Western analyses of China often remain trapped in Western-centric political assumptions and fail to appreciate the enduring indigenous logic of Chinese political development. It is tempting to interpret China’s actions and ambitions through American or broader Western paradigms, yet such projections distort reality rather than illuminate it. A more accurate understanding requires approaching China on its own terms, with careful attention to its distinctive history, social structure, political ambitions, and modes of governance.
A Dialogue between Wen Yang and David P. Goldman
In the book “You Will Be Assimilated: China’s Plan to Sino-form the World” by David P. Goldman (2020), an appendix presents a dialogue between Goldman and Professor Wen Yang of Fudan University, sparked by Goldman’s interview in the Swiss newspaper Weltwoche titled “You Can Never be China’s Friend.” The exchange, translated and published on the Chinese site guancha.cn, explores contrasting views on China’s global ambitions, political system, and relations with the West. Goldman argues that China seeks to redefine the world through technological dominance, while Wen critiques this as a Western misunderstanding, emphasizing China’s evolved imperial model.
In his interview, Goldman portrays China as an empire aiming to make the world economically dependent, collecting “rent” through control of key technologies like Huawei’s 5G networks, e-commerce, and artificial intelligence. He criticizes U.S. policies under Trump as ineffective against China’s rise, likens Huawei to Mongol siege engineers breaching Baghdad, and dismisses the idea of separating China’s “wicked” Communist Party from its people, viewing it as a continuation of ancient Mandarin rule. Goldman highlights China’s lack of Western concepts like public trust or democracy, describing its society as familial and anarchic, held together by ambition and meritocracy, while warning that China’s model poses a threat to Western prosperity without ideological conquest.
Wen Yang responds by praising Goldman’s historical awareness but accusing him of Western-centric fallacies, such as comparing China’s system to the Sicilian mafia or ancient Greek city-states, which he deems outdated for China’s vast empire politics since the Qin Dynasty. He rejects the notion of China as expansionist like the Mongols, stressing its defensive military posture and dismissing Goldman’s “rent” analogy as a projection of Jewish commercialism. Wen asserts that miracles occur when China’s government and people align, enabling global redefinition, and criticizes Goldman for failing to grasp China’s unique “home-state-empire” structure shaped over millennia.
In his rebuttal, Goldman clarifies that his “rent” reference denotes technological monopolies, not literal exploitation, and urges China to abandon its historically cruel imperial model now that modern technology mitigates ancient threats like famine. Drawing on Jewish history, he explains Jews’ financial success as rooted in fostering faith, trust, and rule of law in capital markets, contrasting this with China’s trust deficits and overreliance on state banks. Goldman questions the necessity of China’s suppression of individuals and minorities, advocating for innovation over coercion, and shares insights from Israeli-Chinese exchanges on Jewish creativity stemming from valuing each human life infinitely.
Beyond the Polis: Why City-State Political Theory Fails to Explain Empire-Scale China
Wen argues that Goldman’s reliance on Western political theory derived from city-states fundamentally misjudges the nature of imperial China. Goldman draws on Aristotle’s political thought, which was developed within small poleis such as Athens; Augustine’s Christian moral framework, shaped by Roman and ecclesiastical contexts; and even analogies to the Sicilian mafia, rooted in early-modern southern Italy. Wen contends that these intellectual traditions share a common limitation: they emerged from compact, socially homogeneous communities whose political and moral assumptions were calibrated to populations numbering in the tens of thousands, not to continent-spanning polities.
By contrast, China after the Qin unification functioned as an empire-state of an entirely different order. It governed millions of square kilometers across multiple ecological and cultural zones—grasslands, highlands, forests, and maritime regions—and encompassed dozens of ethnic groups and languages. At its Qing-dynasty zenith, the empire covered approximately 13.8 million square kilometers, exceeding the total area of the Mediterranean world. Political coordination at this scale demanded institutions, norms, and governing logics that bore little resemblance to those of city-states or clan-based societies.
Wen’s conclusion is therefore methodological rather than merely historical. Ethical frameworks and political theories forged in city-states or small moral communities cannot be uncritically applied to empire-scale civilizations. To judge imperial China through the lens of Western city-state ethics or localized social analogies is to misunderstand the structural realities imposed by scale, diversity, and longevity. Any serious analysis of China must begin with the recognition that empires require forms of political thought fundamentally different from those designed for the polis.
A Category Error at Civilizational Scale: Reassessing Goldman’s Mafia Analogy of China
Goldman’s comparison of the Chinese political system to the Sicilian mafia is a provocative but deeply flawed analogy. By likening China’s governance to a network of feuding families overseen by a single “capo di tutti capi,” Goldman suggests that Chinese political order is fundamentally distrust-based, informal, and rooted in narrow familial loyalty rather than public ethics. While rhetorically striking, this analogy collapses under closer scrutiny, revealing more about Western conceptual limitations than about China’s political reality.
Wen’s critique targets the core logical failure of Goldman’s argument: it mistakes an empire for a village. The mafia model presupposes fragmented authority, weak institutions, and the absence of shared moral legitimacy—conditions that are historically alien to Chinese imperial governance. For over two millennia, China developed a continuous, centralized bureaucratic system capable of governing vast populations across immense territory. To describe this system using metaphors derived from marginal, decline-era Western phenomena such as Southern Italian “amoral familism” is not only misleading but intellectually lazy.
A central problem lies in Goldman’s misuse of Western intellectual history as a universal yardstick. Concepts drawn from Aristotle or Augustine—political friendship, civic virtue, or common love—emerged from small-scale Mediterranean societies with radically different demographic and administrative constraints. These traditions are not neutral measures of civilization but provincial products of particular historical conditions. Applying them wholesale to China ignores differences of scale, structure, and political ontology, resulting in a category error rather than genuine comparative analysis.
Goldman further misconstrues Chinese political morality by assuming that the absence of Western civic concepts implies the absence of legitimacy or ethical order. Confucianism, however, offers a rich moral framework centered on virtue, ritual, hierarchical responsibility, and the reciprocal shaping of ruler and ruled. Political legitimacy in China historically rested not on abstract individual rights but on moral governance, social harmony, and the Mandate of Heaven—a cosmological principle that bound state authority to ethical performance. Familial values were not substitutes for public order but foundations integrated into law, bureaucracy, and ritual.
Historical evidence also undermines the claim that China lacked forms of popular political legitimacy. Wen’s reference to the 719 BC Wei incident—where a coup leader was rejected by the people and elites in favor of a more legitimate successor—demonstrates that early Chinese polities possessed mechanisms of consensus, moral judgment, and elite negotiation. These practices, though not labeled “democracy” in Greek terms, fulfilled comparable functions of legitimizing authority through public and moral approval.
To Goldman’s credit, he does recognize an element of continuity between imperial China and the modern Party-state, particularly in the role of a governing elite akin to the mandarin class. Wen builds on this insight to argue that China’s political psychology assumes the legitimacy of strong state authority and the possibility of harmony between government and people. Unlike Western liberal traditions that often frame state and society as natural adversaries, Chinese civilization developed a “home–state–empire” structure in which family, government, and empire form a morally reciprocal hierarchy.
Ultimately, Goldman’s mafia analogy fails because it projects the ethical categories of small, fragmented societies onto a civilizational system built to endure scale, continuity, and integration. What may function as an interpretive lens for a weakened or decentralized West becomes a distortion when applied to China’s long imperial arc. Judging an empire with the moral vocabulary of a village does not illuminate China; it merely exposes the limits of the analogy itself.
The Paternal State: Family, Hierarchy, and Authority in Chinese Civilization
In Chinese society, the family has historically served as the central social unit, shaping both private life and broader social organization. While Western observers sometimes stereotype Chinese culture as emotionally reserved, familial interactions are characterized by warmth, spontaneity, and deeply defined roles. Every relative carries a specific designation, reflecting a precise structure of obligations and identity. This intricate kinship network forms the foundation of social cohesion and individual belonging, a foundation that persists even amid modern urbanization and mass migration, exemplified by the annual Lunar New Year reunions.
David P. Goldman, in his discussion of “amoral familism,” draws attention to the limits of applying Edward Banfield’s concept to China. Although loyalty to the family is paramount, the Chinese state has historically provided a necessary framework for social mobility and public order. Far from being irrelevant, the state functions as an extension of familial authority, supporting ambition and collective welfare while remaining hierarchical and paternal in nature.
This familial model of authority extends to the Chinese emperor, who traditionally embodied the role of pater familias. Rituals such as plowing a ceremonial furrow, described in the Confucian Book of Rites, symbolized the ruler’s responsibility to provide for and care for the people as a head of a vast extended family. Unlike Western rulers, who often distanced themselves from labor, Chinese leaders publicly demonstrated virtue through engagement with the land, reinforcing a cultural connection between governance, family responsibility, and agriculture. This model of paternal authority undergirded the longevity of the Chinese empire, which, unlike slave-based societies such as Athens or Rome, relied on strong family structures rather than rigid class divisions for social stability.
The hierarchical relationship between family and state is mirrored in Confucian moral ideals. Virtues such as benevolence (ren) and moderation (li) emphasize the ruler’s obligation to govern like a father—kindly but decisively. However, this moral framework does not translate into democratic checks, legal constraints, or constitutional guarantees. Authority is centralized, and the ruler’s will is effectively absolute, constrained only by moral duty rather than formal institutional oversight. This has allowed for both extraordinary achievements, such as the Dujiangyan irrigation system, and catastrophic failures, including the excesses of Qin Shi Huang or Mao’s Great Leap Forward.
Goldman’s analysis underscores that the enduring primacy of the family shapes not only social behavior but also political structures in China. The state operates less as a democratic institution accountable to citizens and more as a hierarchical, paternal authority that parallels the extended family. This fusion of familial loyalty and centralized power has sustained Chinese civilization for millennia, enabling remarkable feats of organization and governance, yet it carries persistent risks of authoritarian excess and human suffering when rulers fail to act benevolently.
Ultimately, Chinese culture and political life cannot be fully understood without recognizing the centrality of the family and the paternalistic nature of the state. The enduring hierarchy, rooted in familial models, continues to influence social norms, governance, and collective expectations in contemporary China, reflecting a civilization where authority and kinship are inseparably intertwined.
Taming the Rivers: How China’s Mastery of Nature Shaped Its Political Order
China’s civilization grew strong and prosperous largely because of its extraordinary ability to confront and control nature’s challenges. Unlike societies in the Mediterranean or Mesopotamia, where small-scale agriculture and seasonal rainfall limited the need for large-scale organization, China’s vast rivers—the Yellow and Yangtze—offered both life and constant threat. The recurring floods demanded not only human ingenuity but also massive, coordinated labor. In response, China developed a centralized bureaucratic state capable of orchestrating large-scale hydraulic projects, stabilizing agriculture, and preventing famine. This necessity laid the foundation for a political culture defined by hierarchical authority, collective duty, and deference to leadership.
The legendary tale of Yu the Great, who controlled the Yellow River floods, exemplifies this ethos. Modern archaeology supports the occurrence of catastrophic flooding around 1900 BCE, validating the pragmatic origins of these myths. Unlike the Western story of Noah’s Flood, which emphasizes moral judgment and divine favor, the Chinese flood narrative is fundamentally secular and technological: nature wreaked havoc, and human intervention was essential to survival. This distinction reflects a civilization in which effective governance was inseparable from the ability to tame the environment.
Hydraulic engineering became both the engine and symbol of state power. Monumental projects, such as the Dujiangyan irrigation system and the Zhengguo Canal, required generational planning, innovative engineering techniques, and immense human labor. Leaders like Li Bing, the apotheosized engineer-governor of Shu, were revered almost as demigods for harnessing rivers and transforming regions into fertile breadbaskets. Their veneration illustrates a central tension in Chinese history: while emperors could inspire fear or wield harsh authority, it was the technically skilled, visionary administrators who earned lasting respect through tangible contributions to societal well-being.
This imperative to manage water reinforced a centralized state. Fragmented political units could not coordinate the labor or technological expertise required for flood control and irrigation. Consequently, Chinese rulers wielded absolute authority, justified not by abstract constitutional rights but by their role in safeguarding the collective through infrastructure and governance. The emperor functioned as a “pater familias” of the state, responsible for both the prosperity and survival of his people. In this context, the relationship between ruler and ruled emphasized hierarchical duty and collective obligation over individual rights, a characteristic that has endured across millennia.
While this hydraulic state brought prosperity and civilizational continuity, it also carried costs. Massive projects were often brutal for laborers, and floods could still overwhelm even the most sophisticated defenses. Leaders such as Qin Shi Huang exemplify the dual nature of this system: capable of immense achievement but also cruelty. Nevertheless, the ability to mobilize society around common infrastructural goals became a hallmark of Chinese civilization, creating a resilient, centralized political model deeply rooted in the practical necessity of controlling nature.
In sum, China’s enduring strength and wealth derive not only from fertile land and vast rivers but from the societal structures these environmental challenges demanded. Mastery over nature shaped a political culture defined by top-down control, collective sacrifice, and deference to authority—an enduring legacy visible in both the achievements and the governance of China throughout its long history.
Flawed Historical Analogies: Why Huawei Is Not the Mongol Horde and the U.S. Is Not Baghdad
In recent commentary, David P. Goldman draws a provocative analogy between the rise of Chinese technology—exemplified by Huawei—and the 13th-century Mongol conquest of Baghdad. He frames Huawei as a modern “spearhead” in a siege against Western dominance, likening the United States to a defenseless Baghdad awaiting destruction. Professor Wen Yang challenges this comparison as historically inaccurate, politically misleading, and laden with subtle racial overtones.
Goldman’s analogy rests on a false equivalence: Baghdad in 1258 was an intellectually flourishing but militarily vulnerable city-state, while the United States today is a nuclear-armed global superpower. Suggesting that China’s technological advances represent a one-sided assault ignores the complex, competitive nature of contemporary geopolitics. Wen emphasizes that such a comparison oversimplifies the strategic landscape and distorts the realities of power relations in the modern world.
Goldman further claims that Chinese engineers helped the Mongols breach Baghdad’s walls, using this alleged historical precedent to cast modern Chinese technology as a threatening force. Wen rigorously contests this narrative, noting that historical evidence is weak at best. The Mongol army was ethnically diverse, including Mongols, Central Asians, Khitans, and others, and there was no unified Chinese state at the time. To retroactively label certain engineers as “Chinese” is anachronistic and misrepresents the historical record. The Mongol army, led by Hulagu Khan and his commanders, operated independently of any modern notion of Chinese agency.
Beyond historical inaccuracies, Wen highlights the political implications of Goldman’s imagery. Casting Huawei as a “spearhead” of an Asian siege invokes echoes of the “Yellow Peril” trope—a longstanding, Orientalist narrative portraying East Asians as inscrutable threats to Western civilization. Such language shifts the perception of commercial and technological competition into a lens of civilizational conflict, potentially fueling paranoia and distrust.
Ultimately, Huawei is a global technology company operating within competitive markets, driven by commercial objectives and engineering talent rather than military conquest. Equating its rise with the Mongol sack of Baghdad is not only historically flawed but also misleading in contemporary geopolitical discourse. Wen urges analysts and commentators to employ historically accurate, culturally sensitive frameworks when evaluating China’s technological ascent, resisting the temptation to recycle fear-based narratives from the past.
In sum, the analogy collapses under scrutiny: Huawei is not a Mongol horde, and the United States is not Baghdad. Misapplied historical metaphors risk obscuring the true nature of technological competition and international relations, replacing constructive analysis with sensationalized, fear-driven storytelling.
China Through Western Lenses: More Imagination Than Intention
In his analysis of China’s global ambitions, David P. Goldman attempts to classify every rising power into familiar historical templates. By this logic, nations either expand through conquest like Russia, promote liberal values like the United States, or dominate maritime trade like Britain. Since China does not neatly conform to any of these models, Goldman concludes that it must be pursuing influence indirectly, through economic dependence, akin to a merchant empire.
Professor Wen Yang critiques this reasoning as revealing more about Western perceptions than Chinese reality. Wen argues that Goldman’s framework imposes historical archetypes onto a contemporary actor whose strategies and intentions may not align with these familiar patterns. In other words, the narrative reflects Western anxieties and imagination more than it provides an accurate account of China’s policies or ambitions. By projecting these inherited templates, analysts risk misreading China’s actions and overstating threats that may not exist.
Civilizational Blind Spots and the Possibility of Historical Renewal
Goldman advances a civilizational critique aimed at the deepest assumptions shaping both Western and Chinese worldviews. He argues that the West’s central blind spot lies in its conviction that liberal democracy, market economies, and individual rights represent a universally applicable endpoint of political development. This belief encourages misinterpretation of non-Western societies, particularly China, by measuring them against Western norms rather than understanding them on their own civilizational terms. China, by contrast, remains constrained by a cyclical historical imagination—one that assumes order must be imposed through centralized authority and that periods of unity and disintegration are inevitable.
Goldman challenges both paradigms. He urges the West to abandon caricature and engage seriously with China’s historical logic, while calling on China to recognize that its material and technological conditions have fundamentally changed. For the first time, Chinese society is no longer defined by recurring existential threats such as famine, flood, or plague. As a result, the harsh political techniques once justified by survival are no longer structurally necessary. Against the Western notion of an “End of History,” Goldman proposes a more radical idea: that Chinese history is only now entering a genuinely new phase—one in which the country has the opportunity to transcend its historical cycles and experiment with more humane and pluralistic forms of governance.
Summary & Implications
As a concluding assessment, Wen argues that while Goldman captures important dimensions of the civilizational divide, his analysis ultimately falls short. Goldman remains constrained by Western-centric political assumptions and underestimates the durability of China’s indigenous political logic, which cannot be reduced to transitional stages on a Western developmental path. Although Goldman rightly warns against viewing China through a “half-silvered” mirror—projecting Western values, fears, and ambitions onto Chinese behavior—Wen contends that Goldman does not fully escape this tendency himself. A genuinely clear-eyed understanding of China requires confronting it on its own historical and institutional terms, without either idealization or distortion.
References
- You Will Be Assimilated: China’s Plan to Sino-form the World, David P. Goldman, 2020