Zhang Weiwei: This is China: Deng Xiaoping

Part of "Unforgettable Red Years"

Taking a break from following Russian events with this translation of a recent program sponsored by China’s Guancha, which is a state media company that produces the This is China educational TV program and also provides a transcript. Many non-Chinese know little of Deng Xiaoping aside from the fact that he was rather short and stocky and that he emerged as China’s Chairman after the post-Mao tumult. As the photo shows, the TV show’s format is that of a roundtable discussion where Zhang Weiwei, another academic in this case Liu Yuwei, and a moderator are the primary participants, and an audience from which questions are often elicited. I’ve provided a few of these in the past based on US-centric topics. At the original page, there’re photos that punctuate the narrative readers. Here we go:

"Deng Xiaoping made very important strategic choices for China, and their significance today seems to be overstated."

"Deng Xiaoping is very famous in Russia, and we are becoming more and more aware that the reform and opening up over the past 40 years and more have been very successful."

"How to ensure that the dividends of development benefit the vast majority of Chinese people in the process of deepening reform?"

This year marks the 120th anniversary of Comrade Deng Xiaoping's birth. Comrade Xiaoping is the chief architect of China's reform and opening up and the pioneer of the road of socialism with Chinese characteristics. In the program "This is China" broadcast on August 26, Professor Zhang Weiwei, Dean of the Institute of China Studies of Fudan University, and Professor Liu Yuwei, Deputy Director of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russia Academy of Sciences, gathered in the studio to commemorate Comrade Xiaoping.

Zhang Weiwei gave a speech

This year, as we solemnly commemorate the 120th anniversary of Comrade Deng Xiaoping's birth, I would like to take this opportunity to talk about my impression of Deng Xiaoping and some of my thoughts on him.

In the mid-80s of the last century, I was honored to have the opportunity to translate English for Comrade Xiaoping many times. Deng Xiaoping left a very strong impression on me in at least four points.

One is vision.

He is a man with a long strategic vision. When I translated for him, he was in his 80s, but what he talked about was how China should develop and how to do it in the next few decades, the first step, the second step, the third step...... These are all things that he can't see in his own lifetime, but when he talks about these future goals, he always seems so confident, so persistent, so focused, that it feels as if he is only thirty or forty years old, and his life is not endless.

What he planned for China was a 100-year path until China became a veritable modern socialist power. Western politicians generally talk about "what to do in 100 days," while Deng Xiaoping talked about "what to do in 100 years." If we have set the long-term direction and strategy, it will be easier to solve the problems in the near future.

The second is the way of thinking.

He's a guy who thinks things all the time. He likes to ask tough questions and face them head-on, and he is very open-minded and thorough in his way of talking about problems. Before each meeting with foreign guests, the leaders of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would make a brief report to him, he would ask a few questions, interact with everyone, and then light a cigarette, silently look ahead, and wait for the foreign guests to arrive. The image of this thinker has always been fixed in my mind, lingering. The same is true of his evaluation of people, when he says "this person has a lot of brains", this is one of the highest things he says about a person.

And he always sees opportunities in his thinking, when there is only half a glass of water in a cup, he always sees half a glass with water, so he is an optimist. The most typical is that when the Soviet Union collapsed, he asked everyone to hold their ground, observe calmly, and come to the conclusion that as long as China adheres to socialism, continues to reform and open up, and realizes its set goals, the world will soon look at China with admiration. Later developments proved that this was the case.

The third is sobriety.

Deng Xiaoping had a thorough spirit of seeking truth from facts. He is very sober and rejects romance, emphasizing that anything new should be tried and seen first. Deng Xiaoping's insistence that all foreign ideas and practices should be tested by China's practice before being promoted in China – this alone enabled China to avoid a financial crisis and the disintegration of a country like the Soviet Union, and at the same time enabled many things that were originally considered incredible to be gradually absorbed into the framework of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

Fourth, the atmosphere.

As a leader who has commanded thousands of troops, he has a very deep affection for this army, and I have heard him talk about his military career many times. Many foreign guests praised him for understanding the economy, so China's economy has developed so fast and so well. But he always said, "I'm a layman on economic issues, and even when I say something, it's from a political point of view." But he has said many times, "If I really have any specialty, it's military." ”

He has the demeanor of a general. Strategically, he is a gradualist, with a strong sense of priority, and the patience to accumulate small steps for big strides; But tactically, he is a vigorous and resolute person, he commands reform and opening up is like commanding a super-scale campaign, always looking for fighters, once he catches the fighters, he bites on, and pursues and fights fiercely until he succeeds.

