One and All: A Conversation with Pang Laikwan

Pang Laikwan’s One and All: The Logic of Chinese Sovereignty (Stanford University Press, 2024) is a critical exploration of the Chinese concepts and structures of sovereignty in imperial, republican, socialist, and post-socialist periods. The book traces how sovereignty branches out into articulations of popular, territorial, and economic sovereignty. With this genealogy in mind, Pang shows how the current regime’s obsession with sovereignty is also an anxiety that cuts across the twentieth century in China. One source of anxiety is China’s social plurality and the spectre of political possibility it represents, swirling underneath all thunderous claims to unity. 

Christian Sorace: Your book takes aim at several myths that legitimate political authority. You write: ‘The idea of popular sovereignty might be one of the biggest myths in China’s modern politics’ (p. 111). It would be wonderful if you could elaborate this point for our audience, but I also would like to push you a bit further: when is popular sovereignty more than its aesthetic representation? Is the concept of ‘the people’ still available for political subjectivity?

Pang Laikwan: Yes, popular sovereignty is essential to democracy, and the ‘people’ are the owners of popular sovereignty. Popular sovereignty represents the political subjectivity of a group of people who are the masters of themselves. But the term ‘people’ is also highly abstract, if not empty. We can look at the different Chinese terms employed to carry this concept, all of which have slightly different connotations, to understand the many meanings attached to the term. For example, guomin (國民) and minzhong (民眾) were widely used during the Republican period, while renmin (人民) is the official term of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). These terms all suggest a multitude, in contrast to the singular individual, geren (個人), who is not given the political entitlement and responsibilities suggested by the pluralistic terms. But these terms still differ. Roughly speaking, guomin is the citizen, minzhong is the masses, while renmin is the master of the nation. They all have different connotations. I can give you an example. One of Sun Yat-sen’s last letters opens with the two famous sentences:

For 40 years I have devoted myself to the cause of the people’s revolution with but one end in view, the elevation of China to a position of freedom and equality among the nations. My experiences during these 40 years have firmly convinced me that to attain this goal, we must bring about a thorough awakening of our own people and ally ourselves in a common struggle with those peoples of the world who treat us on the basis of equality. (Sun 1925; emphasis added)

Here the Chinese original of ‘the people’s revolution’ is guomin geming (國民革命), while ‘our own people’ is minzhong (民眾). We can say that in this passage guomin is the end, while minzhong is the means. When are we the people the end of the political project and when are we the means? When are we ‘enlightened’ and when are we not? To me, the word ‘people’ is always rhetorical, and the different Chinese terms help us see the subtle discursive manipulations.

In the book, I want to demonstrate how popular sovereignty, in whatever disguise, is central to the political rhetoric of all major political regimes as long as they need to justify their own sovereignty, to justify the enormous power they collect. This operates under the fact that universal suffrage is never exercised in this country. I am not proposing representative democracy as a superior political system, but we must admit that popular sovereignty remains a myth. I support all activist efforts to propose and experiment with democracy in China, but as scholars, we must also maintain some critical awareness.

CS: You also take on the ‘fetishisation of revolution’ in China today—that is, how the Chinese revolution is treated as a sacred event in a decidedly anti-revolutionary, if not wholly de-politicising, manner. I have also been thinking lately about how the promotion of ‘revolutionary culture’ (革命文化) is the antithesis of ‘cultural revolution’ (文化革命). The former is about state glorification, whereas the latter is a mass practice, with unpredictable consequences. In your view, what is the role of revolution in Chinese culture and society today?

PL: Yes, ‘revolution’ is another loaded term in China’s political economy. It refers to a series of historical happenings that, according to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), paved the way to its current sovereignty. As I mention in Chapter 4 of the book, the PRC resorts to a historical rationality to justify its sovereign legitimacy—that the sovereignty passed from the Qing court to the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, or KMT), and from the KMT to the CCP with the proper endorsement of the people. This teleological account is most characteristically presented in the PRC Constitution. While constitutions around the world vary in their degree of emphasis on tradition and breaking with the past, the Chinese Constitution is unique in its very heavy stress on history. In the most recent (1982) Constitution, which was written to correct the radical Maoism that had dictated the previous two documents adopted in the 1970s, identifies a running tradition of revolution from the late Qing era to now, which, tacitly understood, justifies the current sovereignty. Revolution was undoubtedly a historical event that represented the will and dedication of some people to overthrow the government with force. But since it became the foundation and source of legitimation of a new regime, it was also highly romanticised by that regime.

