Vital Interests: Daniel, thanks for participating in the Vital Interests Forum. You've spent many years working and living in China studying Chinese culture and governance. You and your co-author, Wang Pei, have a new book titled Just Hierarchies: Why Social Hierarchies Matter in China and the Rest of the World, published by Princeton University Press.  Could you give us a brief summary of the premise of this book?

Daniel Bell: The book’s basic premise is that all modern complex societies have hierarchies. From a normative perspective, it’s important to distinguish between the bad forms of hierarchies and the good ones. It’s more clear what the bad ones are - hierarchies based on race or sex or caste that benefit the powerful and oppress the powerless. But there is no systematic work on what the good hierarchies are and how they operate in different forms of social life.

That's what we try to do in our book. First, we have to ask, “Why is there so little work on good hierarchies, given that they are inevitable and that it's important to distinguish between the bad ones and the good ones so that we can promote the good ones and minimize the influence of the bad ones?"

Well, there's two basic reasons. One is a view of modernity which is quite prevalent, especially in Western countries: in the past social life was all about hierarchies and power structures that benefit, for example, white aristocratic men and we need to free ourselves in those hierarchies to move on to a life where we are all social equals and promote individual freedom. We think that's a pretty one-sided view of a transition from the past to the present. The past had some desirable forms of hierarchical life as does the present, so we need to think about those too.

I have been living in China for nearly two decades and in China there is quite a different view of modernity. The main outlook here we describe as progressive conservative. It's a socialist country and we are supposed to constantly modernize and develop the economy, and ultimately even move on to becoming a society where everybody is a kind of equal, or at least where there are no clear distinctions based on class.

On the other hand, there's also this revival of tradition where people look to tradition for thinking about how to reform the present. It sounds paradoxical in English, this progressive conservative view, but it's quite dominant in China. We think it actually goes right back to the age of Confucius himself, over two thousand years ago.

Confucius was a radical social critic in his own day, he was very dissatisfied with the political status quo. So, in a sense, he was very progressive, but he was also very conservative, he looked to tradition for inspiration, for thinking on how to reform society. This ideal of a progressive conservatism is quite central to Chinese culture. It influences the outlook in our book.

There's been so much discussion of the bad forms of hierarchy and so little discussion of the good forms. The bad forms, in a way, all have the same structure, they're quite easy to understand. Whether this hierarchy is based on race or sex, or caste or whatever bad things, they benefit the powerful and oppress the weak. But good forms of hierarchy are much more complex and diverse. It really depends on the different forms of social life.

So, we have a pluralistic view of hierarchy in our book and we argue that different social relations have different justifications for hierarchy. For example, hierarchies between intimates tend to be justified if they involve shifting roles. If they're fixed and oppressive roles, like permanent dominance of men over women, then obviously we reject those. If it's a hierarchy based on age, for example, it shifts over time. The young become old and so on.

Those are more justified from a moral point of view, whereas hierarchies between citizens have a different character. If the rulers are selected in a hierarchical way, and they serve the interest of the ruled and have the trust of the ruled, then we argue that those hierarchies are justified. That's inspired a lot by the Confucian tradition.

Hierarchies in international relations are, once again, different. Within international relations, there's always going to be stronger and weaker powers. It's important, maybe, to pay lip-service to the ideal of equal sovereignty. But in practice, of course, the big powers, which have stronger economic and military might and more people, tend to have more global influence and to interact with weaker powers. When are those relations justified? We argue that it's when they are win-win, when they benefit both the stronger and the weaker powers.

We have two more chapters, one on relations between humans and animals, and we argue that those are justified if they adhere to the principle of the subordination of animals to humans, but humans have an obligation to refrain from cruelty to animals. That has pretty radical implications when it comes to eating meat for example, where almost all animals are brought up under very cruel conditions. 

The final social relation we look at is the relation between humans and machines. Ultimately machines are there to serve us. Here we think Marx had it right:  it's important to have advanced machinery, but it's important for the political community to ensure that those machines serve human interests and needs rather than the other way around. We worry about advanced forms of Artificial Intelligence that threaten to invert that relation, that can make us into their slaves, so we draw some implications based upon that kind of structure.

VI: You talked about this notion of a good or just hierarchy coming out of traditional Chinese Confucian political philosophy. Is this idea of a just hierarchy part of contemporary discussion in China, among the political elites and intellectuals? 

