(East-West Question) Chen Zhiwu: How do human beings play with risks to promote the development of Chinese and Western civilizations?

  China News Agency, Hong Kong, April 30th: How do human beings play with risks to promote the development of Chinese and Western civilizations?

  ——Interview with Chen Zhiwu, Director of the Asia Global Institute and Professor of Economics at the School of Economics and Management of the University of Hong Kong

  China News Agency reporter Han Xingtong

  Today's world is shrouded in the shadow of epidemics and wars, forcing people to look back on history and look for answers to survival and new hope for the future.

Throughout history, human beings have been impacted by risk events such as violence, war, infectious diseases, and disasters. How can human beings successfully respond to these threats and survive?

  Chen Zhiwu, director of the Asia Global Research Institute and professor of economics at the School of Economics and Management of the University of Hong Kong, recently accepted an exclusive interview with China News Agency's "East-West Question" to sort out the development of human civilization and explore how civilizational innovations shape the world we live in today.

  The following is a summary of the interview transcript:

  China News Service: The world is becoming less peaceful. Wars and other violence are on the rise again. Has this always been the case in history?

Has civilization progressed?

  Chen Zhiwu:

In the past 40 years, the world has generally been peaceful, and the world has achieved common prosperity and win-win results. Globalization has become the pursuit of all countries.

However, in recent years, incidents of racial discrimination have occurred frequently in the United States and some other Western countries. The Ukraine war is a more specific geopolitical conflict that has turned into violence, making different groups feel more and more insecure.

In March 2021, people held a rally in the capital Washington to protest against hate and violence against Asian Americans.

Photo by China News Agency reporter Chen Mengtong

  Although there have been many events such as wars and famines in history, from the perspective of specific data, in the past few thousand years, both the death rate of war and the death rate of general violence have decreased significantly.

In the primitive society, about 525 people died in wars and about 600 people died in general violence every year among 100,000 people; 0.8 people.

In this sense, the progress of human civilization is very remarkable.

  People's tolerance for violence in their lives has also changed significantly.

In the West, one of the entertainments of the ancient Romans was to watch the duel between humans and beasts in the Colosseum. Today, it is hard to imagine that this is an exciting and enjoyable thing; One version of the story is that Guo Ju buried his son alive in order to support his mother. In today's China, almost no one would respect this extreme way of showing filial piety.

  Therefore, although in the short term, various things have happened in today's society, if the historical time axis is extended, we will see that the trend of human development is not so pessimistic, but more and more abandoning barbarism and moving towards civilization.

  China News Service reporter: Productivity is usually used as a criterion for judging human progress. In your new book "Logic of Civilization: The Game of Humanity and Risk", you put forward the indicator of human risk coping ability. Can you tell us why?

  Chen Zhiwu: In

the past, when scholars introduced society, history, and economy, they always emphasized that the only indicator for judging human progress is productivity.

However, this indicator tends to ignore the development contribution of culture and institutional civilization, such as Confucian culture, ancient Greek culture, Christian civilization, etc., so it is necessary to add another indicator - human risk coping ability.

  Taking the Confucian civilization that influenced Chinese society as an example, although it did not bring substantial scientific and technological changes to Chinese society, it structured and organized the interpersonal relationship and social structure of Chinese society by means of rank order and other methods, and strengthened human beings. The ability to communicate with people, especially clan members, and to share risks.

A ceremony was held in the Dacheng Hall of the Confucius Temple in Nanjing to commemorate the birthday of Confucius.

Photo by China News Agency reporter Yang Bo

  Confucius said in "The Analects" that one should not suffer from being poor but suffer from unevenness, and not suffer from poverty but suffer from restlessness.

The focus of Confucianism has always been not to improve productivity, but to improve people's ability to cope with risks, and to focus on strengthening people's mutual assistance, resource sharing, and increasing sense of security.

This is also why when the new crown epidemic broke out, countries and regions affected by Confucian culture, such as mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, and South Korea, were more accepting of restrictive actions such as wearing masks and not traveling.

  In a word, the degree of progress of civilization cannot be judged only by productivity, but also how this civilization builds interpersonal relationships at the social level and shapes people's inner world, so that it can better cope with risks and challenges.

Therefore, the history of human civilization development is not only a history of productivity improvement, but also a history of improved risk response capabilities.

  China News Service: What are the main risks in the development of Chinese and Western human civilizations?

How does risk give birth to civilization, or even advance it?

  Chen Zhiwu:

Risk is relative to the "normal" state, any event that deviates from normal is a risk.

Before the Industrial Revolution, both Chinese and Western countries were mainly agricultural societies, and natural risks became a common challenge faced by human society: droughts, floods, locusts, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, etc.

Once these events occur, people's lives deviate from normal, triggering all kinds of violence and even wars.