For Shenzhen and Shanghai, he demanded so. For example, with regard to the development of Shanghai, once he grasps the breakthrough point of Pudong's development and opening up, he wants you to achieve results at the beginning of one year and three years until a state of quantitative change to qualitative change is formed, and then he can rest assured.

When I was working as a translator for Comrade Xiaoping, I was in my 20s, and it was also when my thinking began to mature, so I can say that I was deeply influenced by him. I am thinking that many of the excellent qualities of our leaders are very precious spiritual wealth of our entire nation and are worthy of our development. Sometimes I imagined what Deng Xiaoping was like when he was young, and later I had the opportunity to go to France to inspect the place where he worked and study, and to the Soviet Union to see the former site of Sun Yat-sen University, where he studied.

Deng Xiaoping was only 16 years old when he first went abroad, in August 1920, together with more than 80 classmates, from Chongqing to Shanghai, taking the France mail ship, passing through Hong Kong, Saigon, Singapore, Colombo, Djibouti, then across the Red Sea, across the Suez Canal, into the Eastern Mediterranean, after 39 days, more than 30,000 miles, and finally arrived at the port of Marseille in France. I heard him talk about going to the port of Marseille, and he said that it was "a big port".

At that time, mail ships arrived at relatively large seaports and generally had to dock for a few days to load and unload goods. According to the memories of his classmates, at that time, "rich people went ashore to eat restaurants and buy things, and we poor students went ashore to go sightseeing and visit some places of interest." Almost all of the places they passed through were colonies of United Kingdom and France at the time. For Deng Xiaoping, it was also an eye-opener for him to understand not only the geography of many parts of the world, but also the suffering of the colonial peoples. So Deng Xiaoping's sympathy for the Third World may have developed from his own personal experience at that time.

During Deng Xiaoping's work-study period in France, the longest time was at the Hutchinson rubber factory in the small town of Mondani near Paris. It was also in this place that he received the influence of communist ideas, and he later said, "The misery of life, the insults of the capitalist lackey foreman, affected me greatly, directly or indirectly, and I felt a little of the bitterness of capitalist society for the first two years".

He eventually embarked on the path of a professional revolutionary and became a member of the executive committee of the Chinese Communist Youth League in Europe. He published a number of articles in the magazine "Red Light", advocating revolution to save the country. In 1925, when the May Thirtieth Movement broke out, he participated in organizing the hour-long occupation of the Chinese legation in France, with the slogan: "Overthrow international imperialism and abolish unequal treaties", and forced the minister to sign several documents in solidarity with the anti-imperialist movement in China.

He was blacklisted by the France government, but the day before the France government served the expulsion order, he left Paris to study in the Soviet Union through the arrangements of the party organization. It was January 1926, and he arrived in Moscow, where he was placed in the seventh class of Sun Yat-sen University, also known as the "theoreticians' class," and Chiang Ching-kuo was also a classmate of Deng Xiaoping.

In 1927, he returned from the Soviet Union, first in Wuhan and then in Shanghai, where he worked underground for the party.

The first time I translated for Deng Xiaoping was on August 22, 1985, shortly after Deng Xiaoping celebrated his 81st birthday. When he arrived at the meeting hall, he first shook hands with then-Foreign Minister Wu Xueqian, and then shook hands with the Chinese personnel present one by one. When he heard that I was from Shanghai, he asked, "Do you know Xiafei Road?" I said, "It's Huaihai Road," he smiled and nodded. Xiafei Road was the name of Huaihai Road in Shanghai when it was in the French Concession, and it was also the most famous commercial street in Shanghai at that time. When I was a child, my family lived not far from Huaihai Road, so I often heard the elders in the neighborhood mention Xiafei Road.

Deng Xiaoping was the secretary general of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. At that time, the leaders of the CCP had a one-line contact with each other, but as the secretary general, he had to memorize the addresses and telephone numbers of all the people in the central organs, so he had a good memory.

