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Over the past 40 years, China has created economic miracles and transformed from poverty -stricken powers to the second largest economy.(Internet)
How can China's economy (even political and society) go to the future?Judging from the experience since reform and opening up, economic indicators in material sense, such as evading secondary income traps and entering high -income economies, are easier to regulate; at the same time, people's pursuit of material goals is also self -motivated because it is in line with human natureSelfish requirements.However, in any society, people are the main body. When pursuing the economy and other goals, people must be considered.
It is often said how far a person can go depends on how far his thoughts can go.It can also be said that how far people's thoughts can go, and it also determines how far the economy can go in a country.Although this does not mean that everyone has thoughts, the society must have a thoughtful cultural middle class to lead the progress of society. Otherwise, the progress of material sense will not lead to the progress of the overall society.For example, pursuing unidirectional development, pursuing various utopia, etc.
The relationship between culture and economic growth, whether it is positive or negative, has been discussed by many scholars.The new religion ethics and capitalist spirit of German sociologist Max Weber described and analyzed the contribution of the ethical ethics and culture to the development of Western capitalism. The entrepreneur group is the cultural carrier of the ethics of Protestantism.On the contrary, the idle class theory of American economist Thorsestein Veblen was negatively impacted by luxury culture on economic growth at that time.The ethical consequences of the economic growth of contemporary economist Benjamin Friedman tell the moral level of economic and moral relationships, poverty and low development, but the other is the same.It will also restrict economic development.
It is not difficult to observe a phenomenon in developed society, that is, the relationship between wealth and people.At a certain stage of economy, changes in people become important, because people's culture cannot improve, and the economy is difficult to go to the level.Economic development is created by consumption and technology.As far as consumption is concerned, people's food, wear, and deeds are limited, and cultural consumption is infinite.Technology creation is the product of cultural middle -class.In the era of post -industrial society and information technology, there is no cultural imagination, and technological creation has become extremely difficult.In a word, a wealthy society relies on wealthy cultural personality.Today, the main body of Western society is the cultural middle -class group.Some studies have found that although Western society has experienced globalization and various economic difficulties, high -end technology and high -end capital have not lost.This is why the West does not have the rapid decline as people imagined.The cultural middle class is the carrier of high -end technology and high -end capital.
What is the reference significance of the reality of the culture of culture?In the past 40 years, China has created economic miracles, transformed from a poverty -stricken country to the second largest economy, and even the income of national citizens is close to $ 10,000.More importantly, after a large -scale poverty alleviation, China has promoted nearly 800 million people to say goodbye to absolute poverty since reform and opening up.In other words, there are many middle -class (or material middle class) in the sense of material life.
Cultural poverty causes a sense of public morality
It is a pity that even a material middle -class group is still culturally immature, even rogue.Even the richest group, it is difficult to say that it has escaped the pattern of immatureness in culture.The problem is that under the pattern of cultural immutability, how can China escape the middle income trap?How to transform from quantitative economic growth to quality economic growth?How can material middle class be used to avoid today's luxury consumption through deep cultural consumption?How to cultivate a healthy consumer society by cultivating culture in the middle of culture?All of this is related to the future of the Chinese economy, and even the future of the entire country and society.
Cultural poverty, naked manifestation in daily life.The uncivilized phenomenon of China occurs not only at the bottom of society, but also on the rich group.It is not difficult to observe in high -end residential communities that many people are already in the material life or surpassing middle -class, but cultural life still has the characteristics of poverty and even hooligans.They are ignored, not abide by the law, and are greedy for some small interests and small cheap.There is no sense of public order in the community. The interior of his house may be magnificent, and the door is dirty.His house is spacious enough, but he tries to occupy the public space.Without public order is a product of lack of public morality, and public morality is the product of cultural middle class.
The lack of cultural domestic production has enlightened the ideology of Chinese society. Society swings between the extreme left and the right right extremes. People are highly emotional and lack of rationality.This situation is reflected in the relationship between the poor and the rich.The poor are the rich, and the rich are also revenge.One can't see others, always thinking about how to engage in re -assignment, grab wealth; one has no sympathy for the poor, can do things in faith, and can't live.It is not difficult to understand the hate by the wealthy group by the underlying group.
The lack of cultural middle production is also reflected in the relationship between officials and the public.Officials' power corruption is also related to the poverty of culture.The people hope that officials are moral and noble, and they can provide services to the people by drinking Northwest Wind; and leaders at all levels have to implement a low wage policy, whether it is because of the pressure of the public, or they think so.It is not wrong to need moral noble, but it is not reliable or even unreliable to rely on the morality of officials under the low wage policy to control the country.Officials are also people and need interest orientation, but officials are indeed public figures, and their interests need to be restrained.Low wages have moved to what people call the hidden rules, that is, corruption; corruption leads to the resentment of the people and exacerbate the tension between the government and the people.
Fantasy, imagination, and imagination are also the products of cultural poverty, because the poverty of culture has caused people to not know how to think rationally, and have no interest and ability to think rationally.All Utopia in Chinese history is a product of fantasy, imagination and imagination.This is very different from the modern Utopia in the era of Western rationalism.The so -called Utopia, including early imagination of socialism, is actually based on limited social experiments. Only at the duplicate (or promotion) stage, the concept of utopia appears.The ideal of no realistic feasibility is the imagination, and only the actual feasibility is ideal.