  But after the Industrial Revolution, new man-made risks emerged, such as unemployment risk, financial crisis risk, inflation risk, policy risk, etc.

  Civilization initiatives mainly depend on whether they can guarantee the normal life of human beings, so that they do not need to use violence even in the face of disasters.

These innovations will essentially advance civilization by reorganizing interpersonal relationships and social structures, making interpersonal resource sharing and risk mutual assistance more reliable.

The Jinshanling Great Wall at the beginning of the snow.

Photo by Zhou Wanping issued by China News Agency

  Civilization innovations include spiritual civilization and material civilization.

Material civilizations, such as the Great Wall and trenches to guard against foreign invasions, farming implements to guard against climate fluctuations, and pots and pans to store food over time, when these things are invented, people's ability to deal with climate disasters will be improved.

  As for the creation of immaterial civilization, there is a very classic example: I grew up in Hunan when I was a child, and the most effective way to make children obey the rules is the myth of "Lei Gong", "Lei Gong" will look at everyone, if you do bad things, "Lei Gong" "One day it will strike you with thunder.

In fact, this phenomenon is the earliest response of human beings to risks and uncertainties, and it has made a great contribution to the establishment of rules and order for human beings, the strengthening of interpersonal cooperation, and the reduction of violence.

Cities in thunderstorms.

Photo by Liu Debin issued by China News Agency

  China News Service: What are the similarities and differences between China and the West in avoiding risks and resolving conflicts?

Can this experience learn from and influence each other?

  Chen Zhiwu:

The differences are mainly reflected in the choices of Chinese and Western ways to solve risks and challenges during the Axial Period, as well as the different cultural and institutional needs brought about by them.

Since the development of human society, four types of solutions to risk challenges have been invented.

  The first category is to build trust networks based on blood ties for the needs of interpersonal mutual assistance.

Chinese civilization has been based on such a choice since at least the Zhou Dynasty, focusing on the establishment of security by blood.

The logic of using blood network to deal with "abnormal" things has never changed in Chinese society.

  Before the advent of Christianity, the West generally also relied on blood networks to solve the need for interpersonal mutual assistance.

However, after Christianity became more and more popular in Europe in the late 4th century AD, the church gradually shifted people's safe-haven dependence to religious networks.

This is the second type of risk aversion - mutual aid based on religious beliefs.

  The third type of approach is the financial market and the commercial market.

The emergence of financial markets has taken a very important, and arguably the biggest, step in improving human ability to deal with risks.

Since the late 19th century, European countries such as Germany have successively introduced the fourth method, that is, the welfare state that provides rich social security.

  It can be seen from this that there is a big gap between Chinese society and Western society in terms of coping with risks and challenges: Chinese society basically only has family and clan to rely on, while Western society also has emergency services provided by religious networks, markets and government welfare. .

This difference has shaped the development paths of different civilizations between China and the West in the past two thousand years, and also created the difference between today's Chinese and Western civilizations.

A Ming Dynasty portrait with a family heritage theme attracts visitors.

Photo by China News Agency reporter Manhui Qiao

  China News Service reporter: Human civilization has developed to this day, and human risk response capabilities have been continuously improved. Are there still new risks or challenges?

  Chen Zhiwu:

Through civilized innovations such as transportation technology and commercial market, human beings have basically solved the original natural risk challenge.

But in modern times, in order to solve a risk, whether it is monetary stimulus, fiscal stimulus or welfare state means, will continue to bring new risks.

For example, in the United States, in order to fight the epidemic in the past two years, the Federal Reserve, the central bank, has issued so many banknotes. The U.S. Treasury Department has sent checks and money to all kinds of people, with government support of hundreds or even thousands of dollars per person at every turn.

As a result, many people are reluctant to work, waiting for the government to send a check at home, and go out to buy various things. The inflation rate in the United States has reached 8.5%, reaching a new high in the past few decades, and the risk of inflation has greatly increased.

This is also a new social and economic problem and a new man-made risk faced by mankind.

  After the arrival of modern society and modern countries, natural risks have been well resolved, but man-made risks have become more and more protagonists and become a greater threat to mankind.

Humanity will continue to explore solutions to man-made risks in the coming decades, if not hundreds of years.

Although there are twists and turns in the exploration process, fortunately, human beings will become more civilized in the process of solving risks and challenges, and the probability of being violently impacted will continue to decrease.

(Finish)

  Interviewee Profile:

  Chen Zhiwu is Director of the Asia Global Institute, Professor of Economics at the School of Economics and Management at the University of Hong Kong, and Professor of Financial Economics at Yale University. He is an expert in financial economics, securities valuation, emerging markets, the Chinese economy and capital markets.

Chen Zhiwu is also the international consultant of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, the chief consultant of Bomao Group, and an independent director of China National Petroleum Corporation, China Bank of Communications, and Noah Wealth.