BERLIN, GERMANY - MARCH 13: Former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt waits to greet arriving guests at a dinner reception on the occasion of Schmidt's 95th birthday at Schloss Bellevue on March 13, 2014 in Berlin, Germany. Schmidt was chancellor from 1974 to 1982. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Recently, the Chinese scholar Wang Hui sat down for a conversation with Helmut Schmidt, Germany’s elder statesman, in Hamburg.
Until 2007, Wang Hui was editor of the influential journal, Dushu, and is author of the seminal four-volume study, “The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought.” Helmut Schmidt, 95, was chancellor of Germany from 1974-1982 and visited China several times to meet Mao and Deng Xiaoping.
A version of this conversation appeared in Chinese in Guancha.cn
PART I: “I Would Not Sell Democracy to the Chinese”
WANG HUI: I need your wisdom on this issue. The debate over political reform is raging not only among intellectuals, but within the Communist Party itself. Everybody knows that political reform is needed. But how can it be carried out? What will be your suggestion for the political reform in China?
HELMUT SCHMIDT: (Joking) Thank God I am not in the place of Xi Jinping! There are too many problems at the same time. On the one hand I think it is astonishing and encouraging that you are required to change the leadership every 10 years and that you replace the elder leaders by younger ones. Nobody stays in power any more as long as Mao of Deng.
On the other hand as a foreigner, as the European as I am, I really have no in depth knowledge of Xi Jinping, and I don’t know what kind of people he has surrounded himself with.
WANG: What about the political party system?
SCHMIDT: I think that Deng was not clear enough when he said “yes we want a democratic nation, but with Chinese characteristics.” What that meant was unclear. What are the Chinese characteristics? I think you have to find your own way, and you are already an important factor of the world’s economy whether you like it or not.
WANG: You said that it is very difficult for Xi Jinping because he is in a very complicated situation with so much that needs to be done at the same time. Some people in China have different views about political reform.
Some want to copy the Western multi-party system. Others argue that China needs democracy at the local level and some mechanism on the top level, but not necessarily elections at the national level. What is your suggestion in this respect?
SCHMIDT: Democracy is not the end point of mankind. There may be developments in many different directions in the coming centuries. Democracy has only existed for about 200 years. It started out with the American Declaration of Independence. The Americans got their ideas from the Europeans, in the main from the French, the Dutch and the British.
But democracy has a number of serious failures. For instance, you have to be elected every four years and you have to be re-elected after the next four years. So you try to tell the people what they would like to hear. The multi-party system is not the crown of progress, but it is the best we have right now. I would fight for maintaining it, but I would not sell it to the Chinese.
The British have sold it to the Indians and to the Pakistanis and the Dutch tried to sell it to the Indonesians. Democracy is not really working in India. I would not tell the Egyptians to introduce democracy; nor would I pitch it to the other Muslim countries like Malaysia, Iran and Pakistan. It is a Western invention. It was not invented by Confucius. It was invented by Montesquieu and by other Frenchmen. It was invented by John Locke and by the Dutch people.
WANG: Very few Western leaders talk about these issues like you do.
SCHMIDT: That does not necessarily mean that I am wrong.
The critical thing about Western democracy is the fact that you usually have a transition of power without bloodshed. That is an enormous advantage. But still democracy as we know it was only invented recently in the West, historical speaking. It did not really work in ancient Rome. It functioned for less than 200 years in ancient Athens. And then it had not functioned in any other country in the world until the Americans declared independence from the British monarchy.
Even in the time of Pericles in ancient Athens you had slaves. You had to be a citizen of Athens, and for every citizen of Athens there were at least three people who did not have the right to vote and at least one third were slaves.
Even in America, slavery was officially accepted until the middle of the 19th century. The Civil War in the American democracy was about slavery. Don’t forget that. And by the middle of this century you will see that the Mexicans and their children and the Afro-Americans and their children will together be one half of the American electorate. And whoever is president will have to play to the ears of these electors. America will change from a world power into something different. China will also change. And whether you become a democracy or not remains to be seen. My feeling is that you will not become a democracy.
WANG: In both the multiparty system in the West and the system of multiparty cooperation under one party rule in China, the representative-ness of political parties have diminished. Most parties today look like state-parties where the spoils are doled out tot he organized special interests that have captured the state. Parties are no longer politial organizations representing various social forces.
The Chinese Communist Party, for instance, is no longer the Communist Party in its 20th century sense. It is a state party in the sense that it is almost completely integrated into the framework of the state, and functions as such, rather than as a political organization. And this has occurred across the world. What we witness is the political system detaching itself from society.
We need to think of a different kind of politics. Democracy is a very positive value, but it is not for everybody. In this sense, I do not align myself with liberal democrats, nor traditional socialism.