According to his own later recollection, two of the times in his life he had a brush with death were in Shanghai. Once, "I connected with Luo Yinong, and after finishing my errands, I just went out from the back door, and the front door patrol came in, and Luo Yinong was arrested." Another time was when the patrol learned that Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping lived together and wanted to search, Deng Xiaoping said, "The comrades at home got the information and hurriedly moved, but I was not there at the time and did not receive a notice." The patrol inside was still searching, I went to knock on the door, fortunately we had Tecko inside, and I didn't hear the right voice when he promised, so I left quickly. So there were no accidents.”

I think that the reason why Deng Xiaoping was able to lead China on the road of reform and opening up must be related to his early years in Paris, Moscow, Wuhan, Shanghai, and other big cities. A young man from the age of 16 to 26, in the era when his thinking was maturing, mainly in the international and domestic metropolises, when Deng Xiaoping could be described as destitute, and the snobbery and glitz of the big cities must have brought him many unpleasant experiences; But after all, the city embodies another kind of civilization, so I think Deng Xiaoping was the one who had a strong "urban complex" or "urban feelings" among the red leaders of that generation.

If modernization was, in a sense, a shift from an agrarian civilization to an industrial civilization, then Deng Xiaoping's urban experiences as a young man set him apart and gave him some rare qualities to become an outstanding leader in China's industrialization and modernization.

For example, when he was in France, France had just experienced World War I and there was a shortage of male labor, so Deng Xiaoping, who was only sixteen or seventeen years old at the time, did heavy manual work there. He later said, half-jokingly, half-seriously, that he did not grow taller, that is, he did not eat well in France at that time, and the nutrition was not enough. I visited the Hutchinson rubber factory, where he worked, and it was quite large.

France was, after all, an industrial country that had already experienced the first and second industrial revolutions. I can imagine how Deng Xiaoping felt at that time, and I think this must have been an important reason for him to promote reform and opening up. He believes that we must learn from and draw on all the strong points of the outside world so that China can realize socialist modernization at an early date.

Deng Xiaoping also mentioned Lenin's New Economic Policy several times during the reform and opening up. He said, "We don't fully understand what socialism looks like." "Maybe Lenin had a better idea and a new economic policy." The NEP was a relatively flexible and pragmatic method adopted by Lenin in the 20s of the last century to promote economic development, including leasing land to peasants, attracting foreign capital and technology, expanding foreign trade, and so on.

Deng Xiaoping arrived in Moscow in 1926 to study, by this time Lenin had died, but 1926 was still the latter stage of the NEP, so Deng Xiaoping personally experienced the pragmatic side of the NEP, and realized that socialism does not need to completely resist the beneficial things in capitalism, but to use everything beneficial in capitalism to develop socialism.

I remember that in 2021, when the centenary of the founding of the Communist Party of China was commemorated, we did a program reminiscing about Deng Xiaoping, titled "A Key Move to Determine the Fate of Contemporary China", and I proposed that Deng Xiaoping made three strategic choices for China at three special historical moments in China's development, and its far-reaching significance cannot be overestimated.

The first moment was Deng Xiaoping's decision to reform and open up in 1978.

Looking back at the situation at that time, China could have other choices, and China could also not engage in reform and opening up. For example, we can continue with the practice of the mid-60s, which is to make only partial adjustments to the planned economic model and not integrate into the global trading system, let alone access to the global Internet, because that would be too risky. But Deng Xiaoping decided to play a big game of chess and decided to explore a new path of socialist modernization, and his goal was to turn China into a country that could stand up to all-round international comparisons.

The second moment was the political turmoil at the turn of the spring and summer of 1989, when many people in China were overwhelmed and lost their political determination, but Deng Xiaoping made a decisive decision at this critical moment in the development of history and responded strongly to the challenge of Western forces to China's political system. Without Deng Xiaoping's decisive choice, China could have plunged into a long period of turmoil and chaos. Where would there be today's all-round rise?

The third moment was a series of speeches made by Comrade Xiaoping during his inspection of the south in 1992.

The international context at that time was very complex. In 1990, there were drastic changes in Eastern Europe, Gorbachev announced his resignation on December 25, 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, the Western world cheered, and there were many people in our internal pessimism, doubting "how long the red flag can be fought".

On August 20, 1991, four months before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Deng Xiaoping said: Now that the world has undergone a major turning point, this is an opportunity. Undoubtedly, Deng Xiaoping saw an opportunity in the crisis and an opportunity for Chinese socialism, but he felt as if many people around him could not see it, and he was very anxious.