Daniel Bell: The Confucian tradition has always assumed that social relations will generally be hierarchical, and that those hierarchies are justified if those with power serve those without power with compassion. This idea of compassion, or ren is really essential to the Confucian tradition. Through much of the 20th century the Confucian tradition has been marginalized. Arguably, the main tradition of the 20th century was the tradition of anti-traditionalism.

But over the past couple of decades, there's been this huge revival of tradition in China, including Confucianism. So there's much more openness now to talk about morally justified forms of hierarchy. In terms of ordinary social relations, it's not just in China, but in other societies influenced by Confucianism. Think of Korea or Japan. When people greet each other, they bow at differential angles based on the social hierarchy. It’s just taken for granted in everyday life that social hierarchies are there and are present in a way that might not be the case in Western countries such as Canada, where I'm from.

VI: For ideals of good social hierarchies to succeed, do they presuppose a largely homogeneous society? In China, Japan and Korea the “other” is marginalized, there is little attention given to minority rights. In China, there is the issue with the Uighurs and foreigners are largely suspected. Is populism a necessary aspect of hierarchy?

Daniel Bell: Not at all. Of course in practice, there's a huge gap between the ideal and the reality. The Confucian ideal of harmony, for example, is known by every Chinese intellectual: the exemplary person should seek diversity in harmony rather than conformity or uniformity （君子和而不同）. In theory anyway, it's taken for granted that society will be diverse, and the task is to take that diversity and make it peaceful；there's almost a love and respect for diversity. Based upon this idea, there ought to be strong respect for traditions and minority groups. As you know, there's a huge gap between the ideal and the practice, but at least from an ideal point of view, there is no reason why any social hierarchy presupposes a homogeneous culture.

VI: When you say these ideas are now part of the intellectual dialogue in China, are they being taught in the universities? Are there courses that students take that expose them to these ideas and encourage them to investigate traditional knowledge that can be applied to contemporary circumstances?

Daniel Bell: That's one of the interesting things about the reform of the educational curriculum. In primary schools and secondary schools, there's much more emphasis on traditional values, including Confucianism, taught to different people at different ages. For example, the value of filial piety or reverence for elderly people is essential to the Confucian tradition, and it's taught to young children in China in schools now.

Of course, filial piety assumes a hierarchy between adults and children and between elderly parents and adult children. But it's not meant to be a blind obedience. From a Confucian point of view, one is supposed to be constantly committed to self-improvement and to have a reasonable degree of rationality and compassion. If one has a reasonable degree of rationality and compassion and is committed to self-improvement, then one is owed authority and can legitimately exercise extra authority.

Even young children don't have an obligation to blindly obey their parents. If you look at some of the Confucian texts, if parents do something morally wrong, even young children have an obligation to criticize them, but they have to do it in the right way. There's very detailed ways proposed as to how children can respond to parents who do something wrong. There's a misleading interpretation of Confucius, not just in the West but also often in China throughout much of the 20th century, that  is, "Just blindly obey those with power." That is very much the opposite message of the Confucian ideal. Power needs to be justified.

There has to be a moral justification, and the moral justification differs based on the social relations. If there is a justification for the power relation between children and parents, it's not necessarily the same justification for the power relation between rulers and citizens or between strong countries and weak countries. 

VI:  Moving on to the situation with COVID-19 in China, which directly relates to the question of moral responsibility and adherence to government dictates. When the virus first appeared in the Chinese city of Wuhan, there was a slow response by authorities but then it quickly ramped up and the government was able to impose strict isolation measures that did limit those infected and reduce fatalities. Was it part of the social contract in China that once the government took charge and issued directives, the people acquiesced, trusting the hierarchy to have their best interest in mind?

Daniel Bell: In the early days of the COVID crisis, there were terrible mistakes made. Again, it's helpful to think about this in terms of justifiable hierarchies. In the Confucian tradition, what it means to be a junzi, or exemplary person, was changed by Confucius himself. Before his time, if you were born into the right family with the right bloodline, similar to the Western-style aristocrat, then you were a junzi. He says no – you’re a junzi only if you have superior virtue and ability.

Since then, for many Chinese, there has been almost endless discussion over how to select and promote public officials with superior virtue and ability. If there were to be real junzi, truly exemplary persons who have superior virtue and ability, generally people would have great respect for them. But junzi also need the freedom to express their views, to criticize things that they see as wrong and suggest improvements.

In the early days of the COVID outbreak in Wuhan, there were genuine junzi, medical doctors with superior ability and compassion for the people, who worried about this new disease that looked a lot like SARS. They spread the message to their colleagues but they were shut down and accused of spreading rumors.

