This is China Discusses Feudalism & Technofeudalism

Zhang Weiwei, Fan Yongpeng and TV Hostess/Moderator

This is China TV Discussion Program #271 aired on 17 February 2025

I’ve previously provided several translations of this program featuring outstanding Chinese scholar Zhang Weiwei and probably ought to do more of them as they offer insights into China’s view of Western aspects, in this case technofeudalism and feudalism. The televised program, “The Feudal Nature of the Western System,” lasts an hour that’s divided into three sections: discussion by the academics, roundtable discussion with the moderator, then some Q&A from the audience. There are several other recent statements of importance made by the Chinese government that have seen no reproduction in the West I hope to translate and publish during the coming week so readers can obtain better insight into China’s system. The transcript begins with the hostess providing an introduction to the subject matter:

"OpenAI and Nvidia hyped chips so expensive, and the United States originally wanted to monopolize it, and then we saw how DeepSeek broke the monopoly, which is very feudal."

"Feudalism in Western society is a systemic phenomenon, and it is by no means just the result of the development of technology and platform capital."

Not long ago, Professor Yannis Varoufakis, a left-wing scholar in Europe and former Minister of Finance of Greece, made the point that capitalism is declining and being replaced by another politically regressive form of "techno-feudalism". In Dragon TV's "This is China" program broadcast on February 17, Professor Zhang Weiwei, Dean of the Institute of China Studies at Fudan University, and Professor Fan Yongpeng, Vice Dean of the Institute of China Studies at Fudan University, discussed the relationship between capitalism and feudalism.

Fan Yongpeng:

In September 2024, Prof. Zhang invited Yanis Varoufakis, a Greek economist and former Minister of Finance, to the Institute of China Studies at Fudan University as a visiting scholar. Yannis was an influential new intellectual, whose main idea was that capitalism was dead; With the development of new technologies and industries, the West has entered the stage of "technological feudalism".

Yannis refers to platform capital such as e-commerce and social media as "cloud capital". He believes that the relationship between platform capital and labor is no longer the free [non-slave] wage labor of the classic capitalist stage, and that platform labor is becoming more and more like a kind of "cloud serf".

At the same time, those who hold these "cloud capitals" have the power to circumvent the market. They produce nothing, but they can charge producers three to four percent of the rent, which Yannis calls "cloud rent". Different platforms are isolated from each other and have strict barriers, similar to the feudal state of feudal society, which he called "cloud territory".

And the power of the state, which used to be able to provide checks and balances on the power of capital, is becoming weaker and weaker. Because these platforms are able to control not only people's lives, but also people's thoughts and speech, and even votes, it is also able to control political power.

Platform capitalists like Mark Zuckerberg, the metaverse he created is to build an independent parallel world to compete with real countries. Then in their own territory, "cloud capital" is the feudal prince who is in charge of everything.

So Yannis thinks that capitalism is dead, but instead of being replaced by communism, it is a return to feudalism. As the American left-wing scholar Jodi Dean put it: "Capitalism is at a crossroads: should it choose communism or neo-feudalism?" The answer of these left-wing scholars is neofeudalism.

In addition to Yanis, many left-wing intellectuals in the West have been keen to discuss this topic in recent years. For example, the Slovenian writer Zizek and the French scholar Dylan are both talking about the feudalization of capitalism.

There are some right-wing intellectuals who have come to the same end as them. Although they also have a nostalgic rather than critical attitude towards old-fashioned capitalism, they also see the phenomenon of capitalism being feudalized.

In fact, more than 10 years ago, many scholars were keenly aware of this problem, such as Francis Fukuyama, an American ideological apologist, and Thomas Piketty, a French economist, who saw the hereditary trend of wealth and power in Western society from different standpoints. In response to Trump's recent re-election, Paul Krugman also wrote: "Crony capitalism is sweeping the United States.”

It is no coincidence that these people are concerned about the problem of neo-feudalism. When we look back at the development of capitalism in the West in the past two decades, we can indeed see that the tendency of feudalism in all aspects is far beyond the realization of these intellectuals.

It is easy to spot a series of signs of capitalist degradation:

First, the revival of feudal theocracy. In recent years, religion has seen a rise in influence on political power, from Trump and American conservatism to the European right. Not to mention the Middle East, Turkey, India, and other countries, all of which are re-religious to some extent.

Second, the power of the feudal chaebol rose. In the past, we may not have been unfamiliar with the chaebols in Japan and South Korea, but today we find that the chaebol forces in Europe and the United States have also begun to come to the fore and directly participate in politics.

