Daniel A. Bell's Blog

In 1995, Professor Crane and I co-organized a demonstration on the Williams campus to protest restrictions on academic freedom in Singapore. In my new book, the longest chapter is a defense of academic freedom and a critique of censorship. But for some reason Crane thinks I have evolved into a defender of “authoritarianism” over the years. I promised to myself that I would ignore his review but it’s easier said than done, if only because the review seems to be making the rounds on social media and friends say I should respond. So here goes.

I did not write the Dean of Shandong for those who are convinced the Chinese political system is fundamentally evil and the earlier it collapses, the better. I wrote the book for those curious about the inner workings of Chinese academia and I draw implications for evaluating the Chinese political system. Nor did I write the book for those who lack a sense of humor. My book deals with serious subject matter — bureaucracy, academic meritocracy, Confucianism, monarchy, Legalism, corruption, collective leadership, censorship – but I wrote it with a light-hearted touch, heavy on the self-criticism, to show the humanity and humor that so often informs my interactions with Chinese friends and colleagues, in contrast to the negative stereotypes about China so pervasive in the West. It’s part of the reason my book was selected as a book of the year by the Financial Times and even my harshest critics such as China uber-hawk Gordon Chang find the book “entertaining.” But Crane seems to have read the book as a deadly serious tract on Chinese politics.

Regrettably, Crane says hardly anything about the arguments and the stories that inform my book. His “review” consists of empty virtue signaling that has nothing to do with my book. He criticizes a couple of sentences completely out of context (the comment about Xinjiang is part of a long paragraph about what’s wrong with China – the critical intent is obvious — and the comment about the role of party secretary fails to note I discuss the role of the party secretary in academic institutions, not at higher levels of government where their work might involve dealing with political dissent and such). He devotes much effort to criticizing a book I wrote in 2015 and selects the harshest polemical reviews of that book (I wrote responses to the reviews which he doesn’t mention; he mistakenly identifies Huang Yushun as a “foreign China analyst” when in fact he is Chinese scholar living and working in China).  

Crane learned nothing from my new book (and, I confess, I learned nothing from his review). So why did he bother writing the review? The reason is that he has a political axe to grind and that’s what he did. My political sin, it seems, is that I do not favor overthrow of the Chinese political system. Let me plead guilty as charged. 

Does it follow that I seek to defend “authoritarianism”? I do not think it’s helpful to divide the political world into “democracies” and “autocracies”, as both President Biden and Professor Crane favor. We should compare ideals with ideals, and highly imperfect political realities with highly imperfect political realities. Ideals are meant to provide moral standards that allow for critical evaluation of the political reality and to suggest standards for improvement. In the United States, intellectuals and political reformers typically invoke “democracy” as an ideal. In China, however, intellectuals and political reformers do not defend “authoritarianism” （专制主义）， which is highly pejorative in Chinese. So we need to think of which political ideals might inspire reform, and that’s why I wrote (an earlier) book defending the ideal of “political meritocracy at the top, experimentation in the middle, and democracy at the bottom”. We may have gone two steps backward and one step forward since I wrote the book, but the ideal, let me suggest, is still valid and widely adhered to as an inspiration and source of criticism in the Chinese political context. So if we want to compare ideals with ideals in slogan form, with respect to the question of how political leaders should be selected, the relevant dichotomy should be something like “electoral democracy” in the U.S. case versus “vertical political meritocracy” in China.

If we want to compare highly imperfect political realities, then it’s a different story. In the United States, the reality is closer to “one dollar, one vote” than “one person, one vote”. In China, the Legalist tradition is hugely influential (as I try to show in my book), in combination with Leninist legacies, especially at higher levels of government. So if we want to compare highly imperfect political realities in slogan form, it should be something like “electoral dollarcracy” in the United States versus “Leninist Legalism” in China. 

In any case, the relevant question is: given that both countries have highly imperfect realities, which political ideals should inspire political reform? For Crane, the same liberal democratic ideals that should inspire reform in the United States should serve to inspire reform in China. I think we should allow for the moral relevance of cultural particularity and that the Confucian and socialist traditions can inspire China’s reform. There are some universal human rights – “negative” rights against torture, slavery, genocide, and systematic racial discrimination as well as “positive” rights to life and basic material needs – but beyond that different political communities can adhere to different standards regarding such issues as the best way to select and promote public officials and to organize economic life.

One last thing. Crane criticizes me for having “hope” that China improves. Here too, I plead guilty as charged, though I do my best to give reasons for hope, it’s not blind hope. 

Daniel A. Bell (University of Hong Kong)

Dec. 16, 2023

I’m happy to announce the publication of my new book, The Dean of Shandong: Confessions of a Minor Bureaucrat at a Chinese University (Princeton University Press). https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691247120/the-dean-of-shandong (for a 30% discount, valid internationally till 10/31/2023, please type the code BEL30). There are also ebook and audio versions. It is also available on amazon and other online book sellers.

