Chinoptimism

In the 2012 movie Looper, Jeff Daniels imparts some advice to Bruce Willis in his juvenile form (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). Upon hearing of his protégé’s study plans, he asks, “Why the fuck French?”

“I’m going to France,” Bruce Willis Gordon-Levitt replies.

“You should go to China.”

“I’m going to France.”

“I’m from the future: you should go to China.”

And so young Bruce-Joe goes and spends three decades doing drugs and dirty deeds in his über-minimalist apartment in an admittedly somewhat hitman-ridden but nevertheless comparatively secure and prosperous China.

This was but one of a number of upbeat Hollywood depictions of China that seem to have kicked off around 2009, when China saved the world in the apocalypse film 2012. China also saved the world that same year as it drove the global economic recovery from the Great Recession.

Admittedly, China receives positive depictions in Hollywood films not because Americans like China, but rather because Hollywood likes Chinese moviegoers. But even if these films aren’t reflecting public sentiment, it is possible that they may be influencing it. There has been a gradual generational shift in American perceptions of China. According to Pew, 55% of Americans ages 18-29 report a positive view of China, while only 41% of those ages 30-49 agree, and those ages 50+ are mighty suspicious at 27%. Perhaps media depictions don’t matter. Perhaps it’s simply that the more distant in one’s memory the Cold War is, the less one regards Communist states as a rival.

“What’s that?” you object, “China isn’t Communist!” Actually, I expect my intelligent and attractive readers are savvier than that, but if the thought did cross your mind, you’re not alone. I have met many people and—sad to say—read the Facebook comments of many more who are under the impression that China is a capitalist country now (sad because I’m reading Facebook comments, not because they’re wrong). This misperception is forgivable, but considerable. As the ruling Chinese Communist Party itself says, China is a “socialist market economy,” and the more you learn about China’s economy, the more you will find that is an accurate description (I will convince you in a future post).

Regardless of the actual degree to which China is capitalist or socialist, the market is (somewhat) open, and many young Westerners with positive perceptions of it have dived in. More hope to do so, and many people plan for their children to do so (Chinese nannies are in demand). Run across any of these aspiring foreign entrepreneurs in China, and you will find it isn’t just that they regard the Chinese people as one billion customers; in the minds of many, China is the future.

China is also the future in the minds of many Americans and Europeans at home, who may or may not regard this as a good thing. China also looks like the future to many Africans, Central Asians, Southeast Asians, and South Americans, because China is where investment is coming from, China is where you can get a scholarship, and China seems to be led by rational people. The futurism of Chinese cities has been acclaimed by one Paris Hilton who, on a 2007 visit, said, “Shanghai looks like the future!” Shanghai looks much more futuristic now than it did then, and it looks even more futuristic when Bruce Willis Gordon-Levitt arrives in 2044.

Super-Pudong 2044 (Source)

China is also the future in the minds of most Chinese. Optimism is said to be a trait in the Chinese character. Chinese kids, as so many envious American education writers tell us, have grit. They are taught that success comes not from innate talent, but from hard work, and I personally would attest that this truly shows in the attitudes of the Chinese people I know. And it is admirable.

It would be hard not to be optimistic, perhaps, when you experience wealth and security that your parents did not, when your grandparents lived through famine and civil war, and you have an iPhone—or even if you don’t have an iPhone, you are at least able to support your extended family by working in the factory that makes them.

There is another side to the coin, of course. Decades of bullet-fast economic growth produce externalities, as the air, water, earth, expropriated villagers, bewildered elders, and powerless promoters of civil society attest.

Yet money has a way of healing all wounds, and China’s pervasive atmosphere of optimism remains alluring. A few of my Chinese friends make cynical remarks about the government, but very few of them think their country is falling apart, and almost none of them think the world is about to end. It is deeper even than the economic. While America sighs with postmodernism, China enthuses modern: progress, enlightenment, socialism, science, education, improvement, prosperity!

I would wager that this is something inconceivable to American Millennials, unless they should have the opportunity to go a place such as China and experience it for themselves. American popular culture has overflowed with apocalyptic imagery for more than a decade now. This is what Confucius called 亡国之音, the pitiful cries of a doomed country. And why not? To progressives, humanity is a despoiler of the earth, and America is the bandit extraordinaire: climate change is going to destroy everything, and it’s all our fault. Or if not that, automation apocalypse or AI apocalypse or virtual reality apocalypse or colony collapse syndrome. As H. Bruce Franklin said, “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” But regardless of their politics, most young Americans feel the truth of this: Millenials are the first generation in American history to experience less prosperity than their parents. This is entirely the opposite of young Chinese, and God bless them.

Yet here is the rub: today’s young Chinese will soon be crushed by the economic burden of the old. China is rapidly aging just as the economy is slowing down. It will get old before it gets rich. Not only will China not escape the middle income trap, it may not even surpass America as the world’s largest economy (in nominal GDP). Chinese demographer Yi Fuxian once told the New York Times, “People say we can be two to three times the size of America’s economy. I say it’s totally impossible. It will never overtake America’s, because of the decrease in the labor force and the aging of the population.” China’s population is expected to fall below one billion by 2060, at which time the US population will be over 400 million. By 2050, China’s median age will be 48.7, while America’s will be 40. Meanwhile, China’s GDP growth will continue to slow. The recently established pension system remains to be worked out, and lifestyle diseases are expected to spread. Chinese a few decades hence will probably remember the 1990s through the 2010s as a golden age of expanding prosperity in much the same way that Americans remember the 1940s through the 1960s.

Our national salvation (Source)

China is set to suffer the burden of an aging population (as are Europe and Japan), but America is not. America’s fertility rate remains high because of immigration, and as long as it keeps the door open, a continually rejuvenated population will ensure that its prospects for economic growth and national security remain equally high. At the moment, most Americans would agree that the nation seems hell-bent on committing suicide. To the Trump-right, immigration is that suicide; in reality, America's path to suicide would be to succumb to the nostalgic and racist authoritarianism that would lock us into a monochromatic, geriatric destiny. But bad presidents come and go, xenophobia ebbs and flows, and politics sway between left and right. If America can remember its better self, it may find reasons for optimism that most of the world will lack.