Third, the feudal warlords reappeared. The phenomenon of private or group armed forces, which seems to be alien to the modern state, is re-entering our field of vision. In recent years, there have been signs of military interference in politics in the United States, France, and Germany, and the armed forces of the right and left wings of the civilian population have also begun to appear. The "color revolutions" promoted by the West have also led to the disintegration of many relatively mature countries such as Libya and Syria, leading to the emergence of various warlords.

Fourth, it is difficult to return to the feudal hereditary system. From Trump's cronyism, Biden's pardon for his son and some criminal politicians, to the frequent revelations in the United States in recent years that congressmen or public officials let their relatives take over and confer public office on the country. These cases show that political power in the United States has become seriously hereditary. Some studies have found that at the level of Congress alone, there are already more than 700 political warlords in the United States.

Fifth, the feudal manor reappeared. Not only the data and platform estates pointed out by scholars such as Yannis, but also traditional landed estates never became extinct. Whether it is the aristocratic estate of Britain or the big landlords behind these cities in the United States, these Western cities that seem to be very modern on the surface have always had a feudal property structure behind them.

In addition to these "old money," the "new money" created by the information industry has also begun to buy land in realty. Bill Gates and others were once blown into the sky as innovative entrepreneurs, but today they have all begun to become big landowners in the United States.

Therefore, we can see that the feudalization of Western society is a systemic phenomenon, and it is by no means the result of the development of technology and platform capital.

Although the critical consciousness of Western scholars such as Yannis is very valuable, they still have not jumped out of the prison of capitalist discourse.

Their critique of capitalism is mainly that the rise of platform capital has led to the failure of the market economy, the decline of free wage labor, and the challenge of new technologies to representative elections. But I think this kind of criticism is still too superficial, and there are many problems with it, so I will briefly mention a few points.

First, the demise of the market and profits, as they point out, does not necessarily mean the demise of capitalism, but only exposes the backwardness and barbarism inherent in capitalism itself. It is true that we all know that capitalism was built in the struggle against feudalism and that the main task of the bourgeois revolution was to overthrow feudalism. [Something seldom taught in the West.]

In 1843, Marx proposed a series of important concepts, including political emancipation, civil society, and so on. What he meant was that one of the characteristics of feudal society was that people's economic status and political status were linked. For example, if you are a big landlord or a big nobleman, you will enjoy the corresponding feudal privileges; And if you don't have land, you can only go and be a serf, a vassal.

One of the advances of capitalism is political emancipation, the decoupling of people's economic status from their political status, turning them into modern individuals, and achieving basic political equality. In the future, economic inequality and the real emancipation of man will be solved by the socialist revolution, according to Marx.

But the problem is that capitalism is not completely anti-feudal. Capitalism is exploited by the market economy and free wage labour, which is an economic exploitation, but that does not mean that it is not supra-economically exploitative. Capitalism was born out of feudalism, and it itself dragged a long feudal tail.

From the long-standing slave labor in Europe, the white indentured slavery and black slavery in North America, to the child labor and unequal pay for equal work that are still rampant in the United States today; From the genocide and brutal exploitation of other regions by Western colonialism, to the plundering of India and the Qing Dynasty, to the global bloodsucking and world war of imperialism, to the subversion, resource grabbing and oil theft by the United States in recent years.

When capitalism is able to kill people and oversell goods and engage in super-economic exploitation, it will never be polite. Only if it cannot engage in supra-economic exploitation, will it patiently sit down and engage in economic exploitation.

From this point of view, the retrogression of capitalism today, which runs counter to the principles of market economy and profit, is not a new thing at all, but a form of capitalism itself.

The greatest significance of China's rise in the world is to make it impossible for Western capitalism to plunder and exploit the world unscrupulously, so capitalism has been beaten back to its original form.

Second, these Western scholars have not really touched on the problems of the Western system itself. When we look at these intellectuals, they basically don't talk about the problems of liberal democracy in the United States or the representative system in the West.

In their view, the market economy is still healthy, and the representative system is democratic. Therefore, their criticism of neo-feudalism still contains a defense of capitalism to a certain extent.

But what they don't see or don't want to talk about is that Western representative system itself is not so modern, it is itself a kind of feudal legacy. In the history of the ancient West, the system that can be called democracy is not based on elections, but on voting, drawing lots, and so on.

Election is a typical institutional form of feudal aristocratic society. Elections in the Catholic Church, elections in the Holy Roman Empire, aristocratic democracy in the Kingdom of Poland, and parliamentary systems in England are all forms of aristocratic control and distribution of power.

