I took advantage of my vacation time to read the third book in the trilogy written by Shi Zhan, "Breaking the Cocoon: Isolation, Trust and the Future".
"The most soft thing in the world is the strongest thing in the world. There is no existence in the world, and I know that nothing is beneficial." - Laozi
"In the academy, we have a lot of things to live in." For different purposes, we are the memory of this world. Without us, humans are just a little better than dogs." - "Game of Thrones"
"Memory is not about living in the past, it is precisely about moving toward the future. . Through memory, we can understand who we are, where we are, and our relationship with the world, so that we can know how to find the way to the future in a turbulent and ever-changing era. Through memory, we can understand a series of things. When the 'moment' enters history, it also enters the future." - Shi Zhan
The book is divided into three parts: problems, reality and future.
1. Problem: Modern society is a risk society. Due to the high degree of division of labor and refinement, everyone can only master a small part of the knowledge, and it is difficult to grasp the overall knowledge. ***Knowledge is the cornerstone of a risk society, but now many debates are not based on logic, but just on stance. As the media is fully developed and information is fully shared, public space is gradually lost and political awareness is diffused. Social media, mobile Internet and recommendation algorithms have further catalyzed the information cocoon, causing people to be good at replacing rationality with emotions and covering reality with concepts. The sweeping epidemic has become a common harm to mankind, and may be the starting point for rebuilding human consciousness.
Concepts can obscure reality: 1. Under the shadow of nationalism, the political field obscures other fields. Nationalist encapsulated thinking: Internally, it conceptually reduces various complex domestic social structures to form a relatively homogeneous society; externally, it conceptually strengthens the differences between one's own country and foreign countries, making them The space is incommensurable. This kind of encapsulation will cause a gap between people's ideas and practice without realizing it, and the information cocoon greatly strengthens these two encapsulations.
2. Use ideological issues to cover up professional issues. Ideology provides value direction, but does not directly bring identity. Nationalism provides identity, but cannot clarify value direction. Debates based on ideology are emotional catharsis rather than rational debates. Professional and technical issues related to rationality are easily obscured by emotional arguments.
3. Refuse to recognize the unity between China and the world, and refuse to recognize China’s particularity. As a super-large country, China's national interests must be implemented within a cosmopolitan structure. There is no conspiracy in China's relationship with the world, only conspiracy. Today, China has a high degree of organic relationship with the world at various levels including economy, politics, society and culture. Today, there is some conflict with the West on the level of values, and international issues are increasingly becoming the primary issue that China has to face.
2. Reality:
The product production process has achieved an international and refined division of labor among countries, resulting in the increasing separation of the political space dominated by the state and the economic space dominated by businessmen. The information industry The rapid development has penetrated the existence of national boundaries. This change makes the existing global economic governance order invalid. The trade war has led to the spillover of China's manufacturing industry, and China still dominates the industrial chain of mid- to low-end products. From the perspective of the structural position of the world's manufacturing industry, creative and disruptive high and new technologies, that is, 0 to 1, are still dominated by developed countries. China is more about economies of scale, expansion in quantity, and is good at doing things from 1 to N. China needs to build trust with the world. Let the world believe that China will not "politicize" its supply chain capabilities, thereby preventing developed countries from constantly expanding their product lists and rebuilding their own industrial chains on the grounds of security.
The West hopes that China will change some non-market mechanisms, eliminate artificially formed asymmetric competitive advantages, and form a truly market-oriented competition mechanism. Only by maintaining basic trust can there be cooperation between major countries.
The example of Germany is worth learning from. After World War II, Germany had to simultaneously complete two difficult but balancing tasks: rebuilding and gaining the trust of its neighbors. It is necessary to revitalize Germany's economy through reconstruction and to allay the fears of its neighbors. Adenauer's approach at that time was to abandon the concept of Germany as a "Germany for Germans" and to make Germany a "Germany for Europeans." At that time, coal and steel were the two most important raw materials for waging war.
Germany joined forces with France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg to promote the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Joint Venture, which brought coal and steel production into a transnational joint committee for unified management in order to gain mutual trust among the six member states. This kind of transcendence Through the institutional arrangements of the nation-state, Germany has depoliticized/de-weaponized its production capabilities, not only achieving its reconstruction goals but also gaining the trust of the world.
Trump has made the United States withdraw from various multilateral organizations, but at the same time he is attracting various new groups. This approach not only excludes China, but also prevents the U.S. economy from being restricted to its own market and resulting in low economic efficiency.
In 1996, 33 countries signed the Wassenaar Agreement, in which member states promised not to export high-tech, military and civilian products listed in the agreement to non-member states (including China). One example of dual-use products is that it prevents China from purchasing photolithography machines from Asmail of the Netherlands.
Globalization is the result of every crisis. After the crisis, globalization will surely develop further.
