A Chinese De Toqueville Sees America

 Wang Huning is the idea man behind the harsh "Common Prosperity" campaign in China but he has a lot to say about modern America which he toured peripatetically visiting 30 cities and 20 universities  in 1989.  He's sort of a modern day Alexis De Toqueville and published his memoir in 1991 as "America Against America".    He's right behind Emperor Xi but avoids the headlines.

A key observation from the linked article:  "Americans are faced with intricate social and cultural problems but tend of think of them as scientific and technological problems".

"In (America Against AMerica), he marvels at homeless encampments in the streets of Washington DC, out-of-control drug crime in poor black neighborhoods in New York and San Francisco, and corporations that seemed to have fused themselves to and taken over responsibilities of government. Eventually, he concludes that America faces an “unstoppable undercurrent of crisis” produced by its societal contradictions, including between rich and poor, white and black, democratic and oligarchic power, egalitarianism and class privilege, individual rights and collective responsibilities, cultural traditions and the solvent of liquid modernity.

But while Americans can, he says, perceive that they are faced with “intricate social and cultural problems,” they “tend to think of them as scientific and technological problems” to be solved separately. This gets them nowhere, he argues, because their problems are in fact all inextricably interlinked and have the same root cause: a radical, nihilistic individualism at the heart of modern American liberalism.

“The real cell of society in the United States is the individual,” he finds. This is so because the cell most foundational (per Aristotle) to society, “the family, has disintegrated.” Meanwhile, in the American system, “everything has a dual nature, and the glamour of high commodification abounds. Human flesh, sex, knowledge, politics, power, and law can all become the target of commodification.” This “commodification, in many ways, corrupts society and leads to a number of serious social problems.” In the end, “the American economic system has created human loneliness” as its foremost product, along with spectacular inequality. As a result, “nihilism has become the American way, which is a fatal shock to cultural development and the American spirit.” "

This is part of a longer thought-provoking article at palladiummag.com.  From the heading of that article is this picture showing Wang in the background of high state business and the observation that the troubles he analysed in America have come to China.