 Good afternoon, good evening, or good morning, depending on where you are. My name is Steve Tseng. I am the director of the Sours China Institute. I am delighted to host this webinar today with a very distinguished scholar who is going to give us, I believe, a very thought-provoking talk. On the subject of institutional genes totalitarianism in China, the speaker is Professor Cheng Gang Xu. And Professor Xu is a senior research scholar at the Stanford Center on China's economy and institutions, an investing fellow at the Hoover Institute, also at Stanford University. He is also a research fellow at the Center for Economic Policy Research in London. Before he was located to Stanford, he had taught at the University of Hong Kong, the LSE, and at Tsinghua University in China. He was also a visiting professor at the Department of Finance at the Imperial College in London. Professor Xu was educated at Harvard, where he earned his PhD in economics, and he is a distinguished economist of China, having been a recipient of the China Economics Prize for contributions in the understanding of government and enterprise incentive mechanism for the transition economy in China. But the subject today is a bit different. Before I hand over to Professor Xu, just let me reiterate that this session is recorded. And if you would like to ask a question or make a comment, please use the Q&A box at the bottom of your screen. When you raise a question or make a comment, it would be very helpful to me as moderator to see who you are. But if you would like your identity not to be reviewed, please say so at the start of your questions, and your wish for anonymity will be respected. No information that will identify you will be given so that you can speak freely and raise whatever question you would like with Professor Xu. With that, let me hand over to you, Zhenggang. Thank you very much, Steve, for the invitation and for the very generous introduction. And thank you, everyone, for coming and for giving me a chance to share my views about the institutions in China. And today's talk is based on a forthcoming book to be published by the Cambridge University Press fairly soon, hopefully. The title of today's talk is Institutional Genes Totalitarianism in China. Let me start from talking about the fundamental institution of the People's Republic of China. To be short, the nature of the fundamental institution of the PRC is the communist totalitarianism with Chinese characteristics. But to be more precise and informative, I characterize that as a regionally decentralized totalitarianism. Regionally decentralized means that although totalitarianism is the most centralized type of regime, but in terms of administration and in terms of resource allocation, the Chinese regime is more decentralized to the local party-state agencies. However, this extremely centralized nature of the totalitarianism is still there, as the core of the institution is the Leninist Party, the Chinese Communist Party. And I'm also going to very briefly mention about the evolution of the Chinese regime, how this regionally decentralized totalitarianism has been evolved. And the reason I'm talking about this is because this is the foundation to understand China's reform, China's today, and its future as well. So when I characterize the Chinese institution as RDT, the regionally decentralized totalitarianism, people may argue that, so there are many different ways of characterizing the Chinese institution. Why call that as a totalitarianism? So here I want to say that this is actually not only from myself. The more classic type of characterization of the Chinese institution actually has been given by Mao Zedong and by Xi Jinping themselves. So when Mao and Xi, they have repeatedly said that the party leads everything. When they have repeatedly talked about this party leads everything, they actually give the definition. So in the following is the formal definition, is the academic definition about the totalitarianism. So the party, so first of all, the party leads everything and the party monopolizes on ideology. The party monopolizes on armed forces. The party monopolizes on the police and the secret police and the judiciary. The party monopolizes on the media. The party controls all organizations, all the businesses, all the resources in society, and the party controls all the data in the society. So the very last part is the contemporary version of totalitarianism and all the rest have been given by Friedrich and Brzezinski in 1956. For understanding China's institution, in this book, I introduce a concept. It's called institutional genes. This is an analytical tool. The reason we introduce this kind of a concept is because many historians have observed that institutions actually evolve. They evolve from its past. So a famous saying that history repeats reflects this fact. The so-called repeats doesn't mean repeats every details. It repeats in some essence. So what I call the institutional genes means those basic institutional elements which are going to repeatedly self-reproduce. And so this self-reproduce the institutional elements would usually relate to the structures of power, the structures of resource allocation, and also the basic beliefs among the population. And the reason these basic elements are going to be repeated by itself is because the players of the game or the participants of the participants of institutional changes, they are going to reproduce this kind of a power structure, the resource allocation structure for their own interests. So that is the reason why we observe the so-called institutional genes. Moreover, these institutional genes are going to determine long-long institutional evolution. So if we look at the communist totalitarian regimes in the world, it's very striking that it took the communist totalitarian regimes only a half-century to