The Mass Line from a Liberal Democratic Point of View: Clyde Yicheng Wang, "The Self-Image of Propaganda: Biopolitics of Yuqing Governance"

 

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 Clyde Yicheng Wang (Washington & Lee) has published a quite fascinating article in Critical Asian Studies. Entitled "The Self-Image of Propaganda: Biopolitics of Yuqing Governance," the article applies a biopolitics lens to the dialectics of propaganda (so-called by all sides) to more deeply interrogate the dynamics of the relationship between mas opinion and its management by and through the Chinese propaganda system.  The analysis is thoughtful and quite revealing. The article's abstract nicely summarizes the argument, as well as the perspective that underlies the analysis:

This article explores how China’s propaganda system operates as an aspect of governance, especially how propagandists understand the public opinion they seek to influence. Understanding the concept of yuqing (public opinion conditions) is crucial for understanding propaganda in China. Yuqing is considered akin to the medical condition of public opinion (yulun). Hence, propaganda is treatment that the state provides to an organic social body of public opinion, which is subject to constant monitoring and treatment. The party-state is keen on establishing standards and norms about what a healthy and clean society should be. Thus, this paper argues that the propaganda system does not contribute to responsive authoritarianism by collecting grassroots information, but instead prioritizes cleansing public discourse in accordance with party-state logic. Furthermore, contrary to the belief that authoritarian propaganda focuses on demobilizing collective resistance and forcing compliance, China’s propaganda system disciplines the public by actively constructing discursive norms.

And, indeed, the author makes a strong case for the proposition that yuqing represents something of the tip of a heavily managerial curation of public opinion that requires public pinion for its management. From the perception universe of liberal democracy that can be troublesome--it makes explicit--and industrializes in a sense--the principle that individuals, and collectives other than the vanguard of social forces organized as a communist party, ought to lead and guide opinion toward certain ends. The idea, stated explicitly, that the individual is no longer the master of the cultivation of their own opinions, does not align well with a set of social relations premised on the opposite principle that the ordering of social relations ought to, at least formally, strive toward the cultivation of individual self management of opinion.  Of course, that is not quite true within liberal democracy--it is just that such yuqing systems are forbidden the State and its apparatus and made fair game among privatized collectives of self styled leading social forces in social media, enterprises, academics and public intellectuals. Still, for liberal democracy, that fractious fracturing serves the purpose both of denying the State apparatus a decisive role and encouraging debate among influential bit not politically authoritative factions (the current curation of "social justice" provides a nice example). The State might be used as  a tool by powerful factions, but generally the driving forces are non-governmental--mostly. In this sense the article nicely analyzes the current state, as well as the discursive state of awareness, of opinion cultivation within China, with respect to which the medical analogy works nicely. And it fits nicely with other work, for instance the 2016 consideration of this issue by Peking University Professor Hu Yong. The view from liberal democracy is thud well developed and convincing on its own terms.

Nonetheless, getting past the heavily baggaged (though de rigeur within communities of scholars and policymakers) terminology of authoritarianism popular in the United States and elsewhere, it might be possible to see in the analysis in a little different light. From the inside the system, from the foundations of the Chinese Marxist-Leninist operating system, what might be described is a variant, perhaps successful on its own terms, of the application of the mass line in ways that align closely with its dialectic and mimetic objectives. In a Marxist-Leninist system that is committed, as a fundamental source of its legitimacy and authority, to forward (as they it) movement along a socialist path toward the establishment of a communist society (eventually), the cultivation and management of mass opinion is an essential task of the vanguard of social forces (the Communist Party of China) as an important element in undertaking this forward movement toward that objective. From this starting point, of course, there is a basic and likely irreconcilable difference, with the libel democratic baseline of self-actualization and fulfillment with no direction other than maximizing welfare (as that may be understood in a complex interplay of individual and collective sentiment that varies with the times and interests of those living). Liberal democracy has nowhere specific to go; Marxist-Leninism on the other hand does.

What then, does the mass line contribute to the shaping of propaganda, at least a s a matter of theory? At its simplest, the mass line is a feedback loop. That, of course, was Clyde Yicheng Wang’s point in part. The question is what sort of feedback loop it is. Again, Clyde Yicheng Wang did a marvelous job of describing its characteristics and operations using the now fashionable discourse of responsive authoritarianism. And, indeed, from a liberal democratic perspective e, that is from out of the core values and foundational operating premises of liberal democracy, the critical analysis (with the emphasis on the first word) is unavoidable—the object is not merely to monitor and perhaps respond, but also to guide and shape the discourse. That is, precisely what the mass line requires if the vanguard is to fulfill its obligation to move the masses in the correct direction along the Socialist path. What from the lens of liberal democracy is understood as a critique, through the lens of Marxist-Leninism the analysis serves as an affirmation.

That affirmation has a fundamentally dialectical dimension. The mass line posits that the masses drive the system; but it also posits that the system must guide the masses. That is the fundamental nature of the loop—not a circle but a spiral bent to a particular pathway and toward a specific ends. What comes from the masses informs the vanguard. That informing function has at least three principle elements. The first touches on the work of the vanguard itself and through its organs; it is the quality control or accountability element. It is the “responsive” element of responsive authoritarianism in the language of liberal democracy. The second is the corrective element, one tightly connected with the responsive element. Here mass reaction to a situation may alert the authorities about the gravity of a situation requiring correction--one way or another.  And the third is the instructive or responsive element. What is received from the masses must be evaluated through the lens of the principles and objectives of the vanguard; it is received but also produce a response that serves to instruct as well as to curate the message in ways that push mass opinion and perception in the “right” direction along the socialist path. The dialectics, then, are inherent in a process of “receiving” from the masses and “responding” to the masses in a patterned set f iterative interactions that each shape the other within and to some extent on the reshaping also move the enterprise forward. If it works right. To that end, disciplining the public by actively constructing discursive norms is precisely what the political economic model requires. This requirement, of course, is incompatible with liberal democratic values. But then this is not a liberal democratic system. Clyde Yicheng Wang’s excellent article draws that distinction clearly—and nicely extracts the inevitable judgment from a liberal democratic perch: the mass line is incompatible with liberal democratic values. It is, however, a core Marxist-Leninist value and essential to its fundamental project of reshaping society in the most specific ways. From that lens, Clyde Yicheng Wang may well have evidenced not only how it works, and the discursive tropes used in its performance. He may also have evidenced its success. In the process, in this excellent article, he reveals another dialectic--that between the imaginaries of liberal democracy and Marxist-Leninism in the new era.