In modern times, the suffrage has proliferated, and the representative system has also taken on a false democratic veneer, but it is still essentially an aristocratic system, except that the feudal aristocracy has been replaced by the commercial aristocracy, then the industrial aristocracy, then the monopoly bourgeois aristocracy, and gradually replaced by the Jewish and financial bourgeoisie after World War II.

The story that is happening in the United States today is a new wave of replacement movement launched by the upstarts of technology and platform capital, and it is always the capitalist aristocracy that holds the power.

The rise of the new right in Silicon Valley, represented by Musk, is the embodiment of the new aristocracy of technology and platforms.

As the British thinker Lasky put it, the so-called representative system is a system in which different types of property rights share political power in proportion. Western representative system is essentially a tool for the direct transformation of property power into political power.

Then, when Western capitalism begins to stagnate, the progressive nature of the capitalists begins to disappear, and the social differentiation between the rich and the poor and the accumulation of wealth have a hereditary tendency, it will inevitably bring about the hereditary transfer of power. From hereditary property to hereditary power, it's no wonder that today the West looks more and more like a feudal society.

How to solve these problems? Yanis: They mentioned the idea of either techno-socialism or techno-communism. But as European left-wing scholars, their thinking is very limited and they lack intuitive experience of how socialism works.

For example, a big capital platform like Mark Zuckerberg can only be invited by Congress in the United States to ask him for questioning, while in China we can regulate the development of platform capital through regulation, punishment, legislation, etc.

The Western Left cannot jump out of the ideological routine of representative government, but we have actually explored a successful path. We have played a fundamental role by relying on the vanguard political party, the public ownership system, the people's political power, and the people's army.

Of course, China is also facing many new challenges today, and it also needs to be reformed, but my view is by no means the dogmatic liberalization or the reform in the direction of opening up, as advocated by some scholars or social figures today.

Third, the meaning of feudalism itself is complex. From the perspective of the political system alone, one of the characteristics of feudalism is the separation of local powers. Western culture is particularly fond of emphasizing autonomy, which is itself part of the feudal tradition.

It is very difficult for human beings to combine small societies into large societies and form a unified economic and political body, and it has extremely high requirements for institutions and cultures.

It was only from the Warring States Period that China gradually got out of the feudal state of political power after the unification of the Qin Dynasty, and after more than 2,000 years of practice of great unification, we still have to find a balance between national unification and local autonomy today. But it is important that we must not allow the particular to prevail over the unity, and not to allow the local to jeopardize the wholeness.

On the contrary, in the history of the West, it is very lacking in unified political experience, so in the process of modern anti-feudalism, except for some small countries in Europe that once established a relatively unified political entity, the political construction of slightly larger countries has never been able to break through this "ceiling".

For example, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States have not been able to achieve real integration and unification, and the so-called federalism is a typical semi-finished product with feudal characteristics. And the EU is an institutional experiment that has fallen into crisis before it is completed.

Therefore, when the development of capitalist modernization in the West came to a standstill and the construction of the state came to an end, these feudal factors began to rise, dissolving the unified country and re-entering the state of separation of various local and special forces. The technological feudal separation, cloud separation, and data manor seen by Yannis and other scholars are just a special manifestation of this feudal political structure.

There are so many other aspects that I can't go into them all. In short, the thinking and criticism of Western scholars represented by Yannis are very enlightening, but they are limited by the limitations of European and American civilization itself. They have failed to see the whole picture of the problem, nor have they been able to thoroughly theorize, and it is difficult for them to really come up with effective solutions.

Thus, in the end, it will either degenerate into a pessimistic wail about the historical regression of capitalism, or it will fall into an idealistic utopia about the future direction.

For example, their proposed plan for the new feudalism and the inheritance of wealth and power is either to collect taxes without pain or itching; but the problem is that in a country ruled by capital, you collect taxes from capital. Isn't this just to seek skin with the tiger?

Either talk about communism in vain, including the Jodi Dean just mentioned, who is also talking about the vanguard party, talking about communism. The problem is that in the bastions of capitalism and feudalism, communism does not grow automatically.

I really hope that these thinkers will put forward better theories, more powerful words, and be more proactive in helping the people of the world to oppose the oppression of capitalism and the restoration of feudalism, so as to build a better and more progressive modern world.

Thank you.

【Roundtable Discussion】

Moderator: We are talking about capitalism and feudalism today, and let's start with the word feudalism. Everyone may have learned about feudalism, feudalism, etc. when they studied politics in middle school, but it may not be so easy to learn and understand, especially it is difficult to explain this concept clearly in everyday language. So when we discuss some of the drawbacks of capitalism, let's start with the concept of feudalism, Mr. Zhang.

