising star since his 30's, when he became the youngest law professor in Fudan University history. Three years later he was awarded a prestigious scholarship to see the United States as a visiting scholar for six months. There is a famous anecdote from around this time that the President of Fudan University offered to promote Huning and give him a larger apartment, Huning laughed at the idea and told him that there were many scholars more deserving than him who could use the extra space.
At Fudan University, Wang Huning was well regarded as a popular and charismatic professor, who's down-to-earth teaching style attracted large crowds of students. His success in a series of international debating championships, where as coach he led the Fudan team to victory and international fame on numerous occasions, as well as his industrious work ethic, having published over a dozen books by this time, attracted attention from the highest ranks of Shanghai municipal government. Zeng Qinghong, who later became China's Vice-President, is said to have personally sought out Wang at a wedding and spent two hours chatting with him. Wang's writing was read and admired by Wang Doahan, Pan Weiming, Wu Banggou, and other members of the so-called "Shanghai Gang" which formed the base of President Jiang Zemin's power. With so many powerful admirers, Wang was invited to relocate to Beijing by Jiang Zemin himself, which Wang reluctantly accepted.
It was around this time that Wang Huning took a vow of silence in regards to the outside world. Having at this point authored over 20 books and countless papers, Wang Huning ceased all publication through non-party journals, and stopped talking with many of his foreign friends.
Wang started his career in Beijing as head of the politics group in the Central Policy Research Office, which is a branch within the CCP tasked with providing policy recommendations, developing ideologue, and drafting Party documents and speeches. He was soon promoted to Deputy Directory of the Research Office, and in 2002, during the transition from Jiang Zemin's administration to that of Hu Jintao, Wang became a member of the Central Committee. Wang Huning's meritous rise was not at all interrupted by this new era of leadership, and in 2007 he became a member of the influential Central Secretariat, which along with his directorship of the Research Office numbered him among the top 200 most powerful men in China.
The rise of Xi Jingping has not tarnished Wang Huning's good fortunes, and in 2018 he was promoted again to member of the Political Bureau, the 25-man core of Chinese leadership. This remarkable achievement, which has been widely publicized in the media, is all the more outstanding when considering the factional politics within the CCP, and the imprisonment of many notable members of the "Shanghai Gang". His remarkable career is no doubt, in part due to Wang Huning's renown as an intellectual, and many of his books, notably National Soverignity (1987) and America Against America (1991) continue to be read today.
Written from notes taken during Wang Huning's six month visit to the United States, America Against America tries to answer one single question: "Why is there an America?" The conclusion is the koan-like title of the book. Between these two seemingly simple extremes is a wonderfully complicated and nuanced journey into American society, and the multitudes of contradictions which define it. Originally a companion to Wang's more theoretical work, Comparative Political Analysis, America Against America is as much an introduction to political science as it is a travelogue. Always the professor, Wang Huning included this challenge to his readers in the original introduction to America Against America: "Sometimes people need to do a job that provides the opportunity to think, not to conclude. The various real-life accounts in this book follow my thinking and conclusions, but I have also tried to make it an opportunity for others to think." There is little doubt that America Against America is a book which people will be thinking about for a long time.
April 16, 2025
veľmi kniha svojho času, zaujímavý pohľad a dosť ambiciózny pokus o zistenie čo vlastne tá Amerika je? bolo by zaujímavejšie keby som o amerike vedel menej, príjemná kniha
March 13, 2022
An interesting "anthropological" look at US society from a Chinese professor-turned politician who is currently holding a major position in the Chinese Communist Party under Xi Jinping. Quite a few articles in western media have talked about this book as some sort of "analysis of the US by the Chinese Communist enemy", but my fundamental impression was that the author seemed like more of an Americophile, trying to understand which parts of US society can and can not be applied for China's own modernisation process.
Written in 1989 after the author's stay in the US as a visiting scholar, the book is broadly divided in three parts, first with a broad overview of US society, then various institutions, first pointing out how these have led to successes throughout the 20th century, finally highlighting flaws and predicting various issues with the system going forward. Some parts are of course out of date, but there's also observations which have held up surprisingly well. Most interesting to me were the comparisons with Chinese society, although as the book was originally written for a Chinese audience, the Chinese perspective is somewhat taken for granted and not elaborated on for the reader, not fully elaborating on how Chinese society handles these issues differently.