Only 20 days after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he began to inspect the South, and he had something to say. He called on China all the way to uphold socialism, promote reform and opening up on a larger scale, embrace the market economy more courageously, and improve the people's living standards by a greater margin, so that socialism with Chinese characteristics will certainly succeed. His debate about the market economy is also final: whether there is more market or more planning is not the main difference between capitalism and socialism, these are the means.

Looking back, in the more than 40 years since reform and opening up, we have not followed the old road of being closed and rigid, nor have we taken the evil road of changing our banner, but we have explored a new road of socialism. In fact, this is also a summary of Deng Xiaoping's three historical choices: Deng Xiaoping's choice in the southern speech in 1992 was to "not follow the old road of closure and rigidity"; Deng Xiaoping's choice in 1989 was to "not take the evil road of changing the banner"; Deng Xiaoping's choice in 1978 was to explore a new path suited to China's own national conditions.

All this has enabled us to build on the precious foundation laid in the previous 30 years to achieve the rise of "integrating the four industrial revolutions". All this has changed China and the world forever.

Roundtable discussion

Moderator: Mr. Zhang just said that Comrade Xiaoping has a very long-term strategic vision, and many of us also have this experience. What do you think of the tremendous achievements and changes that China has made in reform and opening up at the time were already in his mind at that time, and which ones might even surpass the old man's original prediction?

Zhang Weiwei: On the whole, China's achievements today are more than he thought at that time, because he is most famous for proposing the "three steps" of China's modernization, that is, using 1980 as a base, doubling by 1990, and tripling from 1990 to 2000; After that, it was more general, because at that time I felt that there was still a long time before 2050, so I only proposed to build China into a moderately developed country in a more general way. By today's standards, the goal of basically realizing socialist modernization by 2035 should be roughly the goal of 2050 that Deng Xiaoping was looking forward to at that time.

Moderator: In fact, it is the emancipation of the mind and the emancipation of the productive forces, which can bring about the fruits of prosperity and development, so how important is the word "emancipation". I also want to hear Professor Liu's impressions, you have also seen generations of leaders in Russia over the years, how do you see the importance of this emancipation of ideas and productive forces to a country?

Liu Yuwei: I think two or three years ago, President Xi announced that China's task of being moderately prosperous has been accomplished. This was one of the goals set by Deng Xiaoping, and it was quite a great one. So this proves that his vision is very long.

For ordinary people in Russia, they basically know that Deng Xiaoping is one of China's great leaders. Many people know a saying, that is, "no matter whether it is a black cat or a white cat, catching a mouse is a good cat". So I think Deng Xiaoping is famous in Russia. And now we are becoming more and more aware that the reform and opening up over the past 40 years and more have been very successful.

Zhang Weiwei: We now and Russian scholars often talk about some of the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union, and I have my own interpretation. How many generations have you seen the leaders of the USSR? Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and finally Gorbachev, he had long forgotten Lenin, and Stalin became a sinful leader.

Therefore, the leaders of China and the Soviet Union had completely different ideas for reform. Deng Xiaoping and Chairman Mao were almost contemporaries, but he was younger and lived longer than Chairman Mao, and he became the core of the second generation of leadership. Chairman Mao said before his death that Deng Xiaoping was fairer. He learned from the Soviet Union's lesson, that is, he did not deal with many issues in the same way Stalin did, which Deng Xiaoping called "three seven opens." In this way, we have inherited a good political legacy, and at the same time, we have paid attention to solving some problems that existed in the past, and finally followed such a path. I am now telling my Russian friends that they are also very impressed.

Liu Yuwei: Every time we Russians talk about China's reform and opening up, we naturally think of our own reforms. Just as China did at the end of the 70s of the last century, the Soviet Union faced a similar problem in the mid-80s of the last century, that is, in what direction to develop and what goals to set.

At that time, our leader Gorbachev was very different from Deng Xiaoping, and when we first talked about "reforms," the people of the Soviet Union hoped that these "reforms" would be as successful, but after a year and another year, we slowly found that Gorbachev was not like Deng Xiaoping, he had no clear goals and no specific plans.