Zhang Weiwei: If we talk about the feudal system, perhaps one is in a narrow sense and the other is in a broad sense.

In a narrow sense, for example, the Zhou Dynasty divided the feudal system, and the land was distributed to their relatives, to their generals, and so on, and then such a system began to form. Europe was a feudal society for a long time throughout the Middle Ages. It is characterized by the fact that people, peasants or serfs are dependent on the land and have no freedom. But in China, since the Qin and Han dynasties, this system has collapsed.

But there is a more general sense, maybe the land system has changed, but many traditional habits, such as hereditary and nepotism, which we talk about, are part of feudalism.

Fan Yongpeng: The concept of feudalism is actually a very interesting concept. There is a very central debate topic in China's more than 2,000-year political history, that is, is it better to be feudal or county-wise?

Feudalism is the system of the Western Zhou Dynasty mentioned by Mr. Zhang, and the counties are the system of the Qin Dynasty, and the Qin system completely overthrew feudalism. The Qin Dynasty was very unfortunate and short-lived, so later generations have been arguing: is it better to make the Qin system or the Zhou system?

For example, in the early years of the Western Han Dynasty, it was thought that it was necessary to divide the feudals, and then Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty began to engage in integration again, and then to the Jin Dynasty, the local feudal forces began to rise again, and to the Sui and Tang Dynasties, they began to unify again, and they have been swaying repeatedly.

From the Song Dynasty to the Ming and Qing dynasties, there was also a certain degree of abandonment of local governance by the central government in China, called "the imperial power does not go down to the county", so there was a very deep-rooted feudal structure in the local structure, that is, the rule of the landlords over the peasants. But at the national level, it is not entirely feudal, there are unified laws and unified political systems.

This concept has been debated, and Chairman Mao and Guo Moruo have another debate. Liu Zongyuan in the Tang Dynasty was on the side of the county system, and Zhang Shizhao in the late Qing Dynasty wrote a book called "Liu Wen Instructions". Chairman Mao thought it was very good after reading it, and then debated with Guo Moruo, and wrote a poem called "Hundreds of generations are all practicing Qin politics and law", that is, the county system has its advantages.

But the word feudalism is not exactly the same as feudalism in the West, especially the feudalism proposed by Marxism. As Mr. Zhang said, from the disintegration of the Roman Empire to the time before modernization, Europe was feudal at this stage, and it was not exactly the same.

This word was translated by our great translator Yan Fu. Yan Fu himself talked very vividly in the book, he said that the word feudalism can be translated into feudal, he took the pen, threw the pen on the ground several times, and then circled around the room, and finally there was no way, or translated into feudal, so it brought a certain degree of confusion.

However, China's traditional feudalism and European feudalism actually have something in common, and Mr. Zhang just talked about it, and it has several characteristics: first, it has a certain kind of large land, and then exploits it through land rent and labor, rather than through free labor and wages.

Second, it exists in the relationship of human dependence. For example, I am a serf, and I am attached to a landlord; Or I am a nobleman and I am attached to my lord. To put it bluntly, this view of personal dependence means that people are not free, which is different from the concept in our society today. I go out into society, I am an independent individual, I am not attached to anyone.

The third characteristic is the decentralization of political power, that is, the central government cannot centralize power, and various separatist forces are formed at the local level, and the relationship between them and the central government is contractual, layer by layer, and power is divided through contracts. As soon as we unify these three characteristics, we will find that Chinese and Western feudalism actually have commonalities.

Since the end of the Qing Dynasty, with the decline of central power, China's local feudalism has become the main contradiction in Chinese society, coupled with the entry of imperialism, so at the Second National Congress of the Communist Party of China [1922], the party clearly put forward the slogan of "anti-imperialist and anti-feudal" in the program, and this diagnosis is very accurate. Under its guidance, the Chinese revolution has succeeded and construction has also succeeded. Therefore, the Chinese Communist Party's understanding of feudalism is correct.

Moderator: Just now you said that feudalism has many directions, dimensions, and characteristics. To put it simply, it may be anti-dependency, which is first of all a very important core content of anti-feudalism, and from this point of view, everyone may understand it at once.

Zhang Weiwei: When we discuss issues with Western scholars, we often say that there has been no real freedom in European society for thousands of years, and once you have freedom, you cherish it very much, and you talk about freedom every day, because you have too little freedom in history.

Fan Yongpeng: Let me add to Mr. Zhang's opinion. There is a very famous Marxist historian in the West, named Perry Anderson. He said why do we Westerners attach so much importance to freedom? He said that it is only when you are faced with unfreedom that you become aware of the problem of freedom.