control one-third of the world population with China being the largest. So in comparison, if we look at the Christianity, which is the largest religion, so for the Christianity expanding to covering one-third of the world population, it took the Christianity 2000 years. And then here a critical question is why the communist totalitarian system could expand so rapidly. And when it expands so rapidly, the largest part is China. But here we must be clear that the institutional genes of communist totalitarianism were not from China itself. So it's imported. So that was from Soviet Russia. But then the question is why did China embrace communist totalitarianism instead of constitutional democracy? And then we recall a famous alarm given by Formesis in 1946, means the end of the Second World War, the end of the Nazi's regimes. So he said that all the efforts to stop totalitarianism have failed. The question is why? And indeed, he was correct. So then here, in this book, in today's talk, that is the central issue. So here we want to say that China's past and China's future, these are all depends on how its institutional genes change. So why did Chinese embrace the communist totalitarianism and why the communist totalitarianism have such a deep root in China after the collapse of the Soviet Union and all the other communist regimes in central Eastern Europe? So now let's have a very brief view of the institutional genes of the communist totalitarian party, the Bolshevik in Russia. So in the middle part of the institutional genes is the czarist imperial institutions, which is featured by monopoly of powers. So that is going to make constitutional reform in Russia very, very difficult. So here I see means incentive compatible, so makes transition to constitutional democracy in Russia incentive incompatible. But this imperial institution alone has to rely on other institutional genes. So on the lower left corner, that is the Russian Orthodox Church. The Russian Orthodox Church actually is an essential part of the communist totalitarian party. It becomes an institutional genes for the communist totalitarian party in terms of its propaganda in terms of its way of penetrating society and controls ideology and as an organized ideology organization, things like that. And then on the lower right corner, that is another institutional genes for the communist totalitarian party, which is the secretive political institutions or also called political terrorist institutions. So that actually is a foundation for the communist party. So the communist party is not a regular political party in the sense that it's a secretive, it does not allow for competition and it's not voluntary. Instead, it's a secretive political institution and that kind of institutional genes coming from the Russian past. So here the key point is that among these three institutional genes, China share two of them. So one thing China is lacking. So the one institutional gene that China does not have is the Russian Orthodox Church. So therefore, China alone would not be able to create a communist totalitarian party. So China has to rely on importing. However, because China shares two of the three institutional genes of communist totalitarianism, that makes China easy to embrace the communist totalitarianism. So this is a brief summary of the evolution of China's institutions. So everyone knows that China has a very long history, very long history of empire. So the Chinese empire lasted for more than 2000 years, which is the longest on earth. And the institutional genes inherited from the Chinese empire is very helpful for China to be converted into totalitarianism. But still China needs an import of institutional genes from outside. So the communist totalitarian institutional genes, these are exogenous coming from Soviet Union. So from this diagram you can see that the Chinese native institutional genes, sorry, plus the exogenous institutional genes coming from Soviet Union combined to form this classic totalitarian, classic communist totalitarianism in China. So starting from 1949 up to 1957, that was a period of China that China established a classic communist totalitarian regime. So in that period of time, China became a Soviet Union in terms of institutions. So it's just more backward economically, but in terms of institutions, it's the same as those in Soviet Union. However, China did not consistently stick with this classic communist totalitarian regime. Instead, in 1958, China launched the Great Leap Forward Campaign, which moved China away from the classic type of a totalitarian regime. So starting from the Great Leap Forward movement, large amount of resources being delegated to the local governments, and the administrative functions have been delegated to the local governments as well. So since then, China moved from a classic communist totalitarianism into a regionally decentralized totalitarianism. However, the Great Leap Forward movement was a great failure because it simultaneously dismantled the central planning, the Soviet type of central planning, and at the same time eliminated the market altogether. So without central planning, without the market, and this kind of new institution created a chaos. So it ended up with a great famine, with nearly 40 million people died. So then the Great Leap Forward movement had to be stopped by 1961, 1962. But fairly soon, a few years later, the second move towards regionally decentralized totalitarianism was launched, which is the Cultural Revolution. So the Cultural Revolution actually dismantled the central agency, central party state agency, in a more thorough way. So during the Cultural Revolution, most of the central ministries have been dissolved. And even the even the judiciary system have been destroyed. So all the functions, almost all the functions, have been decentralized to the local governments. And