In addition, we find that Gorbachev did not have the same pragmatic attitude as Deng Xiaoping. At the beginning, Gorbachev said that "comrades, we need reform and opening up, but the domestic conditions are not yet ripe, so we have to wait". In the end, the USSR and the Soviet people waited for 6 years, and after 6 years, the situation in our country was not as good as it was 6 years ago, so we had no way to start reforms. At that time, we felt that the Soviet Union lacked its own "Deng Xiaoping".

Moreover, because Deng Xiaoping had a realistic attitude, he carried out reform and opening up from the bottom, starting from the agricultural reform, from the countryside, and from small and medium-sized enterprises. Older Chinese friends remember very well that after 1978, after six years, the situation in China was completely different from the situation in 1978, and it was getting better and better every year, and there was progress year by year.

And the USSR was the opposite, year after year. At that time, there was even a joke in the Soviet Union: why are the Soviets happy every day? Because they know every day that today will be better than tomorrow. At that time, the attitude of the Soviet leadership was rather arrogant - the USSR was the "big brother", so what was the need to learn from the "little brother"? We didn't learn from China at that time, and that was a big mistake.

Moderator: Maybe it was because China itself was still in a stage of exploration at that time. Comrade Xiaoping famously said, "We must cross the river by feeling the stones," and at that time we were also groping, which is different from the great achievements of reform and opening up that we have seen now. Maybe the Soviet friends at that time could not see what to learn at once, and they had not yet summed up these things to learn.

However, just now, Professor Liu repeatedly talked about the importance of "seeking truth from facts", and Mr. Zhang, you also said in your speech that Comrade Xiaoping "refuses to be romantic" - these four words are very vivid and very pragmatic. Coupled with what Professor Liu just said, what do you think of the vitality of the words "seeking truth from facts"?

Zhang Weiwei: Deng Xiaoping is highly realistic and sought truth from facts. For example, what we have experienced is that in the mid-80s of the last century, we did not use GDP statistics in the past, and then we asked experts from the World Bank to help China make statistics, according to the standards of the World Bank, and the results showed that China's per capita GDP was very low - more than 400 US dollars per capita. Later, people asked Deng Xiaoping if he wanted to make it public, and Deng Xiaoping said, "It doesn't matter if it is announced." Behind this is self-confidence, that is, the firm belief that we will eventually be able to catch up through reform and opening up. At that time, the per capita GDP of Chinese, according to the standards of the World Bank, was lower than that of most African countries and even lower than that of Western countries.

In addition, it was really risky, because I was translating for him at the time, and I realized that he had a bottom-line mentality. At that time, I translated a lot of his conversations with African leaders. There are many left-wing African leaders, and many people ask him, what should socialism look like? He said that we should adhere to at least two principles: the first is the party's leadership, and the second is that public ownership should occupy the main body. These are his two bottom lines that he can't give up. It's important to look back, and with these two items, we can boldly explore them, and if we make a mistake, we can also use them to correct them.

One of the good things about China is that it always pays attention to the development of the outside world, not only in Western countries, but also in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. I went to the Soviet Union in 1990, and before I went, I didn't know what Gorbachev's perestroika was. But after going there myself, I came to the conclusion that Gorbachev's perestroika had failed. At that time, consumer goods in the Soviet Union were extremely scarce, and the largest department store in Red Square, Gum, was empty. Through China's initial reform and opening up, by 1990, the market had initially prospered.

Moderator: Yes, so you just talked about the importance of pragmatism, in fact, there is a kind of self-confidence behind seeking truth from facts, and only when you are confident in yourself can you see some problems very completely.

Just now, Mr. Zhang also talked about what he saw in the Soviet Union in 1990, and I would like to ask Professor Liu, what stage of your life were you in during the collapse of the Soviet Union? What was the whole society like at that time?

Liu Yuwei: Just now Mr. Zhang mentioned the Gum department store on Red Square, and I suddenly remembered that in 1987, I was admitted to the doctoral program of the School of Oriental and African Studies of Moscow University, and it happened to be September, and the weather was getting cold, and I wanted to buy a shirt, so I ran around Moscow, went to Gum and other places on Red Square, ran for two weeks, and couldn't buy a shirt - everything was out of stock at that time, and I couldn't even buy a top. It just so happened that in October of that year, I arrived in China, and I bought a nice top on the first day, and I couldn't believe it, so I didn't have to wait in line. This is a good example.