The most famous is Dr. Li Wenliang who died at the age of 34 from the disease. That delayed an appropriate response and I think there's a recognition that was a terrible mistake. Once the central government got on board, starting on January 20th, there was another junzi, his name is Doctor Zhong Nanshan, an 84-year-old medical doctor who helped a lot in the SARS epidemic. Once he sounded this alarm about this new, dangerous disease, the response was amazing.

His warning spread throughout all of China and immediately people got on board, understanding this was something very serious. When the government locked down Wuhan and much of Hubei on January 23rd, people listened and complied. This was a manifestation of the advantages of having a strong centralized hierarchy. If they're doing things right, if they're performing well, then generally people will trust in them and will go along.

The lockdown in Wuhan was unprecedented. Never in history had there been such a large-scale lockdown, it’s hard to imagine any other government getting away with that, but they did have the trust of the people. The rest of China was under, let’s say semi-lockdown. Then a few weeks later these very strong centralized measures, informed by science, contained the spread of the virus.l. I don't want to sound like an apologist but the whole point of the lockdown was compassion, to save lives. 

The Chinese economy paid a huge price. But in Shanghai now we're basically back to normal life. I regret that the rest of the world didn't follow the China model in this sense. But it’s not just China, other countries with a Confucian heritage, like South Korea and Vietnam, also did extraordinarily well partly because of this tradition of respect for junzi and because of this tradition of a strong and effective government that performs well in emergencies and holds the trust of the people.

VI: The Chinese government had this ability of social control and had the technology to do it, so there was certainly the determination and the means to impose this kind of massive lockdown?

Daniel Bell: Sure, but it would only have worked if the people had faith that the government was acting in their best interest and that it was a short-term measure, not long-term, totalitarian controls on their privacy and freedom. There was an assumption that we would get back to an ordinary life where we could commit to self-improvement again, do our jobs, serve our family duties, and go to restaurants with friends and so on. The very strong, governmental controls would not have been effective without the people on their side.

VI: We have heard about social control programs that the Chinese government has been instituting. One is kind of a merit system where every citizen is observed and then given rankings in terms of their social acceptability and how good a citizen they are. This ranking will determine the kind of education they can get, where they live, what kind of employment they aspire to. Can you describe this program and its implications?

Daniel Bell: The terminology is a bit misunderstood in English because often they describe it as a social credit system, but there is no one system and there's no one program, it's very local. There's different ways of assessing, we can call it credit scores, in different localities and some of it is very experimental. I am at Shandong University, the leading university in a province of about 90 million people, and there are three different experimental programs in Shandong province for a credit system.

It's not like one score determines what school you go to and so on. Actually, to be frank, it's often applied not to ordinary citizens, but to officials. It's part of the anti-corruption drive, and it's meant to suggest a propensity or actual likelihood of corruption. It’s still much too early to tell what’s going to emerge because it's very localized and experimental, and this idea there's going to be one uniform score that’s going to apply to all citizens in a rigorous way to assess what people think and do is unlikely as an outcome.

VI: There have been stories about Chinese “princelings” who have extraordinary privileges and wealth, and the unchallenged power of high ranking party members. Can you explain Chinese anti-corruption policies and efforts to promote this kind of meritocracy as opposed to privilege?

Daniel Bell: In a political meritocracy, where public officials are supposed to be selected and promoted based on their ability and virtue, what does virtue mean? It's more clear what it doesn't mean. Somebody who's not virtuous is one who misuses public funds or resources for personal or family interests, and that has a long tradition in China. I think the leaders now are very aware that corruption played a central role in leading to the downfall of dynasties. For example, the downfall of the Ming Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty.

Why did the communists defeat the KMT in the civil war? Not because of the superior military power but one important reason was that they were viewed as less corrupt and more willing to serve the people. About 10 years ago, corruption really had reached a tipping point in China. It was measured in surveys, the people were so outraged by the corruption, especially by public officials who would take bribes and help people get in backdoors to schools and hospitals and so on.

It was very in-your-face corruption. The rulers were very explicit, if we don't deal with corruption it's going to undermine the whole system. Unlike Western countries, where legitimacy comes from being voted in by the people, in China legitimacy comes from being seen as having superior ability and virtue. If people in power are viewed as corrupt, then basically, they have no legitimacy. So the Chinese Communist Party understood they had to address corruption in a very serious way.

