In 1988, Wang Huning was a well-known political scientist and professor of international affairs at China’s Fudan University. That same year, Wang embarked on a trip that took him to the United States as a visiting scholar and across the country to more than thirty cities and more than twenty colleges and universities. His account of that journey, “America Against America,” is an assessment of the “historical–social–cultural conditions” that created and still shape the American political landscape and its system of governance and economics.
America as Allegory
On one level, “America Against America” reads like a travel diary composed of recollections and first impressions. Wang makes superficial assessments and snap judgements that echo long-standing critiques of the social ills of the United States. This is a broader reflection of what Chinese scholars and politicians thought of the United States in the 1980s. That jaundiced view of the country is reinforced by Wang’s narrative. Then too, in the later 1980s and early 1990s, there was no room in Chinese political discourse for outright criticism of China’s policies or political order. Often-times, critics of Beijing’s policies, or advocates of changes to policy made subtle, even allegorical arguments in their writing.“America Against America,” then, reflects a great degree of political circumspection. Wang’s book was never intended for a U.S. audience but written instead for Chinese political science scholars and students and even more directly for China’s political leaders. Wang wanted his book to burnish his reputation as a Communist thinker, Party loyalist, and neo-conservative. By this time in his career Wang is also likely to have begun to aspire to power and to higher offices in the Party. Wang avoided any criticism of Chinese policies that would either provoke ire or jeopardize his growing political ambitions.
Values, Order, and Stability
Throughout “America Against America,” Wang repeatedly argues Americans will continue to lose faith with many of the core values of their society and culture. He cites as evidence for this the dissolution of the extended family, new expressions of sexual freedom, an increasingly secular society, a sense of alienation engendered by the rise of technology, and a nihilism that has replaced a broader and explicit morality. The freedom of choice exercised by each individual, Wang argues, makes it impossible for American society to perpetuate its core values in a value-unified nation.For Wang, and for his audience of CCP leadership, this leads to a troubling question of how to maintain order and stability. “How can there be true harmony when everyone wants to have individualism and private spheres,” Wang writes. “Individualism and private domains are important values in American society, but are they beneficial and harmless within any limits?”
Wang, with the publication of “America Against America,” was cautioning against the loss of core values. Wang understood that social and economic development “cannot be achieved without the spirit of innovation ... in 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.” But the volatile free market of new ideas is filled with the potential for discord and disagreement and always threatens to push aside old values. “The question,” Wang decided, “is how to separate value continuity from technological and material innovation so that value continuity ensures the development of the latter, and the development of the latter strengthens value continuity and transmission?”
In the pages of “America Against America,” that question is left unanswered. Perhaps, it will only be answered by a historical–social–cultural work not yet written: “China Against China.”