Many might believe that the Communist Party still recognizes socialism as positive, and that we can convert the Party back to its earlier tradition. This is impossible, because there are so many different interest groups within the Party. When the Party is no longer the representative of the people, we need autonomous organizations of workers and peasants and other social organizations to express their voice in policy-making in the public sphere. I call these “post-parties.” And we need all policy to be made not only by the Party, but also by the Congress that represents broader interests.
Do you think that we may see the emergence of a “post party” system?
SCHMIDT: You are certainly in a post-communist system but you have not entered the new era. I also doubt that you will remain a one party system either. A great event can always happen. In the history of China you endured many enormous changes and I'm sure you will in the future as well.
WANG: What is your comment on the power of the media in the contemporary world?
SCHMIDT: Right now, they are too powerful. I believe in the representative type of democracy. The media are undermining that type of democracy. Particularly since the computerization of the world, the impact of media has grown enormously. The printed books and the printed media have become less important. Why should somebody read Laozi or Confucius if he can Google?
WANG: Developments in the media seem to have made politics more difficult. With the internet you get the instant reaction to what you did. This is also a big challenge for Chinese politicians. There is a paradox. On the one hand, because of the outcry on Weibo the Chinese government may sound stubborn and unresponsive. But sometimes the government has made too many compromises, the results of which were not necessarily good, in order to please public opinion.
SCHMIDT: Also in China, the government needs to please the people.
WANG: Now very much so.
PART II: Japan Has No Friends in Asia. Neither does China.
WANG HUI: China has become the second largest economy in the world. Many economists argue that by 2030 China will be the number one economy.
HELMUT SCHMIDT: Whether in 2030 or 2040, that will happen. It is a great change in global history.
WANG: At the same time, the situation in East Asia has been worsening. Since the late Qing Dynasty, Japan has been the most powerful country in the whole region, and it was not prepared to see the revival of China. I visit Japan regularly and I can see a certain kind of bewilderment in the mentality of Japanese people: Even though China faces many problems, it is nonetheless rising in its economy and military might.
Many of my Japanese friends argue that the best way forward for Japan is integration into Asia so it does not become isolated in its own region.
SCHMIDT: The basic fact about Japan’s situation is that it does not have any friends in the region –- not the Philippines, nor the Koreans, nor the Russians, nor the Chinese, nor people in Indonesia. They have invaded all these countries. They do not understand that all their neighbors hate them despite the fact that the present Japanese did not commit any crimes.
In Asia, a military conflict between the Japanese and others in the region cannot be completely excluded. If I were a Chinese politician, I would wait in peace for demographics to take its course. I would continue the policy of the emperors of the "Middle Kingdom” and bide time as events take their inevitable course. By 2050, China will have 1.5 billion inhabitants. Japan will have only 120 million or even less.
If I were a Chinese I would just wait and see how long it takes until the Japanese come bearing presents. Just give them time and don’t fight about these ridiculous Diaoyu islands.
WANG: Ten Southeast Asian countries plus one -- that is, China-- want to have a free trade zone. Japan and Korea followed to propose a ten plus three system. When these ideas arose, there was a certain kind of optimistic sentiment toward the integration of Asia, encouraged by the European example. Will it work?
SCHMIDT: It will not really work. As is the case of Japan, China also has no friends in the region. The Chinese leaders are not unaware of this fact. However, you do not need friends. You are big enough and you will be able to stand alone. And you will still be the largest economy of the world. But you don’t have friends. And they will not join a Chinese-led union like Europe.
WANG: Regional integration in Asia could be radically different from the regional integration of Europe. This is partly because the integration of Europe relied on inter-state relations to form the system of one large entity. The integration in Asia will be inevitably based on inter-state relations as well, but it will be more like a network. The goal will not be the formation of a large, unified political entity.
SCHMIDT: International law is an invention from about 400 years ago. That is rather young compared to the age of Confucius. It is rather young compared with the age of Chinese history and Chinese civilization. The Chinese have one great advantage in Asia: You have one and the same written language. You can even read Japanese newspapers. You may not understand Japanese philosophy, but you can read their newspapers.
WANG: Especially for scholars, we can read some pre-modern books because many of them use Chinese characters exclusively or extensively.
SCHMIDT: That’s a great advantage compared to the 500 million Europeans where every nation has its own language. Don’t underestimate this enormous difficulty.
Helmut Schmidt: 'Why Chinese Civilization Has Lasted.' Part III
WANG HUI: I read some interview in which you talked about your early visits to China and you said that Deng Xiaoping smoked when you met him. [Helmut Schmidt is famous for insisting on smoking, even in public places, at 95- ed.]
SCHMIDT: I met him three times in my life. And each time we had plenty of time. He was a great listener; quite different compared to Mao Tse-tung. Mao didn’t really listen. He did not speak a lot, but he did not really listen. He believed in what he believed and stuck to that that over a long number of decades.