He said that Europeans valued freedom because slavery existed throughout European history. When you're a free man, as a nobleman, like a citizen of Greece, and you look at a large number of slaves laboring for you, you think I'm free.

In China, after the Western Zhou Dynasty, we did not have this kind of large-scale slavery, so the Chinese did not have this very strong motivation to speak of freedom. If you look at the novels in Chinese history, the texts of the Tang Dynasty, the novels of the Ming and Qing dynasties, a Chinese scholar, a farmer, and a businessman can travel all over the world, row a small boat along the Beijing-Hangzhou Canal to Beijing, run to Nanjing, and he is free.

So Chinese, on the contrary, will feel that freedom is not a big deal. The freedom we Chinese talk about is a higher level, that is, Zhuangzi, I am free, I am careless, this is called freedom.

Moderator: Let's talk about feudalism again. Because he is talking about the feudal nature of capitalism now, specific to the level of life, if this feudal nature still exists, what is its harm to a country and this society?

Fan Yongpeng: I think number one, it's anti-productive. Marx made it very clear that capitalism grew out of feudalism. There is a sentence in the "Communist Manifesto" that because the superstructure of the feudal system could not accommodate the development of new productive forces, it was "blasted" and "blown up".

Marx has a wonderful saying, he said that the hand mill produced the era of feudalism, and the steam mill produced the era of capitalism.

The reason why this neo-feudal tendency has emerged in the West today is precisely that their productive forces have begun to stagnate and regress. Therefore, if we are faced with the resurgence of feudal forces, then we must first think that it is an obstacle to modern civilization, to modern material production, and to the development of productive forces.

Moderator: In other words, when feudalism returns, it will bring damage to the whole of modernization and modernity.

Fan Yongpeng: It will bring serious shackles to productivity. The second point is that feudalism brings injustice.

A very important proposition put forward by Marx in 1843 is that in feudal society, your economic rights and political power are linked. What is modern society? It's that how much money I earn is not tied to my rights as a citizen, which is a huge step forward in history. [In theory, but seldom in practice.]

But now this re-peg is starting to happen again in the West, so it will bring injustice. Between wealth and political power to personal status, this equivalence began to emerge again. This phenomenon is happening in many societies.

Zhang Weiwei: We can also give some examples, such as equal pay for men and women for equal work. None of the Western countries have done it, whether Sweden, Denmark, or Switzerland, this is feudalism. This is especially true in Japan and South Korea, where the difference in income between men and women can be 30 to 40 percent, which is severely feudal.

Fan Yongpeng: Including the surname of their husbands after their women get married, it is a legacy of feudalism. Feudalism also has a very important harm, because it will break the modern nation-state that has been formed with great difficulty since modernization. After the emergence of various separatist powers, the central power is deconstructed, and then it will lead to the fragmentation of the country and the fragmentation of the world, which is not conducive to globalization. In fact, if you look at the "small courtyard and high walls" of the United States today, it is hindering the further development of globalization. Globalization has its own problems, it is the domination of the whole world by big capital. But we need to domesticate globalization from another angle, to transform it.

However, after the rise of feudal power, the world will be fragmented, and a large number of wars and turmoil will be brought about, including the rise of religious extremism, and human transportation and material exchanges will begin to be blocked.

Today's modernization has brought a lot of global problems, infectious diseases, global crime, climate change, and finally the world is beginning to deconstruct. Who will solve these global problems? This is a very big problem.

Zhang Weiwei: When I was debating with Francis Fukuyama in 2011, I said that the American political system was pre-industrial revolution, that is, feudalism. For example, when we talk about disaster relief, the U.S. government has very little disaster relief function, and it will be fine if it sends a notice. For a modern state, this is not a no-go.

When Trump was saying that he wanted Canada to become the 51st state of the United States, a Canadian politician began to retort, saying that we want California to become Canada's 11th province and that everyone in this province would have universal health care. Universal health care is also part of modernity.

Fan Yongpeng: Washington, Oregon, and California join Canada.

Zhang Weiwei: She said that Canada does not have people without health insurance like the United States, and Canada does not have anyone who can own guns like the United States.

Moderator: So when we talk about feudalism, we are talking about the defects of the capitalist system itself. Just now, Mr. Fan also said in his speech that the capitalist system was originally produced in anti-feudalism. But because it is not complete, when its own development encounters obstacles, it will turn back and look for refuge in feudalism.