By the end of 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, I was ready to defend my doctoral dissertation. In 1992, all of a sudden, we started to reform the market, and the situation in the country changed all of a sudden, and the whole country changed tracks. I had the illusion that it might be a sign of improvement. Because we have a free market in our country, we have everything, and we can participate in free trade, so I think it's a good opportunity. It was true that there were things everywhere very quickly, and there was no problem with what to wear and eat, and there was no need to queue up.

But there is one peculiarity: these things are imported - what is imported from the West is expensive, and what is imported from China is cheap. Nothing is domestic, and that's a big problem. So after a few years, we found that what we joined was not a very free and happy free market economy, but a relatively barbaric market economy.

Looking at China's experience at that time, I realized that it was not necessary to abandon our previous socialist experience to carry out such reforms.

Moderator: Yes, there is no need to change from this track to a new track in an instant, as if you have completely entered a new economic model.

Zhang Weiwei: If we make a long story short, if we compare Deng Xiaoping's reform model with Gorbachev's reform model at that time, the biggest difference is that Deng Xiaoping believed that economic reform was the absolute priority, and political reform was second, and that it was necessary to serve economic reform and remove obstacles in economic reform. And Gorbachev put political reform first, political reform overriding everything, thinking that it would solve all problems, which we call "political romanticism", and the result was a complete failure.

Liu Yuwei: That's right. There is also Professor Zhang mentioned that Deng Xiaoping has accumulated small steps into big strides and developed step by step. And our Yeltsin era was very different, the liberal government came up, and they said, "Okay, we are going to come up with a 500-day plan now, and after 500 days, the people of the whole country will live a very happy life." "We waited 500 days and found out that these words were empty words, and we were in despair. Later, these 500 days turned into a major chaos for at least 10 years, during which there were two economic and financial crises in Russia, and the barbaric economic model brought a lot of suffering to the common people.

Moderator: In such a turbulent and chaotic long year, for ordinary people, they will feel that they have no goal or direction in life, and they don't know what to do next, which is really painful.

Zhang Weiwei: I know more or less about Russia's experience, one is that I have been to the field, and I have a lot of Russia friends. Now many Russians themselves regret it, reflecting on why they were so naïve at that time and trusted the United States so much? I think that as long as I adopt the Western political system, everything will be good after that. The West is "painting bread to fill hunger", but many people in Russia believe it, which is a collective confusion.

Moderator: They are "political romanticism", and "romantic" things are always easier to impress, and people are easily attracted to "romance". As you said in your speech, all major historical events are like battlefields for him, and he must think holistically, have a strategic vision, have determination, and have very practical methods.

Q&A session

Audience: As our country continues to open up and deepen reform, it will inevitably encounter some problems, such as development and reform first, and relatively lagging institutional norms, which can easily cause the gap between the rich and the poor to not be curbed in a timely and effective manner. So how does our government ensure that the dividends of development benefit the vast majority of Chinese people in the process of continuous opening up and deepening reform?

Zhang Weiwei: The gap between the rich and the poor, to be honest, also lies in international comparison. China is a socialist country, and the vast majority of people are beneficiaries of reform and opening up. Moreover, our system is comprehensive, in addition to the subsistence allowance, it also includes the complete solution of absolute poverty, which is very remarkable; "Two worries and three guarantees", of which the "three guarantees" include medical care, education, and housing, which is not easy - if you look at the United States, the poorest population in the United States is far from meeting this standard, how can it achieve the "three guarantees"?

Today, many foreign tourists are very surprised when they come to China, not only in first-tier cities, but also in fourth- and fifth-tier cities. With regard to narrowing the gap between the rich and the poor, the best move we have done now is that we have taken out the whole of Zhejiang Province as a demonstration area for narrowing the gap between the rich and the poor, and as long as the results of the experiment in Zhejiang Province are good, then there is very great hope for narrowing the gap between the rich and the poor in the whole country.

Liu Yuwei: The problem of the gap between the rich and the poor is indeed in every country in the world, and Russia also has it. At the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, President Putin mentioned 10 structural changes, as well as the issue of reducing the gap between the rich and the poor, as well as a series of measures, such as solving the problem of unemployment, supporting families with many children, improving care for our elderly and the disabled, and other measures. So the key is not whether there is such a problem, but how the state treats it.