at the end of the Cultural Revolution, in the 1970s, China basically has established a consolidated RDT regime with most of the counties being self-contained in the functions, in the composition of the economy. And indeed, this RDT regime is the fundamental institution for the post-moral economic reform. We have to remember that the beginning of the post-moral reform is the ending of the Cultural Revolution. So the whole reform is based upon the institutions inherited from the Cultural Revolution, which is the RDT regime. And indeed, the reason the Communist Party launched the reform is for saving the Communist Party, is for saving the totalitarian regime. It's because the Cultural Revolution has damaged the reputation of the party, damaged the legitimacy of the party. So the party found that to recover, to regain control over the society, so the party found that they have to switch the party target from the party line from class struggles into economic development. But here we have to keep in mind that economic development is not the purpose. Economic development here is for saving the party. And indeed, before launching the reform, Deng Xiaoping had declared the four cardinal principles. And these four cardinal principles actually is the repetition of the basic principles of Communist totalitarianism. Let me just briefly summarize what are these four cardinal principles. Number one is socialism. By socialism, it means communism. As Karl Marx made it clear that socialism is the first stage of communism. And the second is the party. The party must lead everything, which is the definition of totalitarianism. The third is the ideology, is the Marxism, Leninism, and the fourth is the dictatorship of the proletariat. So dictatorship is the basic principle. And these have been the bottom line or the right line of the Chinese economic reform. And in the whole Chinese economic reform process, preventing peaceful evolution has been the bottom line for the Communist party. The so-called peaceful evolution simply means that the private business is going to evolve into capitalism. But that is not going to be allowed for. So on the one hand, the Chinese communists wanted to have economic development. And later, they allowed the four private sector to grow. But on the other hand, they have been alarming that preventing peaceful evolution is the bottom line. And the four cardinal principles, these are the bottom line. And these are actually the foundation for Xi Jinping taking over the regime. For Xi Jinping, reversing, seemingly reversing the direction of the development. So then we observed that after 2012, 10 years ago, the totalitarian regime has been restored. Now let's look at the institutional genes of the Chinese communist regime or the PRC regime. So in the center of the institutional genes is the party state bureaucracy. So on the one hand, this party state bureaucracy is highly centralized in terms of politics, in terms of ideology, and in terms of personnel control. Personnel control mostly focused on loyalty, loyalty to the party and loyalty to the leadership. However, the administration and the resources, these are decentralized to the local party state bureaucrats. And moreover, the whole judicial system is within this bureaucracy. So there's no separate judicial system. The party leads the judicial system. But again here, this bureaucracy alone cannot stand. So the bureaucracy needs a foundation. The foundation is the other institutional gene, which is on the lower left corner. That is the resources. So the party state controls all the land in China. So literally, all the Chinese land in China are state owned. And also the party state controls all the banking system and controls most of the financial resources. So these are going to be the economic foundation of the party state bureaucracy. Also because they have this economic foundation, that is at the same time the legal foundation for the party state to control whole society. But that still is not enough for keeping the party state bureaucracy, monopolizing everything in society. So then on the lower right, we have the third institutional genes supporting this regime, which is the personnel and the ideology control. So the party completely controls the personnel matters and ideology. And that part is highly centralized. So through controlling personnel matters and ideology directly, the party actually is affordable to decentralize its administration and the resource control. So this is the institutional genes of the RDT regime, the regionally decentralized totalitarian regime. But where these institutional genes come from? So we have mentioned that the Chinese shared two institutional genes with the Soviet regime. So the Chinese imported one institutional gene from them, which is the Orthodox Church that is related to ideology and related to the way of organizing ideology and penetrating the society. But this here, when we show this regionally decentralized totalitarian regime, the institutional genes like this, we find that looks somewhat different from Soviet Union. So where these institutional genes come from? So now let's look at the Chinese empire. So since the Sui dynasty, the Chinese empire has already had matured all of these institutional genes in the place. And the structure looks like very similar to contemporary Chinese institution. So in the middle, that is the bureaucracy. In the Chinese literature, historical literature, this is called Junxian system. But the so-called Junxian system actually essentially is the bureaucracy. It simply means that the emperor and the imperial court make appointments for controlling all the localities of the empire. So all the heads of the localities are the appointed bureaucrats. They are not nobilities. So that differentiates the Chinese empire from the European feudal system. And this bureaucracy also includes