Turning back to China, especially the history of the founding of New China, we have been very thorough in our anti-feudalism. The system is very thorough, but we may also observe in terms of living customs, and there may be certain local customs that still reflect a certain feudal nature, but this may not be a large proportion.

Zhang Weiwei: There is no doubt that there are many feudal traditions in Chinese society. Even if we talk about the "second combination" now, it is also a combination of Marxism and China's excellent traditional culture, that is to say, there is a problem of taking the essence and eliminating the dross.

There are some things that we actually do all the time, some that we haven't done enough, and some things that are still very ingrained. For example, when it comes to seniority, there are quite a lot. At that time, Gong Zizhen said, "I advise Tiangong to be vigorous", he was a figure in the late Qing Dynasty, and such an expression was revolutionary.

Now we talk about selecting meritocracy, and some things are the essence. We invented the imperial examination system, which was the most advanced civil service examination system in the world at that time. But then it did become more and more rigid, and it became a test of eight strands; And it only focuses on writing poems and writing beautiful articles, rather than how to really solve practical problems.

Therefore, in our current cadre selection system, a very important point is to look at your practice, your political achievements, and how well you have done.

Moderator: In Mr. Fan's speech, he cited the concept of "cloud rent" charged by some platforms in the West. The platform economy is also quite familiar to us. Do we need to be particularly wary of such signs in China?

Fan Yongpeng: It is definitely needed, because the platform itself is not an enterprise in the traditional sense, but has the nature of a certain public infrastructure. Let's think: Can we make our high-speed rail system, our aviation system, a private company to control? So it has a similar nature, but it's also a private enterprise, and it follows the logic of corporate rules.

Therefore, we need to find a suitable angle between the two, that is, to let it unleash its creativity as an enterprise, and at the same time to ensure that it serves everyone as a public instrument of the world, and not as its own feudal territory.

What does this boil down to? It is not possible to rely on the representative system, nor can it be done by relying on multi-party competition; in the final analysis, it is only by relying on the leadership of the Communist Party of China and relying on socialist culture that we can solve the problem.

Zhang Weiwei: When we discussed with Yannis here, his observation was quite perceptive. From the point of view of payment systems and digital currencies, China and the United States have parted ways. The United States follows the road of feudalism, while China follows the road of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

The biggest disagreement is why we can pay so much with mobile phones, but not in the United States? Its credit card companies, banks, and other social media are reluctant to combine when it comes to the distribution of benefits.

China is different, China has the leadership of the party. Since the society has this demand, we want to represent the advanced productive forces, we will give it a try, hold a personal hearing, the mayor will hold a meeting, representatives from all parties will be invited, you will let go of the profits, and I will give up a little of it, and finally try, and we will make such a big world.

Moderator: You just talked about the platform, I did an interview some time ago, and introduced that there is a system called escort in Shanghai, which is actually in great demand. Because many elderly people, even young people, go to the hospital to see a doctor, they may need someone to take me, accompany me to register, get medicine, especially the doctor's order to translate, to remember how to eat in a day, how many meals to eat, etc., is such a service.

The government realizes that because of the lack of escorts in the elderly care service, the government will set up a platform to encourage third-party service agencies to enter the platform, and the service fee may be paid directly by the consumer to the third party, and the government will build the platform.

Going back to what you just said, we will also build some platforms, and we will also encourage the relevant operators to serve the people on them, but if you go beyond the boundary, I will come to supervise you, and I will come to adjust. If it does not go beyond the border, it is very good, because there is one more social force that can do things for the common people, which is a manifestation of the attributes of our socialist system.

The issues we are discussing today sound very professional at first glance, but when we put them into practice, we will find that we have a more intuitive understanding of modernity, modernization, capitalism, feudalism, and anti-feudalism.

【Q&A】

Audience: Hello two teachers, good host. The question I would like to ask today is: What is the difference between traditional feudalism and neo-feudalism in the definition of manifestations? What is deceptive and destructive to social progress? Thank you, teacher.

Moderator: You may be seated. Good question, what is the difference between the feudalism we talk about in history and the feudalism we talk about today?

Fan Yongpeng: Traditional feudalism is a historical phenomenon because the feudal era has passed. But the elites of the feudal era, in the process of modernization, whether in the West, Southeast Asia, Latin America and other non-Western countries, he has been transformed, because he controls resources, so he directly transformed into the political elite of the new era, and he has left.

Therefore, in many countries, there is such a very primitive and conservative political system as crony capitalism, which is a legacy of the old feudalism today.

The new feudalism, which I am talking about today, is proposed by scholars like Yannis and Durand, and on the basis of the development of new technologies, a trend close to feudalism has emerged. Strictly speaking, it is a metaphor, not strictly feudal, but it does have some feudal qualities, such as bringing people to dependence.