In China today, the term revolution often suggests an aura, a culture, or a sense of pride. But, as I write in the book, it is also a term the regime fears the most. Revolution and sovereignty mutually define each other. Revolution brings about new sovereignty, and all sovereignty, one can argue, is based on some prior revolutions. But revolution also brings down sovereignty, and they are arch enemies. You mention how the current discourse of revolution is against the Cultural Revolution; to me, a Hongkonger, I have a closer reference, which is the 2019 social unrest. Some of you might know that there was a major investigation into, and criminalisation of, the protest slogan ‘Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Times’ (光復香港, 時代革命) in Hong Kong’s courts in 2021. Hong Kong judges officially deemed the slogan ‘capable of inciting others to commit secession’ and therefore effectively banned it (Ho 2021). So, the sight of propaganda posters or slogans in the mainland featuring the term ‘revolution’ fills me with awe.

CS: Another key term in your book is sovereignty and how it has been redefined through the logic of securitisation. How was sovereignty different in the Mao period? How is it understood today? And can we imagine alternative conceptions and practices of sovereignty that are not a coercive unity but a ‘comradeship of differences’ (p. 24)?

PL: Although this book is primarily about China, sovereignty is a central concept in both Western political theory historically and the current popular political discourses. In the past few years, governments all over the world have been using the term; it is directly associated with the growing anxiety around state security. We remember that the concern for state security was also blown up in the United States after 9/11, and the governmental response was due less to supporting sovereignty than to fighting terrorism, because what concerned the US Government at that time was using all means to exterminate its state enemy. China’s current concern is both external and internal, and sovereignty both demands and assumes the unity of the Chinese people. During the Maoist time, there was also an anxiety about sovereign unity, but it was situated in a Cold War geopolitics, against both the Soviet Union and the United States, while there was also a Beijing-centred international communist network being formed against the one centred in Moscow.

I remember Wang Hui mentioned one time that sovereignty is primarily a post-socialist term. He might be right that the term was not circulated widely before the 1990s, but it was a key point of debates about the China–Soviet relationships from the late 1950s all the way to the early 1970s. This is due primarily to Moscow’s heavy emphasis on its leadership role in the socialist world. As I write in Chapter 2 of the book, despite increasing criticism—particularly from the people of the subsidiary countries—Moscow did not alleviate its heavy-handed intervention in its ‘brotherly’ countries. Instead, the Soviet Union advocated the idea of ‘limited sovereignty’ to describe the fraternal diplomatic relations with other socialist countries in the Soviet Bloc, allowing the Soviet Union to intervene in countries where socialist rule was supposedly under threat. The PRC was highly critical of this practice because China was one of those subsidiary countries. But it could be argued that the new socialist network Beijing tried to build at that time was also committing the same problem. Internationalism is a principle that poses many challenges to state sovereignty. There were those moments of hope around Bandung and different versions of Soviet internationalism, and humanity was promised that something like a ‘comradeship of differences’ could be realised. However much we have been disappointed, it is still a hope we should not give up.

CS: To conclude, I would like to discuss one more term: landscape. You write about socialist landscape painting as a glorification of sovereign power and spiritual connection with national territory. In your view, why do landscapes become the property of the nation and state?

PL: Yes, the rise of the landscape in the Tang–Song period was phenomenal in the entire Chinese arts history. Since then the genre of shanshui (山水, ‘mountain and river’) has been considered the most revered in Chinese visual arts. It is used to represent both the power of the court (the grandeur of the imperial territory) and the power of the literati (the serenity of the recluse), and the two might sanction or challenge each other. Entering the socialist period, the new regime decided to use this genre to glorify the new sovereignty, although the genre also underwent a lot of revision under the tutorage of the state and the party to purge its former feudalist elements. As the landscape is situated at the intersection between culture and nature, politics and arts, I found it an illuminating art form to illustrate many ideological problems of the time.

In fact, the landscape is a heavily politicised genre not only in traditional Chinese paintings but also, for example, in European and American arts, in which landscape signals power and ownership. Kōjin Karatani (1993: 19–40) discusses landscape as a structure of perception that marked the rise of the modern subject in Japan, while there are also scholars arguing that landscape can be used to classify civilisations. Cartography could also be understood as a form of landscape—or the other way around. As observed in so many military aggressions in history, sovereignty is always about territory. Landscape, as a representation of land, is heavily invested with political meanings precisely because it signals the power of those who own the land. Although Karatani’s focus is the interiorisation of the external, this can also be understood as a mechanism of ownership.

References

Ho, Kelly. 2021. ‘Activist Tong Ying-kit Found Guilty in Hong Kong’s First National Security Trial.’ Hong Kong Free Press, 27 July. hongkongfp.com/2021/07/27/breaking-activist-tong-ying-kit-found-guilty-in-hong-kongs-first-national-security-trial.

Karatani, Kōjin. 1993. Origins of Modern Japanese Literature. Translated and edited by Brett de Bary. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Sun, Yat-sen 孫中山. 1925. ‘遺囑一 [Testament One]. In Sun Yat-Sen Studies Database. sunology.yatsen.gov.tw/detail/b8b520e17c5af94b8f88cfc919eeb539/?seq=9.