the judicial system. So there is no independent judicial system. And this Junxian system established since the Qin dynasty, Qin Shu Huang. But this Junxian system alone cannot stand because as long as you have the land being owned by nobilities, then the nobility would have inherited the power to challenge the empire. So therefore, since the very beginning of establishing the Junxian system under the Qin dynasty, the land system was imperial. So the imperial land system means that all the nobilities were eliminated and all the lands are literally controlled by the emperor, by the imperial court. So the imperial land system is the economic foundation and the legal foundation of the Chinese empire, of the Chinese imperial bureaucracy. But again, here, the bureaucracy plus the imperial land together are still not good enough to sustain the Chinese empire. And indeed, the Chinese empire disintegrated after the Han dynasty. Just several hundred years later, the Chinese empire disintegrated. And after 400 years of disintegration, eventually, in the Sui dynasty, the Chinese empire was reintegrated. But since then, the Sui dynasty learned the lesson that the bureaucracy plus imperial land system was not good enough to sustain the empire. So therefore, the imperial exam system was established formally in Chinese called the Keju system. The imperial exam system is essentially for controlling the personnel, controlling the selection of the bureaucrats and also is the control of ideology. So it's combining personnel control and ideological control together. And since the Sui dynasty and eventually it becomes perfect, it perfected and matured in the Song dynasty. Since the Song dynasty afterwards, there never ever been an internal challenge to the Chinese empire. Again, I mean, internal challenge, I mean, from the de facto nobilities. So there will be no de facto nobilities strong enough to challenge the Chinese empire anymore. So here we can see that these institutional genes have been passed down to the Chinese communists. So not only this part of the institutional genes are essential, there is another part of the institutional genes which are terribly important for contemporary China. So that is the way of controlling the vast land. So what differentiates the Chinese communist regime from the Soviet regime is that in the Soviet regime, the central ministries were the most powerful and the central ministries through central planning are going to control directly all the enterprises by issuing instructions, issuing planning indicators. But that is not the case in the Chinese regime since the Great Leap Forward campaign. So let's look at the governance structure in China briefly. So on the left side of this diagram here, we can see that the central administration functions are divided into dozens of ministries. So here for illustration, I list only four of them. It should be many dozens. But on the right hand side, you see the territorial control. The territorial control means subnational level. So below the central party state agency, then China would have a provincial level and then have a prefecture level and then the county level. And so in China in total, there are more than 3,600 counties. And for each county, the functions are going to be divided in the same way as in the central government. So corresponding to each ministry at the county level, here you have the offices for each function. And all of these functions are going to be led by the party head of the county instead of being controlled by the central ministry. So that is the key of the controlling structure. And that is the key of the regionally decentralized totalitarianism. So how the regionally decentralized totalitarianism controls every county, controls every corner of the society. But again here, where these institutional genes come from. So then let's look at the Chinese empire. Professor Xu, sorry to interfere. I'm getting feedbacks from audience saying that they can't see your slides now. You can end the slideshow and restart the slideshow again and see whether people can see them. Can this be seen? I can see them but some people will say that they cannot see the slideshow. I don't have problems seeing the slideshow at all. So then what should I do? If you close the slideshow and start again. Okay, okay, okay. Can this be seen? Is this okay? Yes, I can see it now. If you could maximize your slideshow on screens then people might be able to see. Okay. Yes. Is this okay? Let me check on the Q&A. People are saying that now somebody suggests that the slides can be seen but needs to click on this small screen on the top. So that is really for people who are not able to see the screen. If you could look at the Q&A box you will find at the bottom that somebody is telling you how to do so. So we can continue now. Thank you. Sorry for the interruption. Yes, so please continue. Yeah, okay, yeah. Right. Okay. So here, yeah, just by looking at the institutional genes of the Chinese imperial Junxian system here we can see the similarities. So actually starting from the Qin dynasty the Junxian system had been organized in this way but here what I'm showing is more of from the Sui dynasties and particularly since the Sui dynasty the Chinese empire has codified their way of managing the Chinese administrative system. So just to illustrate how the institutional genes are outlined. So on the left hand side is the functional control of the empire. So since the Sui dynasty there were always six ministries responding responding for the six functions, the personnel, finance, education, military, judicial, and manufacturing. But the empire is divided into provinces, prefectures, and the counties. And at each county level they were the same six functions organized as offices. So each county is going to have the corresponding six offices and the county hide is going to