In the field of culture, Mao Jian, a teacher from East China Normal University, has a very famous saying, she said that the most feudal place in China is in film and television dramas, which are full of mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationships, bride price, and domineering presidents, which are all typical feudal culture. This is contrary to the socialist culture advocated by our Communist Party. Therefore, we must rely on the party's propaganda and theoretical guidance to constantly overcome it.

In addition, there is a very important point, that is, what is the biggest resonance point between the traditional feudalism and the new feudalism? This resonance point is that after having wealth, this wealth can be accumulated, and a direct relationship between wealth and power is established, which is the most dangerous problem.

For example, I have dozens of properties at home, and I don't need to go to work anymore, I can live on rent. For example, my father has established a large platform capital, and I don't need to operate it anymore in the future, just collect rent and collect a lot of data. Data itself is an economic element, which is productivity. Such a group of people will become a conservative feudal force in the new era.

So you see, our party has been working hard to regulate and change this situation. Therefore, General Secretary Xi Jinping said in his speech at the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China that the Communist Party of China has "three non-represents": it does not represent any interest group, does not represent any powerful group, and does not represent the interests of any privileged class. That is to say, it is necessary to break the inheritance, accumulation, and hereditary inheritance of power and wealth, which is a very important point in the fight against feudalism.

Finally, I'll give you another example, which is how our system breaks this thing. The FBI once tried to interrogate a suspected terrorist, and his iPhone would not open, and then he went to the California Supreme Court to file a lawsuit. In the end, the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of Apple, and the state power just can't get this thing.

And our People's Bank of China has issued a policy that requires that all digital transaction data must have a backup in the central bank. What is the purpose? It's creative activities that you can continue to do, but I'm going to keep a backup of the same here, and the state controls this resource through power on behalf of the people. This is an important example.

Zhang Weiwei: On the one hand, with the digital economy, we see that China and the United States have begun to part ways, according to Yannis's words: one is "technological feudalism" and the other is socialism with Chinese characteristics. In terms of feudalism, the two sides also have something in common. The domineering president is interesting, and if this is a feudal display, then this is also a humorous "soft power" that China exports to the United States.

Short films of domineering presidents are very popular in the United States. They completely used the Chinese script, replaced it with American, changed it to English, changed people's names, and everything else remained almost unchanged, and the lines were all machine-translated. Then I filmed, and even went to China to shoot, and some of them were filmed in the United States, and it turned out to be very popular in the United States.

Moderator: Why do so many people like to watch the story of the domineering president?

Fan Yongpeng: People sometimes want to "lie flat". Independence and freedom are actually quite tiring. As a matter of fact, our party has said this a long time ago: We must shape a new person of socialism and use new people and new ideas to break through this feudal trap.

Moderator: So it's not just about external feudalism, but also about your own inner feudalism.

Audience: Hello two teachers, good host. In contemporary society, anti-feudal movements are often closely linked to the pursuit of fairness in society. In the European bourgeois revolution, although the privileges of the feudal aristocracy were overthrown, inequality still existed within the European bourgeoisie. In the context of the new era, how should we balance different interests and avoid new social injustices after anti-feudalism? Thank you, teacher.

Zhang Weiwei: I think this is also a matter of international comparison. For example, in the UK, the British themselves admit that their country is referred to as a "class society" in English, which is sometimes translated as "阶级社会" (class society) and sometimes as "阶层社会" (stratified society). Its classes and social strata are solidified.

Three hundred years ago, wealthy families and aristocratic families are still the richest today. There is a large body of research to prove this, and the family lineage continues to this day. So in the UK, it's very, very difficult to get past the classes.

In comparison, China is still a society with the greatest mobility. For example, the college entrance examination system, which is almost nonexistent in other countries. It is essential to take the college entrance examination, and admissions are strictly based on scores; many countries do not have this situation.

In Chinese culture, there is a saying: "Heaven helps those who help themselves." As long as you work hard, the people around you will say that this child is good, and we should lend him a hand. Nowadays, whether in politics, society, or business, the vast majority of successful individuals have achieved their success through their own efforts.

Fan Yongpeng: In the traditional sense, the injustice brought about by feudalism should be said to exist in China, but in the world, we are the best.

If you look at the anti-feudal process in various countries around the world, such as Italy and Spain, the feudalism is more retained, because modern capitalism has not developed enough, so some feudal elements have been left.

