The Four "C"s
by Wang Huning
Wang Huning is a member of the Chinese pulitburo. He is widely considered on of the most powerful theoreticians in China, and works as head of the Chinese Policy Research Office and chairman of the Central Guidance Commission on Building Spiritual Civilization.
In 1991 Wang Huning toured the US as a visiting scholar. He wrote a book about his experiences, called America Against America. Despite being subject to a lot of media attention some years ago, this book has never been fully translated.
In this chapter of America Against America, Huning describes several aspects of the infrastructure which allows America flourish as a dynamic and mobile society.
The Four “C”s
After living in the United States for a short time, it has become clear that there are several things which are particularly abundant in this society. Through a surface observation of these things, some basic conditions for the dynamic organization of society can be found. Let’s start with four of them:
There are a lot of cars, which can be found in cities and towns, on highways and country roads at all times. Cars come in all shapes and sizes, and there are many different models. When I was in Washington, Antony King, vice chancellor of Essex University in England, pointed out to me the variety of cars on the street and said, "Ten years ago, most of the cars I saw in the United States were made in the United States, but today there are all kinds of cars, especially Japanese cars." The auto war between the U.S. and Japan is already well known. One important reason why Japanese cars have been able to break into the U.S. market is that the U.S. car market is large and cars are extremely important to people. Not having a car in America is like not having legs. The highway system is very well developed, with generally three lanes on the left and right. Divided into high, medium and slow three, some places have seven lanes of cars. You can see cars running on it day and night. The average family has a car, and many families have several. I went to a professor's house at Stanford University and there were three cars. The United States has the highest number of privately owned cars in the world.
Placing a call is easy. Everywhere you go in the United States, you can see a telephone. All offices and homes have telephones. Home phones also have one to several extensions. In public places, there are automatic telephones, where you can purchase a call by putting a certain number of coins into the machine. Now there is another kind of telephone, the card telephone: you just put a card into the telephone and you can call. In airports, there are rows of these automatic telephones. There are also many such phones in hotels. When I stayed at the Sheraton and Hilton hotels in Washington, D.C., there were several automated phones in the lobby downstairs. In universities, there are also such phones in public places, such as libraries, dining halls, conference halls, computer centers, language centers, etc. Wherever you call, it's quick. No matter where you call, it connects quickly. For domestic long-distance calls, you can pick up the phone and dial the number and be connected in half a minute at most. You can pick up the phone and dial anywhere in the world without any hassle. One of the main characteristics of many people's jobs is to use the phone, and many things are solved by phone, including love. Many parents have told me that their children will spend hours talking with their lovers, which is very expensive, and prevents other calls from connecting. Naturally, the developed social function of the telephone system is not this, you can talk about love, but it has a lot of other uses as well.
The number of computers is a remarkable feature. Wherever you go, especially in business settings, people are using computers. When I visited the National Security Council, I found that people inside use computers. University professors have computers in their offices or homes. Stay at a hotel, and the whole management is computerized. Apply for a drivers license at the Department of Transportation, and all your information is entered into a computer. When shopping in stores and canteens, payment is computerized. Searching in libraries, the information retrieval is computerized. When you go to a bank to deposit money, its is done through a computer. Computers are used extensively in factory production, government offices, military operations, aircraft in the sky, and so on. Computers make everything fast, accurate, and easy to find. Computers can also be integrated into national or worldwide networks. When I visited the library at Yale University, their head of East Asian Studies, Mr. Ma, immediately typed in my name and within seconds found out that my books National Sovereignty and Comparative Political Analysis were available at two other universities. Computers can also talk to each other, and if you know someone’s Bignet ID, you can type in what you want to tell them.
The American card is different from the Chinese concept of card; there are some cards in China, such as briquette card, egg card, daily necessities card, vegetable card, etc., which are all made of paper.1 The card we are talking about here is a plastic card with a magnetic tape on the back to store information. Such cards, too many to mention, such as credit cards, money cards, library cards, phone cards, and ID cards… Each of these cards has a different function. New cards are still emerging, for example the newspapers once carried a story about a new service by an airline that offers free first-class treatment contingent on the purchase of a certain number of tickets, with the voucher being one such card. I flew United Airlines from San Francisco to Iowa, and the ticket was actually a card similar to this. The card and the computer are linked together, as long as the card is inserted into a certain computer, you can do the relevant things. Without having to find a bank clerk, withdrawing money, depositing money, checking the balance of their accounts, can all be done with a card and a computer. Almost everyone who has a job carries a wallet, which has a large number of cards. Because of the card, the American wallet has also changed, and there are several pockets inside specifically for different cards. I am afraid that the leather wallets currently being made in China cannot be exported to the United States or other western countries because there is no place to put these cards.
These are the "Four C's". What is important is the role they play in social organization and social management:
Cars make all of society constitute a dynamic whole, with vehicles moving not only people and goods, but also ideas, concepts and spirit;
Calls, which make all of society constitute an information system, extend in all directions, so the transmission of language is accompanied by the transmission of emotions and information;
Computers, which allows for a high degree of integration in the management of the entire society, computerized information is also a form of equitable and impartial management;
Cards, which represents the management of the whole society, frees people from the direct management of physical objects (people and things) into symbolic management.
The development of these four technologies is crucial to a society, where they are a driving force and a channel for political socialization and communication. The presence of these technologies makes the institutions, principles and spirit of a society much more deeply rooted, materialized and strengthened.
The “Four C's” have brought about many problems, and modernization has come at a cost to human society and nature.
More cars—more pollution, more traffic accidents, more waste.
More calls—more noise pollution, eavesdropping.
More computers—social communication systems have become vulnerable, and if a machine breaks down or a "virus" invades a computer, a large area is immediately affected, and sometimes a large amount of data is lost.
More Cards—more theft, more reported theft, more forgery crimes.
How societies can strengthen their institutions is a major issue. It is difficult to develop strong institutions and systems from scratch. Only when institutions are truly a part of the people's lives is there real societal strength.
1 In this section, Wang Huning is referring to magnetic stripe cards, which were not used within China at that time. To describe them, Hunning coins the term “卡多,” literally ‘multi-cards’, in contrast to printed paper cards, 卡, which were issued in the PRC and had a variety of functions such as food stamps, identification papers, etc.
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