lead all the six functions. And if a minister responsible for one of the functions had inspection at the county level and if the minister found something wrong or had something to say about the function at the county level instead of intervening directly to that office the minister is going to is going to talk to the head of the county. And that is exactly the same way as today. So today if a minister inspects a county level and finds something wrong and then the minister is going to talk to the party secretary of that county the minister is not going to talk to the office of that function. And that is indeed the meaning of the regionally decentralized totalitarianism. So that differentiates from the way that Soviet Union operates. The reason here we spend time to explain this kind of a structure is because that is the key to understand why the Chinese reform has performed so differently from those in the Soviet Union. So in the Chinese reform in the in the in the Chinese reform the key difference from Soviet Union and other communist regimes is that the Chinese had the private sector and not only they allowed for private sector to grow but actually the private sector becomes the majority of the Chinese economy. More than 80% of the Chinese employment are in the private sector. And that is the reason that the Chinese reform was that reform created a bad case of a high growth rate. And so the reason the Chinese could do it is simply because it was organized in a regionally decentralized way and all the local party state bureaucrats were given the target of competing for economic growth. And when they were competing for economic growth they actually loosened the control over the private sector. When they loosened the control they found it was beneficial for the local economy but because they were competing to each other so if some of the local authorities loosened the control over the private sector then the others would do so as well for the sake of competition. So even when the private sector was not legal even when the communist party by the ideology they should not allow for the private sector to grow like that but it was just not able to control it. And then eventually the Chinese communist party found that it was the private sector the growth of the private sector actually saved the communist regime. So since the collapse of the communist party's regime in Central Eastern Europe and in Soviet Union the Chinese realized this and so then they eventually they recognized the private sector. However here the key is that the reason the Chinese launched their reform is to save their regime is not to change the regime and then when the private sector becomes so overwhelmingly developed in the Chinese society then they are worried. They are worried that the private sector is going to become a foundation of shaking up the communist regime become a foundation of transforming the Chinese society but that is not going to be allowed for. So then comes to the next. So then we have to understand today's China to understand the political U-turn in China. We must understand what happened in Soviet Union and it's simply because the Chinese regime is a it comes from Soviet Union. So what happened on Soviet Union yesterday? So it's because the communist party of Soviet Union wanted to hold their power. Because they wanted to hold their power to to save the communist regime although they wanted the economic reform but they resisted the privatization. They did not allow for privatization just for the sake of saving the regime. That leads to the total failure of their economic reform and the failure actually paved the way for the collapse of the regime in former Soviet Union and Central Eastern Europe. But here we can make it clear that the conditions for collapsing actually were laid down since the British in the 1970s. But then what happened at the early stage of the Chinese reform? That is because conditional on the communist control, the Chinese communists focused on the economy. That started from Deng Xiaoping. He believed that the collapse of the Soviet Union was because of their failure in economic reform. So then as long as the communist party is able to control, then the Chinese economy must grow at whatever cost. So then indeed the private sector saved the Chinese economy and the private sector, the growth of the private sector was unintentional from the point of view of the Chinese communist party. But as long as the private sector becomes that great becomes overwhelmingly important in China, then the parties start to worry. So what they worry most is the peaceful evolution. So therefore in the recent years, we observe the systematic crackdown on the leading private firms and the large scale of courage of the leading entrepreneurs and they ban freedom of speech, they ban freedom of assembly, and then drive China to the British Soviet Union era. The reason I'm saying that they drive China to the British Soviet Union era is because what differentiated China from the Soviet Union is the private sector. But now they are in the drive of shutting down or containing the private sector. They are driving to expanding the state sector. And because of doing so, the Chinese economy has steadily slowed down and particularly in recent several years rapidly slowed down. And so all of this on the on the on the surface and also on the mechanism are similar to what happened in Soviet Union in the 1970s. And then finally, let me make a comparison between today's China and yesterday's Soviet Union. The reason I do it is because we care about China's future. And we have seen what happened in Soviet Russia, what happened in today's Russia after the collapse of Soviet Union. We found that although the although the totalitarian regime collapsed in Soviet Union, but they fail to establish constitutional democracy. The reason is because of