THE SELF-RENEWAL OF CHINESE CIVILIZATION
HELMUT SCHMIDT: There is something about China that I do not really understand. The Chinese civilization, the Chinese written language, Mandarin, has existed at least for 3000 years now. Three thousand years ago we had the great civilization of the Iranian people, of the Egyptian people, of the Romans, of the Greeks. All of these civilizations have gone. Yet, the Chinese civilization has retained its continuity. And after more than 4000 years of Chinese history, all of the sudden the Chinese are exploding onto the world stage. Why?
WANG: The Chinese civilization has had the tendency to construct and reconstruct itself continuously. It was interrupted many times, but continuity was always revived. No doubt it has much to do with Confucianism. Confucianism is a political culture and not only a philosophical culture.
WANG: But even in the dynasties when Confucianism was in decline, rulers and scholars still attempted to reconstruct the ideology of the Confucianism to some degree.
SCHMIDT: And it is coming back today.
WANG: They always tried to reconstruct it. The thing most difficult to understand is that the Chinese civilization was interrupted by nomadic people from Mongol, Khitan, and Jurchen. But it is interesting that the nomads who came to China also tried to re-establish society in the tradition of Chinese dynasties. They tended to respect Confucianism while preserving their own cultures and diverse identities, hence enriching the Chinese civilization.
SCHMIDT: The political civilization of China differs in one way from the rest of the civilizations. Chinese Confucianism does not seek to establish the belief in one religion. Confucianism is a philosophy, or an ethical system, but not a religion. You do not believe in God. In what do you, as a Confucian, believe?
WANG: Confucius himself said that we should respect ghosts and spirits while keeping some distance from them.
WANG: To one extent, yes.
SCHMIDT: What is the other extent?
WANG: The other extent is that there was still an important legacy that always survived, especially in the countryside. Until the 20th century, China remained as an agricultural civilization. “Farming and studying as the family lineage,” or geng du chuan jia, had been the basic lifestyle. But now there is a big change. Another great transformation is happening now.
SCHMIDT: Of course, farmers are always conservative. They stick to what they have learned from their fathers and from their grandfathers. This is the same all over the globe. It is not a Chinese specialty.
WANG: No, of course not. But the other side of the coin is radicalness. Mao himself is such a paradoxical character. On the one hand, he was very radical. But on the other hand, he was so well acquainted with Chinese history and classics. When I was a student in the middle high school, I started to study the Chinese Classics under the influence of Mao.
SCHMIDT: Did you do it with the consent of Mao or against his will?
WANG: Well, both. Mao argued that we needed to criticize Confucianism and should be pro-Legalism (the school of thought emphasized strict obedience to authorities and the law—ed.) That political campaign started in 1974. That’s why even in middle school, we were required to read and then criticize Confucian texts. We were hence asked to read a lot of the classics.
WANG: That happened mainly after 1974 when the campaign “Criticize Lin Biao, Criticize Confucius” started. Lin was criticized for attempting to revive Confucianism as a power move, so Mao launched this campaign.
SCHMIDT: At the time of Confucius, there was another outstanding Chinese philosopher, Laozi. Did Mao also attack Laozi?
WANG: No, at least he was not the main target. He was considered a master of dialectical thinking. Mao regarded Laozi as a strategic thinking above all. You may read Laozi from the perspective of military strategy.
SCHMIDT: When I was in China in the 1990s, the general answer that I got when asking about Mao was the he was “70 percent was right and 30 percent was wrong” in what he did. Is that still the answer?
WANG: For China, Mao is complex. Nowadays, some people dislike him very much, but on the other hand many people have a very positive opinion of him. It is difficult to evaluate such a man with such accurate metrics.
WANG: Yes, absolutely. And another issue is that, even though we suffered in a certain period, the history of his period would become the foundation for the next period. After the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping was under great pressure to denounce Mao. But Deng refused to do so. It was partly a political strategy since the legitimacy of the reform was derived from the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party. But it was also because he knew perfectly well that while the Cultural Revolution caused tremendous loss, the Mao era also laid the foundation and defined the framework for a unified nation that was the basis for “opening up and reform.”
Deng’s decision strengthened the legitimacy of China’s political system. Otherwise, China could have fallen into chaos at that time.
SCHMIDT: This could still happen -- not very likely, but not totally unlikely. And it would certainly, after some time, lead to reconsolidation of China once again. It is not the first revolution in history. By the way, Mao confessed to not being a Marxist. He never was (laughter) -- he was a revolutionary.
WANG: How Mao should be evaluated remains a provocative question. But he said during the Cultural Revolution that, in his view, very few people in the Chinese Communist Party really knew Marxism. He made this comment in the 1970s.
