The Morning Star of Lingao is China's cult industrial time-travel novel. Its main author has some thoughts on AGI, power, China's media landscape, and the end of most jobs
Afra: great piece, yet again! Much to digest. I had dealings with the “father” / namer of the Industrial Party, Wang Xiaodong 王小東, in the early 1990s when he and his comrades — funded by the PLA — were already busy envisioning a future of Chinese dominance. I wrote about my early encounters with Wang and his buddies in “To Screw Foreigners is Patriotic: China’s Avant-grade Nationalists” (1995). Geremie
Afra: he was bombastic and extremely self-important, very much in the manner of the 祖師爺 of the chauvinistic intelligentsia in the ‘90s: He Xin 何新. He Xin started out as a “liberal” in the early 1980s but turned patriotic conservative around 1984 when he started to enjoy the patronage of Hu Qiaomu 胡喬木, the ideologue-predecessor to Wang Huning.
As for Wang Xiaodong’s general demeanour, it brought to mind that famous line from Mao’s poem “Changsha”:
指點江山，激揚文字，糞土當年萬戶侯。
I was amused to note that Wang repeatedly denounced me as a US “cultural spy”, even as recently as the early 2000s. My work on his gang must have struck a nerve. I’ve long thought of him as being a Sino-fascist (a term others in China have also used for this school of 愛國賊, even though one might sympathise with aspects of their anti-American anti Western stance.)
Simonian normative claims with Marxist modals..? Wonder if there's perchance any lines, parallel or orthogonal, to be drawn between the rationalist movement's birthing station of intellectual strains and the Industrialists. Besides the obvious points, and lucking itself into 'sponsorship' via the deputy editor at Qidian aside.
Oh, the internet crucibles of the late 90s and 2000s.
Why do you think there are no public intellectuals in China anymore? (It doesn’t seem like the anglophone world has any either; I’m now sure why that is or whether the reasons are the same.)
Thanks Afra, again your feel for journalism is outstanding. A double coda!! (your Wired piece was the coda to a fascinating issue)
This is not "performative encouragement"
"You’re thinking ...Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, aren’t you?"
No.
Sounds like Atlas Shrugged, but I think Ma is making clear in the interview that while that industrialist pride was what brought the original forum together, the thinking is more liberal minded.
I'd argue that the Neo-cons in US misinterpreteted Atlas Shrugged when they started to site it as their manifesto, confusing John Galt's conept of virtue with baseness.
"... people who actually held advanced productive capacity."
Galt's gulch indeed.
But, what makes the double coda even more interesting is your allusion to precisionist artwork (I guess it just coincidence that industrial looking piece with smoke stacks and stuff was chosen.)
The Precisionist Art of Charles Sheeler
Makes one think, what if everything should be created with some elegant mathematical formula in mind?
There have actually been attempts around the world to design buildings according to the golden mean. Some have been catastrophic, the conclusion being a willing to compromise; The nautalis shell is not EXACTLY the golden mean, but the concept can be seen in it's natural-history-museum-geometry.
Ma mentions, "In the relatively open era of Chinese internet discourse — roughly before 2011 — whatever the nominal topic, politics was always the silent subtext. It ran beneath every thread."
I like the word Feuilleton, but now google thinks it just means "soap opera." I suppose that underscores another theme here, "The question is whether anyone administers anesthesia intelligently."
Media as Rational Actor
"...several million media workers collectively add up to zero..."
He's got a point. Look at the sycophants that are working as techs for broadcast industry for example. They just do what the boss tells them.
"A machine with no manual can’t be repaired.“natives have no rights” — stated plainly ...If you’re confident in your system, you describe it clearly; if you’re not, you veil it in mystification."
Point taken, but such a policy should be considered with the John Rawls philosophy of a "veil of ignorance."
What if Ma was the native? Would he still stand by his logical argument? Presumably he would argue that if he were "native" he would be too stupid to even discuss it.... I see what you mean by inhumane sentiment in the preface:
"Wenzhou was a moment of seizing media oxygen... good media knows how to hack the emotions"
I wonder if he does this on purpose to seem more honest. Sounds like he'd ace an interview with Rupert Murdoch.
"If tomorrow the majority falls into an industrial fetishism that treats investment as inherently virtuous regardless of returns or human welfare, I’ll argue the other way. "
That happened yesterday! read: Hedgefund-Private-Equity-Real-Estate.
populism vs. democracy - Standing with the majority
"But more fundamentally: 'standing with the majority' and 'facing reality' are inseparable"
This is like conformity.
Bifurcation
"...in 2010 ...the majority of people would still be rendered economically redundant"
"...The jobs being eliminated were already structurally unnecessary..."
But, a company is not a company unless it has a bunch of people who agree to be part of it. Whether they do anything useful or not is besides the point.
This has been the case long before 2010, just that in 2010 the financial crisis (Lehman Bros.) showed what an socio-economic dystopian society might look like.
This guy is insanely politically conscious. Really a pleasant surprise to discover a voice like his.