the lack of institutional genes for supporting constitutional democracy. So then here we look at we are going to compare today's China with yesterday's Soviet Union by comparing their institutional genes of totalitarianism and also their institutional genes supporting constitutional democracy. So if we compare their institutional genes as a foundation of totalitarianism, we found that that institutional genes in China is going to be even stronger than those in Soviet Union in yesterday. So which means that the collapse in the collapse of totalitarianism in China is going to be more difficult than that in Soviet Union. But then if we compare the institutional genes, which are going to be the foundation for constitutional democracy. So I divide this into three parts, private property rights, the rule of law, and the pluralist political factors. So then we found in the in terms of private property rights, actually today's China is a lot stronger than yesterday's Soviet Union. So if something happened, if China is pushed into the trajectory of transformation into constitutional democracy, this is a very positive part for China because China has a much larger private sector and much clearer minds, the mindset, protecting private property rights and about operation, how to operate private firms in China compared with yesterday's Soviet Union. However, if we look at the other parts, the rule of law, that part of the institutional genes in China is a lot weaker than in Soviet Union. And the pluralist political factors in China is also a lot weaker than yesterday's Soviet Union. So these parts of the institutional genes imply that China is going to encounter a lot more difficulties than Soviet Union. If China was pushed to that trajectory, transforming to constitutional democracy. Okay, thank you. Well, thank you very much indeed, Professor Xu, that is absolutely fascinating presentation. I would like to invite you to start making your questions or comments in the Q&A box. But before I come to you, I wanted to discuss with you first, Professor Xu, your very important and interesting idea of these institutional genes. And I think what you have said, what you have presented provides a very powerful case if we look at what happens on the mainland of China. But if we look at China in a slightly different way, if we don't simply equate China with the mainland of China, but include also Taiwan and Hong Kong, then we have a different set of questions. Because we will have the issue of, for example, the institutional genes in Hong Kong is not weak with the rule of law, is clearly very strong with the rule of law. And the institutional genes for pluralistic politics is very strong in Taiwan, and slightly less strong in terms of the rule of law, but they are moving in that direction. And likewise with Hong Kong, the rule of law was stronger, but the pluralistic politics was weaker, but they're moving more in that direction, of course, until all these were being upset by the national security law of 2020, when all these were being put to an end. And also in terms of the institutional genes about poverty rights, they were also pretty strong in those places. So the question really is that if we are looking at the institutional genes, are we looking at really just what happens on the mainland of China, or are we really need to be looking at it in a more broader definition of what China is, which incidentally happens to be what the Communist Party's definition of China is as well. Right. This is really a great question. Indeed, when we try to apply this concept to do our analysis, then we have to be very careful to see the particular place. For example, when we look at Taiwan, then we have to realize that first of all, the Chinese Empire ruled Taiwan for only 200 more years, less than 300 years. So the institutional genes of the Chinese imperial system in Taiwan was fairly shallow. It's far away from the mainland, and it was ruled very short in a very short period of time. And then under the Japanese rule, so there was a period of time that Japan was pushing forward the constitutional democracy during 1914 up to the end of the 1920s. And they tried to promote constitutional democracy, not only in Japan, but also in all the colonies. And indeed, in that period of time, the Taiwanese had their local elections, and the Taiwanese had their political parties organized. And I regard those as institutional genes of constitutional democracy. So those institutional genes, although were not very strong, but were already there in Taiwan before the Second World War. And moreover, the impact of Soviet Union was mainly in the mainland China, not in Taiwan. So that part of the institutional genes didn't have a forceful influence there. And then the next is after the Republic of China regained control of Taiwan after the Second World War, they implemented the constitution of the Republic of China for a short period of time. So they had all the local elections, and then there was a period of authoritarian cracking down, but the institutional genes have been there already. Moreover, although the Kuomintang is an authoritarian party, they didn't like constitutional democracy, but their constitution, at least in the paper, the constitution is constitutional, which means that at least the Kuomintang would not be able to eradicate all the rules of the institutional genes, which are pro-constitutional democracy. And also that constitution supported the private ownership. So the private ownership being consolidated in Taiwan in several decades before the final transformation. So here, put together, before the final transformation from an authoritarian regime into a full constitutional democracy, Taiwan actually had already fairly strong institutional genes being the foundation of constitutional democracy. And then talking about Hong Kong, then the colonial