The book is “An inside view of Chinese academia and what it reveals about China’s political system”. Here is an extract from the first review:

“Fascinating insight into life in China from the perspective of a non-Chinese academic. Bell offers a frank assessment of the realities of being a scholar in China. . . . Highly recommended for anyone interested in academia in present-day China.”—Library Journal

(https://www.libraryjournal.com/review/the-dean-of-shandong-confessions-of-a-minor-bureaucrat-at-a-chinese-university-2175328)

And here is an overview of the book, along with some book extracts and endorsements from the Princeton University Press website:

On January 1, 2017, Daniel Bell was appointed dean of the School of Political Science and Public Administration at Shandong University—the first foreign dean of a political science faculty in mainland China’s history. In The Dean of Shandong, Bell chronicles his experiences as what he calls “a minor bureaucrat,” offering an inside account of the workings of Chinese academia and what they reveal about China’s political system. It wasn’t all smooth sailing—Bell wryly recounts sporadic bungles and misunderstandings—but Bell’s post as dean provides a unique vantage point on China today.

Bell, neither a Chinese citizen nor a member of the Chinese Communist Party, was appointed as dean because of his scholarly work on Confucianism—but soon found himself coping with a variety of issues having little to do with scholarship or Confucius. These include the importance of hair color and the prevalence of hair-dyeing among university administrators, both male and female; Shandong’s drinking culture, with endless toasts at every shared meal; and some unintended consequences of an intensely competitive academic meritocracy. As dean, he also confronts weightier matters: the role at the university of the Party secretary, the national anticorruption campaign and its effect on academia (Bell asks provocatively, “What’s wrong with corruption?”), and formal and informal modes of censorship. Considering both the revival of Confucianism in China over the last three decades and what he calls “the Communist comeback” since 2008, Bell predicts that China’s political future is likely to be determined by both Confucianism and Communism.

The introduction is available on the Princeton University Press website for the book (https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691247120/the-dean-of-shandong#preview). And here are some extracts published in the Wall Street Journal (https://www.wsj.com/articles/for-chinese-leaders-hair-color-is-about-more-than-style-598199) , Pekingnology (https://www.pekingnology.com/p/the-dean-of-shandong-confessions),

and The Wire China (https://www.thewirechina.com/2023/02/26/the-limits-of-one-man-rule-leadership/).

Endorsements: 

“In The Dean of Shandong, Daniel Bell takes us where few Westerners have gone—into the faculty lounge, teaching rooms, and party meetings of a Chinese university in the era of Xi Jinping. Think Lucky Jim meets Brave New World: Bell’s account of life as a senior Western academic in a Chinese university is by turns humane, disturbing, hilarious—and always eye-opening.”—Rana Mitter, author of Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937–1945

“Daniel Bell is wry, informed, open-minded, and enlightening in his look at Chinese bureaucracy from his years on the inside. Everyone interested in China will find new insights in this terse, funny book.”—James Fallows, author of China Airborne

“A leading interpreter of the Confucian tradition, Daniel Bell takes us into the citadel of contemporary Chinese higher education. Honest and wise, entertaining and witty, he tells the story of an illustrious scholarly life that began in French Canada and Oxford and led to the deanship at Shandong University, one of the most prestigious in China. The personal narrative sparkles, but Bell also analyzes with great clarity and insight the many challenges as well as promises facing China and Chinese intellectuals in the unfolding twenty-first century.”—Anna Sun, author of Confucianism as a World Religion: Contested Histories and Contemporary Realities

“If you think a book about a ‘minor educational bureaucrat’ in provincial China must be dull, think again. This is a sparkling, compulsively readable book about how an Oxford-educated Canadian political scientist became the leading theorist of political Confucianism in China. Bell’s story is charming and filled with self-deprecating humor, but it is also remarkably courageous, given the current climate. It will leave you with a sense that you understand the Chinese and the Chinese system much better than you did before.”—James Hankins, author of Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy

“Bell offers a fascinating glimpse into the workings of a Chinese university as both an insider (a dean) and an outsider (a Canadian). Along the way he treats, with a light hand, the cultural and philosophical underpinnings of contemporary China. This is a book anyone interested in that country will enjoy.”—Shadi Bartsch, author of Plato Goes to China: The Greek Classics and Chinese Nationalism

“Daniel Bell has rightly earned a reputation as the dean—both literally and figuratively—of Confucian studies. But even more important is his cosmopolitan and communitarian spirit, a compelling worldview that makes him a true bridge between East and West. The wisdom of this book—as with all of Bell’s writing—is both novel and universal.”—Parag Khanna, author of The Future is Asian