The way that they did it, to be frank, led to very bad consequences, because Confucianism is not the only tradition in China. Another strong tradition, we can call it Legalism (fajia 法家), is the view that, during times of social chaos, there is a need for a very strong government that's going to use harsh punishment to basically make the people afraid and get them into line.

This can be seen as the ugly sister of the compassionate Confucian tradition. Legalist means were employed to such an extent that over a million public officials were implicated in the anti-corruption campaign, including very senior ones. This resulted in a number of bad consequences.  One is that it made public officials much more conservative and cautious. We saw that in Wuhan with the initial reaction to the coronavirus. Why did local authorities keep their heads down? I think a very important reason was they were afraid of being punished if things went wrong.

As I stated, the anti-corruption campaign caused public officials to be overly cautious and conservative. Before that, there had been a lot of encouragement for public officials to experiment and innovate. That was one of the keys to China's success. I think they need to revive some of that. 

As a result, there is a lot of unhappiness in the political system itself. Until the anti-corruption campaign moves on from these strong Legalist measures to more soft Confucian measures of promoting better behavior by public officials, there will be a lot of repression in the political system.

VI: That's an interesting insight on the consequence of Chinese anti-corruption measures. Moving now to Chinese influence on the outside world, the COVID-19 pandemic originated in China and is now spreading rapidly around the world. How is this damaging China’s efforts to extend themselves into the global community? The Chinese Belt and Road Initiative has been going on for 10 years with heavy investments in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.  Has the country’s reputation been tarnished by this episode, or will China move on?

Daniel Bell: It's hard for China to be perceived as the good guy in this story, because the original epicenter of the crisis seems to be Wuhan. It's possible that we’ll discover that the actual origin was somewhere else, maybe even from outside China, but at least the original epicenter seems to be Wuhan. So when people look at this COVID disease, they will tend to associate it with China for better or worse.

That said, there has been a very strong and successful response to the coronavirus by the Chinese government. The disease has seemingly been contained and the rate now is close to zero.This ability of Chinese authorities to act decisively and effectively, should send a message that if all the other countries had followed the Chinese model in this way, it could have prevented this disease from becoming so widespread and fatal.

Once the Chinese central government got onboard and lessened the impact of COVID among their own people, it quickly focused on sending medical teams to many different countries including many of the Belt and Road nations. Ultimately I think China has been trying to deal with this in a good way. 

To be frank, I worry more about the United States where the government response to COVID has been a complete disaster. Rather than the Trump administration taking the blame for its own mistakes, it seems to be demonizing China and promoting sometimes totally false stories.

There's one story, an allegation made by Neil Ferguson, the British historian who's at the Hoover Institute at Stanford, who in his column in The Sunday Times of London said that the Chinese government cut off flights from Wuhan within China on January 23rd, but allowed flights to the rest of the world. The implication being that China deliberately spread that disease abroad.

President Trump himself twice alluded to this totally false allegation. I say that because I myself did some of the research to expose that this was a totally false story. There's lots of things wrong in China, but let’s focus on the real issues. It's really scary the way that now that the US government is demonizing China to divert attention from its own mistakes, and also to create a kind of enemy. Unfortunately, I think it's only likely to get worse as the presidential elections approach.

VI: If you look at the Belt and Road Initiative through the lens of just hierarchy and the relations of a powerful state to a weaker one, is the BRI truly a win-win situation? The large and expensive infrastructure projects the Chinese have financed and built have not often benefited the developing nation but rather have resulted in considerable corruption and substantial indebtedness to China.

Daniel Bell: That's partly true. I think the experts who research the Belt and Road initiative find that sometimes even in famous cases of indebtedness, like in Sri Lanka,  it's actually not so simple and China didn't actually want to inherit that. The basic idea of Belt and Road is that China helps to promote infrastructure projects, which help to reduce poverty in surrounding countries. Because these are state-owned enterprises, they don't need to return an immediate profit.

They can take a long term view and they're willing to carry short term loss, including providing loans and so on, for the prospect of long-term profit. The idea was supposed to be win-win whereby the host countries benefit from these infrastructure projects, whether it's Pakistan,or Laos. It's not just surrounding Asian nations but a number of countries in Africa and Latin America as well. Much of that did seem to be going well until this COVID pandemic, where now the global economy is going into a recession and many of these countries have huge debts. It's hard to see how they will be able to  repay. That certainly was not China's intention. In the short to medium term the outlook of the Belt and Road Initiative doesn't look very promising and may certainly require China to offer debt restructuring or forgiveness.