Large portions of the book are very descriptive, as the author seeks to present US political, social and economic institutions to a Chinese audience. If one is already familiar with these processes in the US, one might easily end up skimming a fair amount of the book which merely reiterates what one would already be familiar with. Additionally, the translation into English is unfortunately not the best, as I believe it's an edited machine translation (DeepL). Probably this would have been a better read in the original Chinese, from a Chinese perspective, but it was still interesting to check out. 2.5 stars as is, probably higher if not for the translation.
Written in 1989 after the author's stay in the US as a visiting scholar, the book is broadly divided in three parts, first with a broad overview of US society, then various institutions, first pointing out how these have led to successes throughout the 20th century, finally highlighting flaws and predicting various issues with the system going forward. Some parts are of course out of date, but there's also observations which have held up surprisingly well. Most interesting to me were the comparisons with Chinese society, although as the book was originally written for a Chinese audience, the Chinese perspective is somewhat taken for granted and not elaborated on for the reader, not fully elaborating on how Chinese society handles these issues differently.
Large portions of the book are very descriptive, as the author seeks to present US political, social and economic institutions to a Chinese audience. If one is already familiar with these processes in the US, one might easily end up skimming a fair amount of the book which merely reiterates what one would already be familiar with. Additionally, the translation into English is unfortunately not the best, as I believe it's an edited machine translation (DeepL). Probably this would have been a better read in the original Chinese, from a Chinese perspective, but it was still interesting to check out. 2.5 stars as is, probably higher if not for the translation.
January 16, 2022
https://palladiummag.com/2021/10/11/t...
The real cell of society in the United States is the individual. This is so because the cell most foundational (per Aristotle) to society, the family, has disintegrated. Meanwhile, in the American system, “everything has a dual nature, and the glamour of high commodification abounds. Human flesh, sex, knowledge, politics, power, and law can all become the target of commodification.” This “commodification, in many ways, corrupts society and leads to a number of serious social problems.” In the end, “the American economic system has created human loneliness” as its foremost product, along with spectacular inequality. As a result, “nihilism has become the American way, which is a fatal shock to cultural development and the American spirit.”
Wang’s America: deindustrialization, rural decay, over-financialization, out of control asset prices, and the emergence of a self-perpetuating rentier elite; powerful tech monopolies able to crush any upstart competitors operating effectively beyond the scope of government; immense economic inequality, chronic unemployment, addiction, homelessness, and crime; cultural chaos, historical nihilism, family breakdown, and plunging fertility rates; societal despair, spiritual malaise, social isolation, and skyrocketing rates of mental health issues; a loss of national unity and purpose in the face of decadence and barely concealed self-loathing; vast internal divisions, racial tensions, riots, political violence, and a country that increasingly seems close to coming apart.
As a tumultuous 2020 roiled American politics, Chinese people began turning to Wang’s America Against America for answers. And when a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021, the book flew off the shelves.
The real cell of society in the United States is the individual. This is so because the cell most foundational (per Aristotle) to society, the family, has disintegrated. Meanwhile, in the American system, “everything has a dual nature, and the glamour of high commodification abounds. Human flesh, sex, knowledge, politics, power, and law can all become the target of commodification.” This “commodification, in many ways, corrupts society and leads to a number of serious social problems.” In the end, “the American economic system has created human loneliness” as its foremost product, along with spectacular inequality. As a result, “nihilism has become the American way, which is a fatal shock to cultural development and the American spirit.”
Wang’s America: deindustrialization, rural decay, over-financialization, out of control asset prices, and the emergence of a self-perpetuating rentier elite; powerful tech monopolies able to crush any upstart competitors operating effectively beyond the scope of government; immense economic inequality, chronic unemployment, addiction, homelessness, and crime; cultural chaos, historical nihilism, family breakdown, and plunging fertility rates; societal despair, spiritual malaise, social isolation, and skyrocketing rates of mental health issues; a loss of national unity and purpose in the face of decadence and barely concealed self-loathing; vast internal divisions, racial tensions, riots, political violence, and a country that increasingly seems close to coming apart.
As a tumultuous 2020 roiled American politics, Chinese people began turning to Wang’s America Against America for answers. And when a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021, the book flew off the shelves.
March 31, 2022
My 3 rating is a compromise between 0 and 5. The 0 is for the translation, which I think was a machine translation and is in any case the worst translation I have ever seen. Whole paragraphs are unintelligible, probably because the machine chose the wrong one of two alternative meanings and worked it into a grammatical sentence which made no sense in context. (Or whatever -- your guess is as good as mine, I suppose). My command of modern Chinese is poor, but I often found myself trying to guess which Chinese word was being (mis)translated.