Best wishes,

Daniel

—

Daniel A. Bell (貝淡寧）

Chair Professor of Political Theory

Faculty of Law, University of Hong Kong

Recent Books:1. The Dean of Shandong: Confessions of a Minor Bureaucrat at a Chinese University (Princeton University Press, March 2023) (https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691247120/the-dean-of-shandong) 

2. Co-edited with Amitav Acharya, Rajeev Bhargava, Yan Xuetong. Bridging Two Worlds: Comparing Classical Political Thought and Statecraft in India and China (University of California Press, Jan. 2023). Free online version available here: 

https://luminosoa.org/site/books/e/10.1525/luminos.135/

3. Co-authored with Wang Pei. Just Hierarchy: Why Social Hierarchies Matter in China and the Rest of the World (Princeton University Press, 2022, paperback with new preface) (https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691233987/just-hierarchy)

I was lucky to participate in a fascinating discussion on Legalism vs. Confucianism at Peking University with Wang Hui, Bai Tondong, and Zhu Suli. Long — about two hours — but worth it, IMHO: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1qT4y1K7xb?p=1&share_medium=iphone&share_plat=ios&share_session_id=A00A3504-E3EC-463D-9634-569767D3C4A2&share_source=WEIXIN&share_tag=s_i&timestamp=1631092828&unique_k=r9Bx1Z&share_times=2&from=timeline&isappinstalled=0

Here’s a keynote talk (in English) for an online workshop “Les Géopolitiques de Brest 2021.” I was asked to discuss why China is demonized in the West. The opening music is very cool and it ends at the 18 minute mark. Here’s the link on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKpKDbolVlc

I’m not surprised to see demonization of the Chinese government these days but it’s more surprising to see demonization of Chinese intellectuals. I’ve just seen David Ownby’s misleading introduction and translation of Wang Hui’s article commemorating Lenin’s 150th birthday (https://www.readingthechinadream.com/wang-hui-revolutionary-personality.html). I feel I must intervene. Wang Hui is a friend and we have been co-teaching a course on Chinese political culture at Schwarzman College (Tsinghua University) for five years.

Wang Hui’s article was commissioned for an English language book on the 150th anniversary of Lenin’s book and there is an excellent translation by the Columbia Phd candidate Joseph Kindler. Wang Hui’s article was written when the Covid situation was at its height in China, so not surprisingly he added some comments on Covid that were meant to encourage the Chinese people. The main contribution of the article is its fascinating discussion of intellectual history, showing how Lenin’s ideas influenced revolutionaries in China such as Li Dazhao and Mao Zedong. 

But Ownby’s introduction does not discuss Wang’s intellectual history. Instead, Ownby mentions the critique of the “liberal” thinker Rong Jian titled “Wang Hui’s Heideggerian Moment”  charging “that Wang (and China’s state-hugging New Left in general) have embraced China’s current regime (and China’s supreme leader) in ways that recall the German philosopher’s controversial engagement with Hitler and Nazism.”
Ownby doesn’t explicitly take sides but he argues that “Like Jiang Shigong and many other New Left writers, Wang Hui is seeking a way to renew socialism, and an obvious vehicle for this renewal is Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” and Ownby highlights references to “leader” (领袖) in bold on the supposed grounds that Wang has President Xi Jinping in mind (“I might mention that Wang Hui would not be the only establishment intellectual to address himself directly to Xi Jinping.”).  

In the translation, Ownby misleadingly suggests that Gramsci’s idea of “君主“ （prince) is a single leader. Wang Hui’s interpretation of Gramsci’s idea is that the “prince” represents the people’s will and that the real “prince” takes the form of the political party (“Gramsci believed that “the modern prince, the myth-prince, cannot be a real person,  a concrete individual” but is rather “the political party”). (Here and elsewhere I rely on Kindler’s translation).

And far from defending the leader or the status quo in China, Wang Hui notes Lenin’s point that “to abolish open and frank intra-party debates, criticism, and self-criticism, would have entailed eliminating the life force of the party.” The contrast with what’s happening in China would not be lost on (non-hostile) Chinese readers.

In his discussion of Covid, Wang Hui criticizes local authorities: “in the early stages of the pandemic … the disease control and operating system did not operate effectively, and local bureaucratic systems have lacked sensitivity towards and epidemic that has spread with unprecedented rapidity, committing failures of judgment choosing instead to follow their habit of repressing public discussions in accordance with the logic of stable economic development.” He goes on to praise the central government’s response which borrowed ideas and practices from the “people’s war” and ends his discussion with the hope that the fight against Covid, involving all sectors of the population, might “re-ignite the agency and active role of the People … and provide a motive force for new social and political forms.”

In short, Wang Hui criticizes the lack of discussion and argument within the ruling organization as well as outside it. Such open struggles are necessary to re-energize and re-politicize the people as well as the ruling organization so that China can meet its future challenges. How Wang Hui can be so fundamentally misread is baffling to me. 