The "Bayh-Dole Act" has significantly promoted the transformation of the U.S. innovation economy. The right to benefit from the technological achievements produced by government-funded research institutes belongs to the universities, provided that universities that understand technology must actively promote the implementation and commercial transformation of the results. If a company buys technology without conducting market research and development, universities can take back the intellectual property rights after a few years. Companies no longer need to purchase ownership rights to patents, only obtain commercial development rights. The separation of ownership and commercial development rights has greatly reduced technology transfer fees, making it affordable for many companies and activating the commercial market. If the university cannot make its scientific and technological achievements serve the market, the government has the right to take back the ownership of the achievements. This institutional arrangement achieves effective research and development, implementation and commercialization of high-end technologies and forms productivity.
China’s supply chain has grown rapidly. First, on the demand side, thanks to China’s accession to the WTO in 2001, China has had the opportunity to participate in world economic activities and undertake large-scale outsourcing. Through a high degree of specialization and precision, ization, satisfying the two conflicting needs of efficiency and flexibility. Secondly, on the supply side, China's land fiscal reform coincides with the rapid development of the supply chain network. Urbanization precedes industrialization, and the development of large-scale industrial zones meets the needs of large-scale entry into subdivided industries. China's supply chain network is extremely complete, and the world's mid- and low-end manufacturing industries are moving to China. Although some production links have spilled over to neighboring Southeast Asian countries, it cannot be said to be a transfer. Southeast Asian countries cannot replace China's status as a manufacturing center.
The logic of the international double cycle: the West dominates creative industries and high-end service industries, China and neighboring countries dominate the production of industrial products, African and other countries provide raw materials to China’s core manufacturing industry, and China provides Western countries Industrial products. Western creativity, made in China, sold globally.
The logic of the global double-layered cycle: On top of the real economic cycle of the international double-circuit, there is also a global capital cycle led by the United States.
From a structural perspective, the real engine of the world economy is still in the West, especially the United States. First, it dominates innovation, which will bring about qualitative economic growth. Second, it dominates the dollar-centered economy. Global capital circulation.
The history of the confrontation between the ocean order (open order) and the land order (closed order) is a process of continuous expansion and opening of the ocean order. History has proven that most of the ocean order has won, but the land order has Resistance makes the ocean order continue to evolve in a more open and inclusive direction.
The ocean has dual attributes, one is military and the other is trade. The United States is the well-deserved maritime hegemon, and China is the trade hegemon. The basic order at sea is determined by military overlords, but China still has space and opportunities for negotiation: it can proactively participate in the maintenance of existing maritime order, cooperate with military overlords, and jointly provide maritime order as a global public good. China needs to transcend the nationalistic mentality and pattern, start from the strategic pattern of opening up shopping malls, and proactively provide public goods to the global order that already exists but suffers from imbalances. China needs to recognize the dominance of the United States in the international order, but must strive for the establishment of the order's operating mechanism. The ratio of negotiation power to equity structure distinguishes the United States as having dual attributes of globality and nationality, checks and balances the nationality of the United States, and gives full play to the globality of the United States.
The United Kingdom and the United States have become global hegemons one after another, possessing the dual attributes of nationality and globality, which are deeply related to their common law traditions.
Common law is a discovered law. After continuous abstraction, procedural justice remains. It can integrate places with different customs under a unified system of rules. Britain has become an empire on which the sun never sets. In principle, it does not exclude the participation of other countries. It is an open order that often conquers a place just to gain trade benefits and basically ignores the local laws. Continental European statutory law is invented law, finalized the moment it is written, and promises substantive justice. After France acquired a colony, it had to spend a lot of effort to transform it, which cost a lot. Once it retreated, it would be difficult to rebuild order.
Hong Kong and Singapore are my country’s two ports connecting the maritime economy. Hong Kong is an important fulcrum for China’s participation in the international economy. It implements the logic of common law, big society and small government. Domestic Hong Kong’s series of lifestyles based on common law should be respected and Hong Kong’s role as an international interface should be fully utilized.
The spiritual core of the United States is the unconditional belief of Puritanism, which is the underlying spirit of Jewish creationism and the belief that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omniscient. The United States has two sides: looseness in everyday times and strength in extraordinary times.
3. Future:
The 4th industrial revolution is a revolution in the information technology industry. The core driving force is innovation, which are technological innovation (the United States has obvious advantages) and business model innovation ( China has certain advantages).
In the information technology industrial revolution, the United States leads in algorithms and China leads in data. The establishment of a global digital governance alliance in third countries will help establish public trust, abandon selfishness, remove unnecessary defenses and containment, and promote the healthy development of the data revolution. Establishing an autonomous order for merchants will promote the return of mankind to the state of "commerce belongs to commerce, and politics belongs to politics", which will help rebuild trusting relationships between countries.
In the era of information technology, everyone receives a just distribution of income based on their own data sharing.
Global Digital Governance Alliance - led by businessmen, based on the evolution of technology, driven by businessmen's need to transcend political interference, with the digital charter as the structure, data dividends as the model, and global distribution Justice is its purpose. This may be the most effective way to promote the 4th information technology revolution, deal with the current data barriers between countries, depoliticize, rebuild trust and alleviate conflicts.