This might be a fly-by-night pirate book -- no publisher or translator is given, there's no pagination, and the physical copy I got was not quite right.
As a window into how 1988 America looked to a relatively open-minded Chinese Communist visitor, this book is invaluable -- the more so because its author is now on the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. He had come to find good things in America for China to learn from as well as bad things to avoid. He appreciated the good economic and intellectual effects of American openness, but he was repelled by the sexual freedom, drug use, crime, and beggary he saw in the cities and aspecially the breakdown of the family. He basically came to the neoliberal conclusion -- economic liberalism with minimal political liberalism -- and once he became politically influential he is thought to have argued for authoritarianism and against liberalization.
A couple amusing asides: the backbiting and infighting in American academia surprised him, and so did the inflexible, hardnose approach of management toward workers at the work site. My students in Taiwan also noticed something like this, feeling that their local ways were humane than the American way.
This might be a fly-by-night pirate book -- no publisher or translator is given, there's no pagination, and the physical copy I got was not quite right.
As a window into how 1988 America looked to a relatively open-minded Chinese Communist visitor, this book is invaluable -- the more so because its author is now on the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. He had come to find good things in America for China to learn from as well as bad things to avoid. He appreciated the good economic and intellectual effects of American openness, but he was repelled by the sexual freedom, drug use, crime, and beggary he saw in the cities and aspecially the breakdown of the family. He basically came to the neoliberal conclusion -- economic liberalism with minimal political liberalism -- and once he became politically influential he is thought to have argued for authoritarianism and against liberalization.
A couple amusing asides: the backbiting and infighting in American academia surprised him, and so did the inflexible, hardnose approach of management toward workers at the work site. My students in Taiwan also noticed something like this, feeling that their local ways were humane than the American way.
October 11, 2022
This is a fascinating sketch of 20th-century America by Wang Huning, a Chinese political scientist who is now, as a member of the CCP Politburo Standing Committee, one of the 7 most powerful people in China. Based on Wang's 6 months of travel throughout the U.S. in 1988, this book strikes me as a more impressionistic (less polished, but also freer to make miscellaneous interesting observations and interpretations) version of Tocqueville's Democracy in America. Despite Wang's position today, his writing (at least in this 1991 work) takes a consistently measured, analytical perspective and tone towards America, commenting often incisively on its distinctive characteristics, strengths, and failings.
May 16, 2022
Dense and low readability. I couldn't finish it, but nonetheless it provided a new perspective, which I found interesting. I learned how an outsider from China viewed America and its problems; quite prescient, outlining problems that decades later, today, are coming into fruition.
March 7, 2022
You should read the first 50 and the last 50 pages. Good insights there that are very relevant still. Other parts of it are US polisci 101.
June 8, 2022
There is no way that you'd call this a quick read. I read it over many months and by that I mean 6 to 9 months. Why so long you might ask? Well, it's pretty dry it's quite dense with facts and it is written with a great deal of consideration. This means that you read a bit of it and then you have to stop and think about it.
You might ask who is Wang Huning? He is the non-descript guy that you quite often see in the background when Chinese leaders are talking to other world leaders, if you weren't looking for him you'd never see him.
He's been around for a long, long time which is unusual in Chinese politics, his is the mind behind China's policies, both domestic and foreign.
He went on an extended tour of the United States some time in the 80s and he took detailed notes of what he saw and what he heard.
He's starting premise was something along the lines of these two questions.
The American Question:
How could a country with so little history rise to such dominance in the world?
The Chinese Question:
How could a country with so much history fall so far behind.
This book really covers everything about America, the social structure, the financial structure, the political structure, the lot. And while his scope is far-reaching and far ranging it wasn't judgemental as such, more of an open curiosity than a closed-minded quest.
When it comes to politics, he soon realises that although America may claim to be the worlds leading democracy, in fact, that is a claim that is simply not true.
He rightly points out that a small group of very rich people controls most of what happens not only in American politics, but indeed also most of what happens at all levels of American life.
When it comes to presidential elections he quite rightly points out that the American population do not and cannot vote for the person who will actually become the president. All they can vote for is the people who will vote for who will become the next president.
In this book there is a very full and easy to understand explanation of the very complicated American voting system. I am glad I read this book just for that one piece of information alone. I don't think anyone outside of America has any idea of how that complicated system works, and I suspect not many people inside America have much of an idea either.