WANG: The Chinese situation is different. We still have 260 million migrant workers -- who have come to the cities from the countryside. It is the largest working class in the world. But in the 20th century, when the Revolution took place, there were less than 2 million workers in China.
HOUSEHOLD REGISTRATION, URBAN WORKERS AND MEGACITIES
SCHMIDT: You have to consider the abolishing of the hukou system [the system or urban registration for urban dwellers. Without residence permits, migrants do not get urban services, as urban residents do, including education.. editor].
WANG: Now we are moving toward that direction -- not abolishing it, but making it much more flexible. .
SCHMIDT: You need to do away with the whole system of hukou. It is one of the necessities or modernization. How long will it take?
SCHMIDT: This has also to be changed.
WANG: This is a big issue for China. There are heated disputes over it. Many peasants who live in the suburbs or cities don’t want to give up their land.
SCHMIDT: I think one of the greatest changes that have happened in China is that you do not need so many farmers any more. And they are going into the cities. And the cities are becoming bigger and bigger. Beijing has about 19 million inhabitants now. Shanghai is close to 30 million. This means that the instinct of the farmer keeping to his father’s will in the Confucian tradition is bound to dissipate.
WANG: That’s right.
SCHMIDT: You Chinese today do not believe in your father or your forefather. You believe in making money.
WANG: That is a big challenge. According to the estimation of some Western scholars, by 2035 China will have 25 of the most populous cities among the top 75 in the world. If true, that would entail a thorough transformation in the social structure of China.
WANG: Now there is a debate in China among the leaders and the intellectuals about the approach for the next reform, and about the trend of urbanization. Basically the consensus is that globalization renders the trend of urbanization inexorable. This has been the premise of such discussions. But in China, land is still state-owned and collectively owned, so the problem focuses on how to handle the relationship between cities and the countryside.
In the end, the debate comes down to the issue of the privatization of land. Some argue that state and collectively-owned land should be privatized. But some other scholars disagree and promote the reconstruction of the rural society at the same time as urbanization continues. Even if our rural population is reduced dramatically in the next 50 years, we will still have a population of 500 million in the countryside.
SCHMIDT: I guess that the average size of a Chinese village today is several thousand people. At the time of Sun Yat-sen, there were several hundred people. How great was the population of China in the year 1911?
WANG: It was about 400 million.
SCHMIDT: And now it is more than 1.3 billion. And an increasing share of that 1.3 billion is living in the cities. And the process is going on, whether you like it or not.
THANKS TO THE ONE CHILD POLICY, TOO MANY OLD PEOPLE
SCHMIDT: The problem is rather more complicated, because the standard of living in the big cities, is infinitely higher than in these small towns that are large villages. The standard of living per capita in Shanghai is probably 10 times higher than the standard of living in the small towns of which you have spoken.
On the other hand, the bulk of the Chinese people are still living under the consequences of the one child policy. That means that as a nation you become ever older and you will need to care for the older people. And this is one of the great Chinese problems approaching the middle of the century.
WANG: Yes, absolutely. One doctrine of Confucianism is about “expanding piety to your parents and to others as well.” It is about the respect for the elderly and about sympathy with those who came before, both of which are facing challenge as urbanization accelerates.
A RACE BETWEEN THE U.S. AND CHINA ON SOCIAL SECURITY
SCHMIDT: One can expect a future race between America, on the one hand, and China on the other hand. Both of them will be forced to invent social security systems almost at the same time. The Americans have an advantage because they already do have the beginning of a social security system and you do not have one, or it is very weak.
WANG: Yes. China has been attempting in the last decade to rebuild the social welfare system, especially the healthcare system. Of course the standard is still low, but for the first time in history China has a basic healthcare system that can cover the whole population. We have to be realistic in a country with more than a billion people: The pressure on the state budget might be too much.
SCHMIDT: Further, the science and the art of applying medicine today will extend people’s lives. Your children will become much older than yourself. They will become five years older at least. I am an example; I will become 95 this year. And I’m still alive, due to modern medicine.
WANG: Average life expectancy is already over 70 years of age in China.
SCHMIDT: Before long their lifetime will reach 80.
WANG: I believe so. The average life expectancy in China is much higher than that in India, and is about the same as Russia. It is still lower than that in Japan.
SCHMIDT: And this longevity will grow while the margin of manoeuvre for the state to act in a globalized world is dwindling at the same time.
WANG: The pressure exerted by the society on the government has grown. The urban population has a strong consciousness. Most of the protests in the early days happened in the countryside. But now, they happen in urban areas. Globalization has certainly impacted China, but in comparison to other nation-states, we are relatively independent.
WANG: That is another phenomenon. A lot of the protests call for social equality more than a change in government.