VI: Another intention of the Chinese government is to heavily invest in new technologies - 5G, artificial intelligence, and supercomputing.  Will China continue these efforts in the face of a global economic downturn?

Daniel Bell: I don't think the downturn will impact the quest for high tech development in China. For one thing, there are legitimate worries that some countries, especially the United States, really aim to undermine China's global position. In order to prevent that from happening and for China to develop and to help its people and ideally the rest of the world, then it needs to have superior technological capacity. I think there's going to be continuous support for that in China.

On some of these issues, there's going to be a need for global cooperation. One of the issues that we look at in our book is the hugely important need for some sort of regulation of AI so that it doesn't lead to a situation where millions of people are displaced from their jobs, and ultimately, even more worrisome, that a super intelligent form of AI can make us into their slaves.How do we prevent that from happening?

One solution is to leave it to private corporations like Google and hope that they'll come up with acceptable solutions. In China, there's much more commitment to the idea that a political authority should take the lead in regulating AI so that it benefits people. I think it must be done with the cooperation of other countries around the world. At the moment, it's hard to see that happening but I think it's important to continue to maintain that commitment.

VI: Regarding direct U.S. and Chinese relations, do you see them continuing to be confrontational or can this evolve into a more cooperative relationship under a different administration? What would be the basis for better American-Chinese relations? Do you think that Western intellectuals and policymakers are capable of understanding the underlying ideals of just hierarchies within the Chinese system and perhaps apply them to their own societies?

Daniel Bell: In the run up to the U.S. elections, I think both political parties in the U.S. are going to try and outdo each other to show that they're against China.  If one side emerges with a reasonably intelligent and compassionate leader who's committed to long-term thinking, then it's so obvious that there's a need for global cooperation on dealing with pandemics, on regulation of AI, on climate change.

Every country, including China, should be committed, at least in principle, to very basic human rights: do not kill innocent people, don't torture people, slavery is bad. But when it comes to how to select leaders, we should allow for differences. I think most people in China recognize that in the West there's still a dogmatic commitment to one person, one vote.

I think if people can put aside the dogma and focus on areas of common concern, definitely in the case of China and the U.S., there's going to be different spheres of influence. In the East Asian region, it's hard to imagine that 50 years from now, China will continue to be surrounded by U.S. military bases. At some point, the U.S. has to allow China more space in its own neighborhood. It's very important for China, when it does emerge as a major power in East Asia, to promote relations that are win-win, including for the weaker powers.

I'm from Canada and I think there are some good examples where the U.S. does provide security guarantees for Canada. That means Canada doesn't have to spend as much on the military. It could spend more on social welfare. This unequal relation between the U.S.and Canada is beneficial for Canada as a weaker power. It's those win-win relations between strong and weaker powers that work.

For example, if China gives security guarantees or economic benefits to weaker countries in East Asia, then it's possible to see some future with different spheres of influence: the US would have more influence in North America and China in East Asia. Both sides respect those spheres of influence. But they can also cooperate. Maybe we can have, for example, joined military patrols in the Asia Pacific between the US and China. Why not?

Then, there could be more cooperation on global issues. It seems to me that's the long-term desirable outlook. At the moment, it's hard to be optimistic, but at least it's important to have some idea of what the ideal should be, that's not completely unrealistic and that's the argument we make in our book as well.

VI: We're coming to the end of our time so let’s end on that optimistic point. You've provided good insights on current realities in China. The ideas of just hierarchy and social meritocracy that have evolved from Confucian traditions are certainly interesting. Let's hope that these ideas can perhaps merge with Western concepts of individualism and democratic governance.

Daniel A. Bell is from Montreal and was educated at McGill University and Oxford University. He has held teaching posts in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, and has held research fellowships at Princeton, Stanford, and Hebrew University. He is currently Dean of the School of Political Science and Public Administration at Shandong University (Qingdao) and Professor at Tsinghua University.  His books include The China Model, China’s New Confucianism, Beyond Liberal Democracy, East Meets West, and The Spirit of Cities (co-authored with Avner de-Shalit), all published by Princeton University Press. His latest book (co-authored with Wang Pei) is Just Hierarchy: Why Social Hierarchies Matter in China and the Rest of the World (Princeton, 2020). In 2018, he was awarded the Huilin Prize and was honored as a “Cultural Leader” by the World Economic Forum. In 2019 he was awarded the Special Book Award of China.