One of the things that surprise him is just how free and open the flow of information is in the United States. He talks about research from the leading American universities and how that research flows seamlessly into American industries and often these new ideas are enacted almost immediately. Through this one thing it becomes obvious to him that this is, in fact, one of the ways that America has come to dominate the world. Comparing how long new ideas take to enter the mainstream in China it is easy to see why China would fall behind when compared to the United States.
He also cites some American Think Tanks and how they influence public policy in a way that is quite open and transparent, possibly reflecting on how that same process is maybe not so open and transparent in China itself.
The areas where he tends to show more of himself is when it comes to how people are treated in the United States.
He mentions cities with such an opulent display of wealth and power, and yet those same streets have sidewalk's and doorways full of homeless people, full of sick people, full of mentally ill people, and he asks how is this possible? He realises that for America this is an acceptable by-product of both their culture and their economy.
One of his more chilling realisations is when it comes to parents supporting children through higher education. He contrasts to China where parents will invest in their children's future because those children will support the parents when they are old.
But in the United States there is no such expectation that children will support parents when they are old.
He says that some parents, realising that there will be no return on any investment in the children's further education, and simply encourage or force their children to leave home as soon as possible.
He does combine this idea with the fact that all Americans are raised to be independent above all else. And so encouraging your children to go out into the world to prove their independence is not looked upon in the same light as it would be in other countries.
His conclusions pretty much point the direction that America has followed since his visit including the breakdown of the family being at the heart of American life. The disparity of wealth. And while Americans believe they are more free than other nations, in fact, their freedoms are more limited, their taxes are higher and they get less representation than almost all other democratic countries.
It is also a good snapshot of how America was around the time that Ronald Reagan came to power end before his terrible policies had gutted life for most Americans.
You might ask who is Wang Huning? He is the non-descript guy that you quite often see in the background when Chinese leaders are talking to other world leaders, if you weren't looking for him you'd never see him.
He's been around for a long, long time which is unusual in Chinese politics, his is the mind behind China's policies, both domestic and foreign.
He went on an extended tour of the United States some time in the 80s and he took detailed notes of what he saw and what he heard.
He's starting premise was something along the lines of these two questions.
The American Question:
How could a country with so little history rise to such dominance in the world?
The Chinese Question:
How could a country with so much history fall so far behind.
This book really covers everything about America, the social structure, the financial structure, the political structure, the lot. And while his scope is far-reaching and far ranging it wasn't judgemental as such, more of an open curiosity than a closed-minded quest.
When it comes to politics, he soon realises that although America may claim to be the worlds leading democracy, in fact, that is a claim that is simply not true.
He rightly points out that a small group of very rich people controls most of what happens not only in American politics, but indeed also most of what happens at all levels of American life.
When it comes to presidential elections he quite rightly points out that the American population do not and cannot vote for the person who will actually become the president. All they can vote for is the people who will vote for who will become the next president.
In this book there is a very full and easy to understand explanation of the very complicated American voting system. I am glad I read this book just for that one piece of information alone. I don't think anyone outside of America has any idea of how that complicated system works, and I suspect not many people inside America have much of an idea either.
One of the things that surprise him is just how free and open the flow of information is in the United States. He talks about research from the leading American universities and how that research flows seamlessly into American industries and often these new ideas are enacted almost immediately. Through this one thing it becomes obvious to him that this is, in fact, one of the ways that America has come to dominate the world. Comparing how long new ideas take to enter the mainstream in China it is easy to see why China would fall behind when compared to the United States.
He also cites some American Think Tanks and how they influence public policy in a way that is quite open and transparent, possibly reflecting on how that same process is maybe not so open and transparent in China itself.
The areas where he tends to show more of himself is when it comes to how people are treated in the United States.
He mentions cities with such an opulent display of wealth and power, and yet those same streets have sidewalk's and doorways full of homeless people, full of sick people, full of mentally ill people, and he asks how is this possible? He realises that for America this is an acceptable by-product of both their culture and their economy.
One of his more chilling realisations is when it comes to parents supporting children through higher education. He contrasts to China where parents will invest in their children's future because those children will support the parents when they are old.
But in the United States there is no such expectation that children will support parents when they are old.
He says that some parents, realising that there will be no return on any investment in the children's further education, and simply encourage or force their children to leave home as soon as possible.
He does combine this idea with the fact that all Americans are raised to be independent above all else. And so encouraging your children to go out into the world to prove their independence is not looked upon in the same light as it would be in other countries.