Apologies if you answered this but is the book available in translation? You make it sound fascinating!
yes! here is the link: https://illuminelingao.com/
Afra: great piece, yet again! Much to digest. I had dealings with the “father” / namer of the Industrial Party, Wang Xiaodong 王小東, in the early 1990s when he and his comrades — funded by the PLA — were already busy envisioning a future of Chinese dominance. I wrote about my early encounters with Wang and his buddies in “To Screw Foreigners is Patriotic: China’s Avant-grade Nationalists” (1995). Geremie
so epic! what was he like in the 90s? i only started hearing about him after he published 中国不高兴
Afra: he was bombastic and extremely self-important, very much in the manner of the 祖師爺 of the chauvinistic intelligentsia in the ‘90s: He Xin 何新. He Xin started out as a “liberal” in the early 1980s but turned patriotic conservative around 1984 when he started to enjoy the patronage of Hu Qiaomu 胡喬木, the ideologue-predecessor to Wang Huning.
As for Wang Xiaodong’s general demeanour, it brought to mind that famous line from Mao’s poem “Changsha”:
指點江山，激揚文字，糞土當年萬戶侯。
I was amused to note that Wang repeatedly denounced me as a US “cultural spy”, even as recently as the early 2000s. My work on his gang must have struck a nerve. I’ve long thought of him as being a Sino-fascist (a term others in China have also used for this school of 愛國賊, even though one might sympathise with aspects of their anti-American anti Western stance.)
Geremie
Simonian normative claims with Marxist modals..? Wonder if there's perchance any lines, parallel or orthogonal, to be drawn between the rationalist movement's birthing station of intellectual strains and the Industrialists. Besides the obvious points, and lucking itself into 'sponsorship' via the deputy editor at Qidian aside.
Oh, the internet crucibles of the late 90s and 2000s.
Why do you think there are no public intellectuals in China anymore? (It doesn’t seem like the anglophone world has any either; I’m now sure why that is or whether the reasons are the same.)
Thanks Afra, again your feel for journalism is outstanding. A double coda!! (your Wired piece was the coda to a fascinating issue)
This is not "performative encouragement"
"You’re thinking ...Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, aren’t you?"
No.
Sounds like Atlas Shrugged, but I think Ma is making clear in the interview that while that industrialist pride was what brought the original forum together, the thinking is more liberal minded.
I'd argue that the Neo-cons in US misinterpreteted Atlas Shrugged when they started to site it as their manifesto, confusing John Galt's conept of virtue with baseness.
"... people who actually held advanced productive capacity."
Galt's gulch indeed.
But, what makes the double coda even more interesting is your allusion to precisionist artwork (I guess it just coincidence that industrial looking piece with smoke stacks and stuff was chosen.)
The Precisionist Art of Charles Sheeler
Makes one think, what if everything should be created with some elegant mathematical formula in mind?
There have actually been attempts around the world to design buildings according to the golden mean. Some have been catastrophic, the conclusion being a willing to compromise; The nautalis shell is not EXACTLY the golden mean, but the concept can be seen in it's natural-history-museum-geometry.
Ma mentions, "In the relatively open era of Chinese internet discourse — roughly before 2011 — whatever the nominal topic, politics was always the silent subtext. It ran beneath every thread."
I like the word Feuilleton, but now google thinks it just means "soap opera." I suppose that underscores another theme here, "The question is whether anyone administers anesthesia intelligently."
Media as Rational Actor
"...several million media workers collectively add up to zero..."
He's got a point. Look at the sycophants that are working as techs for broadcast industry for example. They just do what the boss tells them.
"A machine with no manual can’t be repaired.“natives have no rights” — stated plainly ...If you’re confident in your system, you describe it clearly; if you’re not, you veil it in mystification."
Point taken, but such a policy should be considered with the John Rawls philosophy of a "veil of ignorance."
What if Ma was the native? Would he still stand by his logical argument? Presumably he would argue that if he were "native" he would be too stupid to even discuss it.... I see what you mean by inhumane sentiment in the preface:
"Wenzhou was a moment of seizing media oxygen... good media knows how to hack the emotions"
I wonder if he does this on purpose to seem more honest. Sounds like he'd ace an interview with Rupert Murdoch.
"If tomorrow the majority falls into an industrial fetishism that treats investment as inherently virtuous regardless of returns or human welfare, I’ll argue the other way. "
That happened yesterday! read: Hedgefund-Private-Equity-Real-Estate.
populism vs. democracy - Standing with the majority
"But more fundamentally: 'standing with the majority' and 'facing reality' are inseparable"
This is like conformity.
Bifurcation
"...in 2010 ...the majority of people would still be rendered economically redundant"
"...The jobs being eliminated were already structurally unnecessary..."
But, a company is not a company unless it has a bunch of people who agree to be part of it. Whether they do anything useful or not is besides the point.
This has been the case long before 2010, just that in 2010 the financial crisis (Lehman Bros.) showed what an socio-economic dystopian society might look like.
This is a great piece, Afra. Thank you!