Audience: Mr. Zhang just said that Deng Xiaoping had experienced and traveled in Paris, Moscow, and Shanghai in his youth, which had a very far-reaching impact on his personal vision and thoughts. Does that mean that when we young people make life choices, we should also go to these metropolises to feel and experience more, and to see the world, which will be more helpful for our personal growth?

Zhang Weiwei: When I talk about this, I don't necessarily mean Shanghai, Paris, or New York, but if you have the opportunity to go or live, it's fine.

I always say that China is a "civilized country", the most typical three first-tier cities - Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, you carefully compare the way of thinking, living habits, catering and even dialects of people in these three places, such as the pronunciation and grammar of Shanghai dialect and Guangzhou dialect, the gap between them is actually larger than the gap between the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, including their languages, but everyone has lived together under Chinese civilization for thousands of years, so this difference becomes a wonderful [marvel?]. If you have been to these three cities, or even lived, if you can adapt to these three cultures, you will be very adaptable to the international community, and you will not be afraid to travel all over the world.

The key is to walk around, to the city, the countryside, the mountains, etc., to really experience it, this is to see the world. If you've lived in New York, you've lived in Paris, you've lived in Tokyo, it's a way to see the world.

For example, I do my own research on the Chinese model and Chinese discourse, deconstruct Western discourse, and construct Chinese discourse, which is very helpful from an international perspective. I set a goal early on to go to 100 countries, and not a single one should be missing, and it turned out that I had done it more than ten years ago, which was very helpful. You don't feel strange everywhere, it's easy to understand other people's cultures, and people find it easy to have a conversation with you.

Moderator: Mr. Zhang has always talked about the word "seeing the world", which does not necessarily mean that you have to go to a big city to "see the world", I think that if you go more and go wider, it is naturally a kind of seeing the world. Moreover, a young friend who has grown up in the city has to go to areas outside the city, such as rural areas, and other vast provinces and municipalities, to see the scenery and understand the development there. In the same way, we grew up in remote areas and had the opportunity to travel to urban areas.

That is, everyone has to go to places that they are not usually familiar with and do not understand, and this is the real world and growth. If you grew up in a city, and you only go around the city circle forever, then your perception of the world is likely to be very narrow. Therefore, seeing the world should be more and more different places, as long as it is more and wider, it is good.

Zhang Weiwei: Actually, if you look closely at our older generation of revolutionaries, they are all people who came out of small villages and towns. Whether it is Chairman Mao or Deng Xiaoping, their former residences are in the villages, not too poor, not too rich, so that they still have some savings to go out and see, and then go to the big city, and then experience all kinds of things, and then go to the world. Basically, it is such an experience, that is, you have a wide range of contacts, you have a lot of knowledge, and you can use your brain to think, so that you will become more mature and your life will be more exciting.

Liu Yuwei: I think the biggest difference between Deng Xiaoping's youth and now is that 100 years ago, China's rural areas were relatively backward, while the big cities were more developed, and the communication and information exchange were relatively fast, so they could only do a lot of things in the big cities.

Moreover, life was different then than it is now. For example, in the 20s of the last century, there were Chinese students who traveled from Shanghai to Vladivostok by a week, and from Vladivostok to Moscow, by train for three weeks. And I flew from Moscow to Shanghai yesterday, just a 9-hour flight. The situation is completely different now, so there is no need to make a direct comparison. For example, today you live in the country, but you can go online, and you can go out into the world.

So, as long as you are mentally and mentally open-minded and tolerant of the whole universe, you don't have to live in a big city. Now some Chinese villages live more comfortably than in big cities, and I have even heard that some Chinese have left the cities and returned to the countryside to build villas. There are some young people who have worked in big cities for a while and gained experience, so they go back to develop their hometowns; However, returning to their hometown does not mean that they are returning to the past. [My Emphasis]

An interesting and useful comparison of the Russian and Chinese experiences, although IMO a good deal of historical prior knowledge is required. I‘ve described what Putin’s doing in Russia is building socialism with Russian characteristics as he’s pragmatically welding the best aspects of differing political-economies into one. But, IMO there’re also terms that are mutual to all political-economies, investment being one and the fundamental asset—its Human Capital and local/domestic marketplace. I found the read an entertaining learning experience and gladly thank Pepe Escobar for pointing to it.

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