His conclusions pretty much point the direction that America has followed since his visit including the breakdown of the family being at the heart of American life. The disparity of wealth. And while Americans believe they are more free than other nations, in fact, their freedoms are more limited, their taxes are higher and they get less representation than almost all other democratic countries.
It is also a good snapshot of how America was around the time that Ronald Reagan came to power end before his terrible policies had gutted life for most Americans.
July 17, 2024
This is an interesting book but not an impressive one. I was drawn to it by a very strong advocate and I honestly concluded that the reviewer was far more insightful than the author. The book does adopt some views about American society that will suit observors today, particular those with a conservative bent, and no doubt it is sometimes correct in its observations, but that is really just cherry picking bits of text to serve a purpose.
The book's interest derives from the author's political influence on President Xi and China's policies towards the USA and the West. In particular they argue that the USA is losing the qualities that made it so successful in the past and is in decline, culturally, morally, politically and eventually economically. The book's title expresses the idea that every positive attribute contributing to American success is being undermined by a corresponding defect.
The author himself and his reviewers compare this book to de Toqueville's historic investigation of America. I found much of the analysis distinctly idiosyncratic and even silly. It had all the naivety of a farmer who sold a bull and set out to visit the big city. It was often more similar to Gulliver's Travels and Swift's description of the Big Enders and the Little Enders. It ultimately imposes a narrative structure onto disparate scraps of information to tell a story but fails to persuade this reader to suspend disbelief.
Now I concede that it is fascinating to witness the immense gap between this Chinese academic and his American hosts at a time when China was still opening up to the West. But what this achieves is to tell us something useful about China at that time and somethingabout the way they think about the West. I don’t find it is at all interesting as a commentary on America.
Don’t get me wrong. I share a dismal foreboding that America is going to hell in a handcart. I just want a better analysis of what's wrong.
The book's interest derives from the author's political influence on President Xi and China's policies towards the USA and the West. In particular they argue that the USA is losing the qualities that made it so successful in the past and is in decline, culturally, morally, politically and eventually economically. The book's title expresses the idea that every positive attribute contributing to American success is being undermined by a corresponding defect.
The author himself and his reviewers compare this book to de Toqueville's historic investigation of America. I found much of the analysis distinctly idiosyncratic and even silly. It had all the naivety of a farmer who sold a bull and set out to visit the big city. It was often more similar to Gulliver's Travels and Swift's description of the Big Enders and the Little Enders. It ultimately imposes a narrative structure onto disparate scraps of information to tell a story but fails to persuade this reader to suspend disbelief.
Now I concede that it is fascinating to witness the immense gap between this Chinese academic and his American hosts at a time when China was still opening up to the West. But what this achieves is to tell us something useful about China at that time and somethingabout the way they think about the West. I don’t find it is at all interesting as a commentary on America.
Don’t get me wrong. I share a dismal foreboding that America is going to hell in a handcart. I just want a better analysis of what's wrong.
January 12, 2025
Insightful to see America from the perspective of a complete outsider. The translation is pretty rough though.
Includes misses: "They could no longer tell the difference between Methodists and Presbyterians just as they could not see the difference in principle between Republicans and Democrats"
Unintentionally funny quotes: "There is no way to avoid the vagaries of nature. Pig farming can be described as dirty and smelly. This farm is highly automated, but dirty and smelly cannot be excluded. Pigs do not know about cleanliness, there is no way out."
"I talked earlier about the Brookings Institution, which gets its major funding from foundations or whatever."
But also wise insights: "Political rules and political traditions are more powerful than laws, because one is written in words and the other is written in people's beliefs."
"The high level of scientific and technological development is often followed by the illusion that it is not man who ultimately solves the problem, but rather that science and technology become the ultimate power and man becomes the slave... In the face of some intricate social and cultural problems, Americans tend to think of it as a scientific and technological problem. Or is it a matter of money...The approach to the growth of Soviet power was to desperately develop equipment superior to Soviet weapons systems, including the eventual proposed Star Wars program. The way to deal with terrorism is to strike the other side with advanced attack forces. The way to deal with threats in international waters is a powerful and well-equipped fleet. The way to deal with regimes you don't like is to provide the opposition with a lot of advanced weaponry."
"People seek to be governed. Americans like to be governed least, but they like money most. The logic of money is to lead people to be governed."
Includes misses: "They could no longer tell the difference between Methodists and Presbyterians just as they could not see the difference in principle between Republicans and Democrats"
Unintentionally funny quotes: "There is no way to avoid the vagaries of nature. Pig farming can be described as dirty and smelly. This farm is highly automated, but dirty and smelly cannot be excluded. Pigs do not know about cleanliness, there is no way out."