I’m not surprised to see demonization of the Chinese government these days but it’s more surprising to see demonization of Chinese intellectuals. I’ve just seen David Ownby’s misleading introduction and translation of Wang Hui’s article commemorating Lenin’s 150th birthday (https://www.readingthechinadream.com/wang-hui-revolutionary-personality.html). I feel I must intervene. Wang Hui is a friend and we have been co-teaching a course on Chinese political culture at Schwarzman College (Tsinghua University) for five years.

Wang Hui’s article was commissioned for an English language book on the 150th anniversary of Lenin’s book and there is an excellent translation by the Columbia Phd candidate Joseph Kindler. Wang Hui’s article was written when the Covid situation was at its height in China, so not surprisingly he added some comments on Covid that were meant to encourage the Chinese people. The main contribution of the article is its fascinating discussion of intellectual history, showing how Lenin’s ideas influenced revolutionaries in China such as Li Dazhao and Mao Zedong. 

But Ownby’s introduction does not discuss Wang’s intellectual history. Instead, Ownby mentions the critique of the “liberal” thinker Rong Jian titled “Wang Hui’s Heideggerian Moment”  charging “that Wang (and China’s state-hugging New Left in general) have embraced China’s current regime (and China’s supreme leader) in ways that recall the German philosopher’s controversial engagement with Hitler and Nazism.”
Ownby doesn’t explicitly take sides but he argues that “Like Jiang Shigong and many other New Left writers, Wang Hui is seeking a way to renew socialism, and an obvious vehicle for this renewal is Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” and Ownby highlights references to “leader” (领袖) in bold on the supposed grounds that Wang has President Xi Jinping in mind (“I might mention that Wang Hui would not be the only establishment intellectual to address himself directly to Xi Jinping.”).  

In the translation, Ownby misleadingly suggests that Gramsci’s idea of “君主“ （prince) is a single leader. Wang Hui’s interpretation of Gramsci’s idea is that the “prince” represents the people’s will and that the real “prince” takes the form of the political party (“Gramsci believed that “the modern prince, the myth-prince, cannot be a real person,  a concrete individual” but is rather “the political party”). (Here and elsewhere I rely on Kindler’s translation).

And far from defending the leader or the status quo in China, Wang Hui notes Lenin’s point that “to abolish open and frank intra-party debates, criticism, and self-criticism, would have entailed eliminating the life force of the party.” The contrast with what’s happening in China would not be lost on (non-hostile) Chinese readers.

In his discussion of Covid, Wang Hui criticizes local authorities: “in the early stages of the pandemic … the disease control and operating system did not operate effectively, and local bureaucratic systems have lacked sensitivity towards and epidemic that has spread with unprecedented rapidity, committing failures of judgment choosing instead to follow their habit of repressing public discussions in accordance with the logic of stable economic development.” He goes on to praise the central government’s response which borrowed ideas and practices from the “people’s war” and ends his discussion with the hope that the fight against Covid, involving all sectors of the population, might “re-ignite the agency and active role of the People … and provide a motive force for new social and political forms.”

In short, Wang Hui criticizes the lack of discussion and argument within the ruling organization as well as outside it. Such open struggles are necessary to re-energize and re-politicize the people as well as the ruling organization so that China can meet its future challenges. How Wang Hui can be so fundamentally misread is baffling to me. 

As dean at Shandong University, I’ve hosted some cross-cultural dialogues on various themes. I plan to put them together in book form but the Covid crisis makes it difficult to invite speakers and continue the dialogues (for the moment?). So let me put online some of the dialogues we’ve had so far. Here is the second dialogue: thanks to Wang Fuxiang for editing the dialogue. It’s a fascinating exchange on the history, philosophy and politics of sortition with two experts on the topic: Professors Wang Shaoguang and Yves Sintomer. The dialogue is below, and comments are more than welcome

Thanks to John Berger for excellent questions. Here is the interview:

https://www.centeronnationalsecurity.org/vital-interests-issue-32-daniel-bell

And here is a Chinese translation:

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/mEvsh2IISipY2nXWpaKt6Q

Thanks to John Berger for excellent questions. Here is the interview:

https://www.centeronnationalsecurity.org/vital-interests-issue-32-daniel-bell

And here is a Chinese translation:

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/mEvsh2IISipY2nXWpaKt6Q

Thanks so much to Princeton University Press’s Beijing office for efficient and thoughtful organization of an online book talk on May 29th. We presented my new book Just Hierarchy (Princeton University Press) talk with Q and A followed by an informative summary and video link.  It’s in Chinese and my brilliant co-author Wang Pei did most of the talking:

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/hZO5HqP1VJ1aL554SxLc0w

And here’s a link to an English language online book talk on Just Hierarchy hosted by Fudan-European Center for China Studies in Copenhagen on May 28th: