The Brooklyn Rail

“Appetite comes with eating.”
–François Rabelais

“I guess the trouble [with America] was that we didn’t have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist.”
–John Steinbeck

“Politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed.”
–Mao Zedong

As we come to terms with our current geopolitical crisis, we have little or no choice but to either surrender to or resist the coexistence of globalism and nationalism, knowing that while the former embraces interconnectedness and global partnership, the latter insists on national interest and national identity. We have seen how most large nations—including the US, Russia, and China—have aggressively deployed global markets to buttress their own economic strength, while undertaking global platforms to reassert their cultural identity. Each has used globalization as a tool to achieve its goal, yet at the same time, we’ve also seen how such national interests have led to uneven distributions of wealth that have created serious discontent, which poses another kind of threat to national identity. We may now well ask ourselves whether the US, with Russia and China, can competitively explore a potential synthesis of this either/or predicament that lies in between globalism and nationalism.

I think that any refugee who has fled from a communist regime as I did with my family from the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), would agree that not every Leninist regime is identical. For example, as the differences and similarities between China and Vietnam are becoming increasingly more visible since the Russo-Ukrainian conflict began in February 2014, we can see how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has patiently and successfully been exploiting abroad the psychology of the US suburban addiction to the cheap manufactured products they’ve been supplying ever since former President Bill Clinton signed the US—China Relations Act of 2000, which welcomed China to World Trade Organization. On the home front, the Chinese government has suppressed any alternatives, as witnessed by the infamous Tiananmen Square massacre (June 4, 1989), the suppression of Falun Gong in the 1990s, and the ongoing human rights abuses in Xinjiang. We should be intensely aware that the CCP has no doubt carefully observed how every communist regime throughout the world that tried to open up its political system in favor of economic liberalism failed miserably—be it Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, or the Soviet Union in the 1980s leading to its collapse in 1991. Vietnam, on the other hand, while maintaining its communist rule, is no longer an ally to China. Instead, Vietnam is now a close partner to the US, with a comprehensive strategic affiliation focused on trade, and regional challenges regarding Southeast Asian security.

As the baton of power in China was passed on from Mao Zedong, it was Jiang Zemin who initiated the famous theory of “Three Represents,” which promotes as productive forces first the expansion of the “working class,” then the inclusion of the educated and intellectual class for China’s advanced culture, and lastly the creation of the private sector’s dynamism that brought the country’s economic success. This permitted all to become members of the Party. And once the population of China’s new middle class was gradually elevated, the greater demand for freedom of expression became inevitable. This consequently was deemed as a threat to the Party’s monopoly. Xi Jinping’s ultimate vision therefore seems to entail tactical mandates in different stages: firstly, how to coerce all private businesses to comply with the Party’s higher management supervision; secondly, how to regain China’s dominance in East Asia that would eventually lead to global dominance. Here, we remember that, as China began its “Century of Humiliation”—spanning roughly from the First Opium War (1839–42) to the founding of the People’s Republic of China (1949), plagued by foreign intervention, invasion, losing its sovereignty at the hands of Western powers and Japan, then having survived the CCP’s devastation of the Great Leap Forward (1958–62) and the Cultural Revolution (1966–76)—America began to mobilize its “Manifest Destiny,” from westward expansion (1801–60) that subsequently led to the periods of industrialization and Reconstruction in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to its rise to power at the time of WWI that set the stage for both the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression, then its consequential triumph as a new superpower after WWII. Our most urgent question now is, as China has reached its superpower status, rival to that of America, which terms will each have to accept in order to manage the other’s power and opposite ideology? The contrast has been between a closed, secretive society that relies on one autocrat making all the decisions, and a free, open society that depends on its entire population—including the three branches of government, along with the academic and business and nonprofit communities—to make the decisions on how the governance of our liberal democracy can benefit the welfare of our fellow Americans, while firmly maintaining its self-corrective mechanisms.

However, it’s equally essential to recognize the tensions inherent in this relationship. Whereas China is a manufacturing power that presides over a vast colony of skilled labor in various industries, the US is not yet fully awakened from the spell of nostalgic nativism that deeply affects geopolitical strategies. What we Americans must do is to recalibrate our strength, and remember George F. Kennan’s warning that if we become like them, and forget to play to our own strength as a free, open society, we would consequently open ourselves to self-defeat. We must reevaluate, reconstitute, recorrect our past mistakes so we can be poised once again to uphold the rule of law, separation of powers, and respect for rights, thereby incentivizing and stimulating the dynamism of our market economy. All of which can be profoundly revealed in every aspect of our cultural production, in which the arts and the humanities are awe-inspiring products of free expression that can serve as counter-frictions to resist the worst aspects of political ideology.

Happy Fall with love, courage, and cosmic optimism as ever,

Phong H. Bui

P.S. This issue is dedicated to the remarkable lives and works of our friends and mentors, including artists Rosalind Fox Solomon (1930–2025), Günther Uecker (1930–2025), Raymond Saunders (1934–2025), and Peter Phillips (1939–2025) whose contributions to photography and painting were of great significance in bringing human spirit, its complex history infused with formal inventions; Fanny Howe (1940–2025) whose poetic exploration on personal intimacy is at once fearlessly immersive; Robert Wilson (1941–2025) to whom experimental theater, performance, and visual art will forever be explored without boundary; Christophe de Menil (1933–2025) and Wallis Annenberg (1939–2025) whose philanthropies are legendary; and to our dedicated longtime contributor to our Books section, John Domini (1951–2025), to whom a luminous tribute will be published online this month. I’d also like to thank Production Assistant Charlotte Moore, summer interns Valyn Mogensen, Maisie Molot, and Amanda Ro for their indispensable labor of love that keeps our living organism well-oiled and poised in expanding our commitment to enhance “social intimacy” and “slowness of culture” to greater heights than previously. Lastly, I welcome Joshua Chee Sanford as our new Programs Associate. The baton has passed on as the Rail is about to enter our next consequential chapter with all of your support of course.