"I talked earlier about the Brookings Institution, which gets its major funding from foundations or whatever."
But also wise insights: "Political rules and political traditions are more powerful than laws, because one is written in words and the other is written in people's beliefs."
"The high level of scientific and technological development is often followed by the illusion that it is not man who ultimately solves the problem, but rather that science and technology become the ultimate power and man becomes the slave... In the face of some intricate social and cultural problems, Americans tend to think of it as a scientific and technological problem. Or is it a matter of money...The approach to the growth of Soviet power was to desperately develop equipment superior to Soviet weapons systems, including the eventual proposed Star Wars program. The way to deal with terrorism is to strike the other side with advanced attack forces. The way to deal with threats in international waters is a powerful and well-equipped fleet. The way to deal with regimes you don't like is to provide the opposition with a lot of advanced weaponry."
"People seek to be governed. Americans like to be governed least, but they like money most. The logic of money is to lead people to be governed."
September 7, 2025
Wang Huning is considered as one of the current ideologues of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and a person of great influence over Xi JInping. The high profile of the author has made "America against America" as a must-read book for those who are keen to understand geopolitics and the US-China rivalry. But although the book is interesting it should be read in its full context: a travel book of a Chinese sci-pol student by the end of the 1980´s. As the author highlights at the begining he studied and viewed the United States as a society as an observer rather than an investigator.
Nevertheless, the book gives a complete view of US heterogeinity and complexity as a society and its political and economy system. The author highlights the importance of US origin as the root of all of them, the role of innovation and technology as well as the appeal towards outliers people that provides us with an explanation of many events current under development is US. It is also quite interesting to read the view of Wanning of the politics and regulation of US as a mix of pragmatism and the application to its last consequences of federalism as an ideology.
The last part of the book dedicated to the institutions that conform the system deserve a paused reading and provided a knowledge difficult to find in the same volume. The author described the politica pyramid (Federal-State-Counties), the role of education in reproducing the system and think-tanks as the source of political ideas.
In the end, maybe the book doesn´t provide you with a vsion of the US-Chinese rivalry, but would provide you with a complete view of the US system.
Nevertheless, the book gives a complete view of US heterogeinity and complexity as a society and its political and economy system. The author highlights the importance of US origin as the root of all of them, the role of innovation and technology as well as the appeal towards outliers people that provides us with an explanation of many events current under development is US. It is also quite interesting to read the view of Wanning of the politics and regulation of US as a mix of pragmatism and the application to its last consequences of federalism as an ideology.
The last part of the book dedicated to the institutions that conform the system deserve a paused reading and provided a knowledge difficult to find in the same volume. The author described the politica pyramid (Federal-State-Counties), the role of education in reproducing the system and think-tanks as the source of political ideas.
In the end, maybe the book doesn´t provide you with a vsion of the US-Chinese rivalry, but would provide you with a complete view of the US system.
March 22, 2023
This was certainly an eye-opening read. Not perhaps because of the content but because of who the author shows himself to be. Wang Huning is one of the top leaders of the Chinese Communist Party and a leading idelogist in the country since the 1990s. He made a trip to the USA shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall and wrote a book about his observations of the "ideal" capitalist state. This guy is smart! He takes America for what it is. The good and the bad, the consistencies and the contradictions - hence the title of "America Against America". I just came off reading Fukuyama's "The End of History", which is such an idealised and superficial look at American democracy that it belongs in a high school library rather than in academia. Huning takes Fukuyama to town. But how he manages to see so much and glean such insightful conclusions from a short tour of the country is beyond me. It's scary to consider that this guy and Xi Jinping (who I have also remarked elsewhere is very intelligent) are running a world superpower. They're not muppets like the people we see so often in power in Western democracies. They cut through the trash and get down to business.
December 2, 2022
This series of essays on US socio-economics and politics provides a fascinating and rare view into the way China's top ideologue thinks. He had a lot of blind spots, thinking that American participation in the political process was restricted to voting every four years, but he is also honestly trying to find and understand the core of America's strengths. His conclusion is typical Marxism, and focuses on the internal tensions of various groups fighting against each other. He fails to see how this tension is actually the source of the constant renewal that animates US dynamism.
Wang never provides access to himself to foreign press. He doesn't release any writings of substance under his own name. He considers his thoughts to be a state secret. The primary value of this book is to get a peek into his vault. Invaluable for anyone wanting to understand the political thinking behind Xi's China.