Some countries, such as Germany and France, developed particularly maturely in the feudal era, but because it has developed capitalism very maturely, and especially after the Great Revolution, the French aristocracy has killed several waves, and Germany has been bombed in World War I and World War II for several waves, and as a result, the aristocracy has basically been completely eliminated, so these two countries look relatively modern.

So like Britain, as well as Northern Europe, Northwest Europe, and Low Countries these places, its royal power and aristocracy and feudal power are very strong. To this day, they have not yet jumped out of the era of feudal kingship.

It was mainly the Soviet Union and China that really experienced large-scale and profound social transformation, so we were relatively successful in the anti-feudal aspect.

But the question you asked is important. A very big challenge we are facing today is that every time the development of new technologies in human history will inevitably bring about changes in the original structure of social interests.

In today's era, we advocate science, so it is easy for everyone to have a romantic imagination of science and technology and think that science and technology must be good. Historically, science and technology have not necessarily been good, and it has always been a "double-edged sword". So in today's era of highly developed technology, we are also facing this problem.

Looking back on history, what are the special needs of all the periods of rapid development of science and technology in history? There is a special need to stress politics and the active political will that comes from society.

Whether it is through the peasant uprising, through the imperial examination, or through our communist revolution, we must overcome the deviation in the distribution brought about by the development of science and technology by representing the will of the whole people. This is a very important challenge that we face today.

Moderator: Just now, Mr. Fan said that in history, science and technology have always been a "double-edged sword", but perhaps only China has clearly shouted four words, called "science and technology for good", that is, I hope that science and technology will serve the progress of mankind and the well-being of ordinary people.

So the challenges that you just talked about that you might encounter may also bring about a new phase of injustice. However, the characteristic and advantage of our system lies in ensuring the greatest fairness in the midst of all kinds of new changes.

Zhang Weiwei: I'll give you this example again, OpenAI and Nvidia hyped the chip so expensive, and then we came out with DeepSeek, which doesn't need to be so expensive to achieve the effect of the same product, and it's open source.

The United States originally wanted to monopolize it, and we broke this monopoly, which itself is feudal. The United States has created a lot of public opinion, and the whole world believes that this is the only way to go, and everyone can only buy expensive chips in the United States. Now the Chinese socialist forces, DeepSeek represents the people's nature, which is revolutionary. That's what the world is all about.

Moderator: So you just said that I was thinking about this example, we all said to help everyone understand what is anti-feudal, what is feudal, look at the role of DeepSeek, it is anti-feudal.

I said in the program that China is actually the most modern country, and today's topic I think is a perfect footnote to this sentence. How do we understand Chinese modernity? It lies in the thoroughness of our anti-feudal and anti-feudal nature.

What Mr. Fan just talked about is capitalism, and there are still many remnants of its feudalism. When it encounters obstacles to development, it will look back and magnify its feudal nature, so we must be very vigilant about this. Finally, I would like to say that let us oppose external feudalism, and at the same time we must oppose the feudal nature of ourselves and let us live a new self every day.

Thank you all, and goodbye. [My Emphasis]

The discussions we have about the Rentier Class, rents, monopolies, and the financialization of capitalism and Dr. Michael Hudson’s work is all related to the above discussion. I’d characterize it as looking at a horse form two different angles—both see the horse but provide a different perspective of it. Capitalism has a “long feudal tail” that is very present when we look and the sort of technofeudalism described is very visible in Trump 2.0. There’s a great disdain for commonfolk that more and more people are seeing and feeling. An excellent observation was the US Constitution is a feudal instrument and the government a feudal construct made for rule by the upper-class oligarchy. That China needs to be observant that the latent feudalism that remains in its society is regulated along with the feudal structures that come with new technologies. And of course, China isn’t the only nation needing to be that observant. The feudal nature of Europe is prominently displayed today with the EU/NATO construct acting as the Feudal Lord over all the vassal nations which are in differing degrees of resistance. IMO, Xi Jinping understands that the way to keep feudalism controlled is to be diligently constantly reforming and modernizing the governmental structure and its laws. Furthermore, the structures and systems of many former colonial nations mirror that of the Colonial Master, which has caused a great many problems since the aim of those structures and systems was to eliminate any type of equalitarian nature that could be interpreted as socialism or a society devoid of classes. Humanity will have a shared future, but what will be the nature of that future? What might be deemed optimal and what shall be done with the selfish class that disagrees? And what to do with people thinking themselves exceptional, which are currently a different sort than the selfish class? Above, it’s asked who will solve these global problems, religious extremism being just one? We’ve seen how those controlling platforms aid such extremism along with feudalistic empires. Is the technology the danger, the humans that discover it or the governments that control the humans?

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