What's more sad is that these proletariat culture has become a deep -rooted culture and a way of thinking and behavior.This culture has no simplicity and kindness of the traditional underlying culture, and it presents exquisite evil.It should be emphasized here that the standard of measuring the middle class of culture is by no means educational level, not to say that the higher the education level, the more culture.Culture and education are related, but not the same thing.Under the leadership of the proletariat's cultural environment today, there is a situation, the higher the level of education, the more selfishness and self -interest, which is often referred to as the exquisite favorable behavior.
The relationship between culture and originality and originality
What is the relationship between the middle -class culture and China's economic development?Just as in the West, people can discuss this issue from multiple aspects, but here only to discuss a simple question: Why do China have rare original thoughts and techniques?If the lack of original thoughts and technology in the content of the supply -side reform that China has been discussing in recent years, it is easier to understand the impact on the economy.Simply put, original belongs to the supply side, and the lack of originality is equivalent to no motivation from the supply side.
Why lack originality?This question can have countless answers, but in the end, they can be attributed to a very simple answer: few people can look up at the starry sky.
In terms of technology, people are very sensitive to interests, and they can be applied immediately with technology.closeCome to the United States to slander China to steal the United States, in fact China is the largest application market in the United States.Some people say that China is the world's largest manufacturing base, which is exaggerated; to be precise, China is the world's largest assembly base.In the process of western technology spread to China, the cottage version is often full of the market, and often cannot respect the intellectual property rights of others.
This situation has occurred in almost all developed countries. For example, in the early days of the United States and Germany, it also studied the United Kingdom, Japan, and Europe, and South Korea.The problem is that these countries quickly walked through the learning stage and entered the original stage.However, in China, people lack interest and more capable of original things for a long time, and as a result, they are subject to others and always stay at low -end products.Until the two years of trade war, many talents found that their differences from the United States were still so huge, and it was difficult to surpass in many aspects.
Today, the ultimate goal of the United States and China is to position China's industrial positioning at the low -end of the industrial chain and added value. As long as Chinese technology does not challenge the United States, does not surpass the United States, the United States is still the boss of the world.Of course, more and more people in China are now aware of the importance of original technology and are determined to invest in research and development.Wish is one thing, whether it can be realized is another thing.Even if it is rushing to catch up now, it takes a lot of time.More importantly, whether there is no cultural production, whether the current situation can persist is still unknown.
Cultural processes are also manifested in social sciences.In a word, cultural immutability has led to the lack of discourse rights, both inside or in the international community.Many scholars only play the role of Western knowledge and are busy selling knowledge.Although China has an unprecedented transformation in the history of the world, and Western ways to understand China, Chinese scholars cannot provide effective knowledge.The West is not very interested in China ’s knowledge imported from the West, because they are already familiar with it, and because these knowledge cannot explain the reality of China.
Cultural processes failed to produce new knowledge
On the other hand, Marxist research can be said to be a traditional government, and China is actually a great research country in Marxist. It has the largest number of Marx research institutions and researchers in the world.However, how many original research has been invested in such a large amount of people's property?Since Mao Zedong, Sinicization of Marxism has been working hard, but so far, what is Sinicization Marxism?
The intellectual world failed to produce the knowledge system of China, and many people attributed their reasons to the political and management system.The political environment and management system is naturally important, but it is not the only reason.If people think that the lack of effective knowledge is only caused by no freedom of speech, it is too simple.When China ’s history is centralized, there is no new ideas when decentralization and even national power disintegrate.If the intellectual world cannot reflect on the interests, abilities, and methodology of knowledge production, no matter how good the external environment is, it will not help the production of effective knowledge.
For example, in the 1980s and 1990s, everyone complained that the intellectual world was too poor and could not focus on learning.At present, the conditions of most intellectuals have been greatly improved, especially those famous professors, but the improvement of conditions helps the production of knowledge?A ridiculous reality is that the more money, the more corruption in the intellectual world.From the time of the previous money, everyone can concentrate on doing some knowledge; now there are too many money, and everyone will turn to grab the money in various ways.In this way, learning is naturally deserted.
In fact, the advent of the social media era has accelerated the downward speed of the intellectual world.In order to fight for fame or money, we joined the team to grab traffic.Some schools even blatantly use traffic to measure scholars' performance.The knowledge class is blindly vulgar, just to please the public.
what to do?The only way is to first cultivate a cultural middle class. On the basis of cultural middle class, a number of cultural nobles are cultivated.Of course, the nobles mentioned here are not the material nobles in the traditional sense, but as the German philosopher IMMANUEL KANT said, a group that can have time, interest and ability to look up.Only in this way can the economy be hopeful and the nation and nation will have hope.
Since the reform and opening up, China has first mentioned four modernizations, and later added modernization such as systems, but has forgotten the modernization of people.Culture's middle class is undoubtedly the theme of human modernization, that is, to cultivate a wealthy personality.Without a wealthy personality, it is difficult for the country to move towards wealth and maintenance.To cultivate cultural production, it is necessary to start with the elite.This is how the Western history came here, and Asian society, including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, came over like this.Elite not only means having power, wealth, and knowledge, but more importantly, the elite must have a sense of responsibility and responsibility.Once the elite of society loses its responsibility and responsibility, no matter how good the society is, there will be problems. This is the situation in contemporary Western populism.This is the case in other society and China.
(The author is a professor at the National University of Singapore and East Asia)
The article only represents personal point of view