Wang never provides access to himself to foreign press. He doesn't release any writings of substance under his own name. He considers his thoughts to be a state secret. The primary value of this book is to get a peek into his vault. Invaluable for anyone wanting to understand the political thinking behind Xi's China.
February 15, 2023
王滬寧，留任中共中央政治局常委，學者出身。時年三十有三，他從復旦以訪問教授身份赴美，寫下了這本田野考察。學者從政的類似話題，在書中出現過兩回，足見王事國之心熾熱。
被譏為三朝「國師」的中共文膽，進體制前已著書有幾。適逢年前美國國會山莊暴動，這本1988年的舊著以「預言」姿態出土。讀過來了，給我留下最深印象的不是零星的洞見，而是浮現一個形象，這位有辦法曉之以理的學者，故意繞圈子掩護國體，居功甚偉。
首先洞見不是沒有，只不過使其風頭一時無兩者是據報有 Black Lives Matter 暴動的「預言」，然而黑人議題只佔一個小章節，種族議題共佔兩個。內容比風評是不合比例的。至於其餘美國的問題，放在八十年代也絕非新鮮，諸如兩黨制的毛病、核心價值的教育、各種社會問題，王也引用不少著作。拾人牙慧尚且一回事，親筆著墨他也僅是直抒己見，每當深入探討議題核心，倒不及他羅列像是美國上下政制等事實般詳盡。
最富新鮮感的當數段落間流露的中國語境，他用中國學者的眼光探看美國奇蹟，確實有點兒意思。王說總統大選出現了「政治的非政治化」，即選民愛選更具領袖風範、談吐大方的那位。所言非虛，只是放眼世界，但凡有選領袖的地方，哪裏不是多多少少盲目？難道中國小區還齊聲選得出一位安貧樂道、不修邊幅、功業彪炳的現代濟公當代表？
王著書原意一定有包括鞏固人民對馬克思主義的信心，結果用人家的雀斑去烘托出自身的醜。當然，美國沒甚麼值得鋪張吹噓的，弊病也不輪得你我否認。王依然用力點破美國精神，一會兒說個有理的，先來些毛病。他指實用主義與未來主義不容，美國人自相矛盾，我頗意外一位學者不當未雨綢繆是一種實用主義，進而犯下稻草人謬誤。他又誤植不信現代化的 Amish 民族為亞美尼亞人，粗枝大葉。
「制度的再生產」是他書中比較通達的見解，如他所說「人的一大缺憾是上一代獲得的文化知識和倫理道德不能遺傳」，美國要下一代繼承二百多年的價值，儘管有良好制度萬千，還是要如履薄冰。不敏如我馬上想到了今日的共和黨及共產黨。
被譏為三朝「國師」的中共文膽，進體制前已著書有幾。適逢年前美國國會山莊暴動，這本1988年的舊著以「預言」姿態出土。讀過來了，給我留下最深印象的不是零星的洞見，而是浮現一個形象，這位有辦法曉之以理的學者，故意繞圈子掩護國體，居功甚偉。
首先洞見不是沒有，只不過使其風頭一時無兩者是據報有 Black Lives Matter 暴動的「預言」，然而黑人議題只佔一個小章節，種族議題共佔兩個。內容比風評是不合比例的。至於其餘美國的問題，放在八十年代也絕非新鮮，諸如兩黨制的毛病、核心價值的教育、各種社會問題，王也引用不少著作。拾人牙慧尚且一回事，親筆著墨他也僅是直抒己見，每當深入探討議題核心，倒不及他羅列像是美國上下政制等事實般詳盡。
最富新鮮感的當數段落間流露的中國語境，他用中國學者的眼光探看美國奇蹟，確實有點兒意思。王說總統大選出現了「政治的非政治化」，即選民愛選更具領袖風範、談吐大方的那位。所言非虛，只是放眼世界，但凡有選領袖的地方，哪裏不是多多少少盲目？難道中國小區還齊聲選得出一位安貧樂道、不修邊幅、功業彪炳的現代濟公當代表？
王著書原意一定有包括鞏固人民對馬克思主義的信心，結果用人家的雀斑去烘托出自身的醜。當然，美國沒甚麼值得鋪張吹噓的，弊病也不輪得你我否認。王依然用力點破美國精神，一會兒說個有理的，先來些毛病。他指實用主義與未來主義不容，美國人自相矛盾，我頗意外一位學者不當未雨綢繆是一種實用主義，進而犯下稻草人謬誤。他又誤植不信現代化的 Amish 民族為亞美尼亞人，粗枝大葉。
「制度的再生產」是他書中比較通達的見解，如他所說「人的一大缺憾是上一代獲得的文化知識和倫理道德不能遺傳」，美國要下一代繼承二百多年的價值，儘管有良好制度萬千，還是要如履薄冰。不敏如我馬上想到了今日的共和黨及共產黨。
April 13, 2025
“美国人长期处在优越的地位，差不多从一次世界大战之后，它的优越地位就形成了。七十年时间里，美国有过几代人，二次大战之后出生的人目前也已是四十多岁。这一代美国人更是处在“美国第一”的氛围之中，心理上形成一种定势。因而，美国也是输不起的民族。技术优越感已渐渐发展成民族优越感，他们不能想象有什么民族可以超越他们。”
“两党都是选举党，其主要目的是为了赢得选举，并没有固定的政治目标。什么能帮助他们赢得选举，他们就干什么。这种机制促使他们尽可能地迎合选民愿望，将自己与选民结合起来，两党谈的政策主张，实际上是归纳总结选民的问题，然后提出方案。这种应变能力，也是两党保持地位的重要条件。这种逻辑，要求政治高度灵活，高度敏捷，成为社会要求的晴雨表，不然不可能入主白宫。在这个过程中，党魁们把代表大财团和特定阶级利益的观念加入进去。当然，选举获胜后，他们可能全然不顾竞选时的诺言，另行其事。选民此时已难以加以控制。”
“世上没有不变的东西。今天美国人对宪法的解释早已大大异于二百年前，但大家宁愿说这就是二百年前的东西。因为今人说的话要叫人听从不容易，古人说的话要容易一些，有时要容易得多。
关键的问题是，实际上没有人有力量改变这部宪法，维持它并解释它是唯一出路。也许这是一条通则，如果还有某种力量可以改变宪法和政治制度，那这个社会在政治上和社会管理上就没有达到稳态。”
“在商品经济中，钱的力量是难以抗拒的。如果没有一种力量加以引导，人们都会唯利是图。最后会引出严重的谁问题。许多发展中国家也都处在这样的困境之中。发展经济，需要首先调动货币机制，引导人们的精力。等到经济发展了，需要高科技高技术了，才发现难找这样的人才，因为货币力量会驱使人们寻找简单劳动挣钱，而非复杂劳动。这是值得发展中国家引以力戒的。”
“两党都是选举党，其主要目的是为了赢得选举，并没有固定的政治目标。什么能帮助他们赢得选举，他们就干什么。这种机制促使他们尽可能地迎合选民愿望，将自己与选民结合起来，两党谈的政策主张，实际上是归纳总结选民的问题，然后提出方案。这种应变能力，也是两党保持地位的重要条件。这种逻辑，要求政治高度灵活，高度敏捷，成为社会要求的晴雨表，不然不可能入主白宫。在这个过程中，党魁们把代表大财团和特定阶级利益的观念加入进去。当然，选举获胜后，他们可能全然不顾竞选时的诺言，另行其事。选民此时已难以加以控制。”
“世上没有不变的东西。今天美国人对宪法的解释早已大大异于二百年前，但大家宁愿说这就是二百年前的东西。因为今人说的话要叫人听从不容易，古人说的话要容易一些，有时要容易得多。
关键的问题是，实际上没有人有力量改变这部宪法，维持它并解释它是唯一出路。也许这是一条通则，如果还有某种力量可以改变宪法和政治制度，那这个社会在政治上和社会管理上就没有达到稳态。”
“在商品经济中，钱的力量是难以抗拒的。如果没有一种力量加以引导，人们都会唯利是图。最后会引出严重的谁问题。许多发展中国家也都处在这样的困境之中。发展经济，需要首先调动货币机制，引导人们的精力。等到经济发展了，需要高科技高技术了，才发现难找这样的人才，因为货币力量会驱使人们寻找简单劳动挣钱，而非复杂劳动。这是值得发展中国家引以力戒的。”
January 8, 2024
Incredibly fascinating. This is a book written in the 80s by a then Chinese student about his observations and interactions in America during that period over six months. He then went on to become the highest ranking member of the Chinese communist party in relation to political ideology, sitting, more or less, at Xi Xingping's side. The book gives you an incredibly detailed view of where a lot of Chinese views about the west come from and the rationales behind them, written by the young adult most responsible in China for nationalising those ideas today.
It's wild.
It's wild.
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