era of Hong Kong has changed Hong Kong fundamentally. So since under the colonial rule, Hong Kong essentially inherited the ideology and institution from the Great Britain. Although it was a colony, it didn't enjoy democracy, but it's constitutional. And in terms of democracy, actually, in my book, I documented that part of the historical facts, which is that in the 1950s, the British government planned to push forward democracy within Hong Kong, just like what the British did in other colonies. But the Chinese communists did not allow for this. And the Chinese communists warned the British that if they ruled Hong Kong as a colony, they would keep Hong Kong as a British colony. But if the British set up election in Hong Kong, then the Chinese communists is going to send army to occupy Hong Kong. So with this threat, the British government will draw their plan. So actually, Hong Kong was among the few of the British, former British colonies, which did not implement democracy like other formal colonies of British. So here, to summarize, what I'm saying is that although geographically, Taiwan and Hong Kong are regarded as part of the greater China, but in terms of institution, Hong Kong and Taiwan had been in different institutions, and at the same time, they had different institutional genes. Okay, there are already quite a few questions here. The first question I picked comes from somebody who would like to stay anonymous. The question is about what Professor Feilin Wang has already described as these CCP's institutional genes being suboptimized and inefficient. And the question is, would you like to elaborate on the institutional force of the current system in place in China, and whether the Communist Party system today can be seen as a genuinely stable one? And what would it take to get the systems to break down? Right. Very good question. The current Chinese institution is not stable. The reason is the following. Supposedly, if the Communist Party allows for the overall trend of the economic reform just keep going, then they suppose they allow for that. Then indeed, as long as they allow for private sector to expand further, and also the private sector would require legal protections of the private sector. And so then you have to gradually establish a rule of law to protect the private sector. And also the private sector associated with the growth of the private sector. You have their own organizations. Actually, private business itself is already organization. And then they have their own commercial organizations or other kinds of organizations. And all of this, as long as the Communist Party allows them to grow further, these are going to become the foundation of shaking up the totalitarian rule. So it's unstable in that sense. So that is why the Communist Party would not allow for them to grow further. And that is actually that is the explanation why things happened in the recent many years. So many people thought that the reason in the recent years things become that bad is only because that one person. But actually, that is the exaggeration of that one person's will and exaggeration of that one person's power. The reason that one person has that power is exactly because he has that machine. That machine is the institution. And he is the driver of the machine. And so then when the Communist Party does not allow for private sector to grow further for the stability of their political system, then it's going to weaken its economic foundation. And that is what we're seeing now. So by weakening its economic foundation, that is why I'm saying that today's China is driving towards yesterday's Soviet Union. So then eventually it's going to further weaken and shake up the Chinese regime. But if that is going to collapse or not, this is a much more difficult question, much more difficult prediction to make. So I'm not able to predict the collapse of the regime because we have another example, which is North Korea. So North Korea is very, very poor. And its economy is very unstable. But the regime could last because they could use the brutal force to maintain. That is the feature of a totalitarian regime. But here, this is a bit more like our understanding of earthquake. So what we're saying is that the condition is there, but when things are going to happen and in what way is going to happen? We don't know. Okay. Next question I picked comes from Pram Polder, Professor Polder. And the question he puts to you is about your reference to the Russian Orthodox Church as one of the institutional genes of the Bosphorus of the Soviet Union. And what he would like to ask is what about Confucianism or neo-confucianism, which you have not mentioned? And since Xi Jinping talks a lot about it, does it matter? Is it part of that institutional genes or is it not relevant? Okay. Very good question. The reason I didn't mention Confucianism is only for sake of time. So when I talked about Koji system, the imperial exam system, actually, I have a whole chapter about this issue and Confucianism is one of the key issues there. But indeed, if we compare the Russian Orthodox Church with Confucianism together with the Koji system, there is a distinctive difference. The Russian Orthodox Church is an organized ideology that penetrates the society. Penetrates society means not only for the intellectuals, not only for people who can read, it penetrates everyone. And the Orthodoxy was a language, was a cultural, was a religion before the existence of Russian as a nation. And also the Russian Orthodox had a whole set of instruments for doing propaganda and for inciting people. And for people, for inciting people who would even voluntarily like to die as a martyr. And for creating a personality cult, so on and so forth. So that is why the, and also the ideology. So I have a whole chapter about the origin of communist ideology. And the origin of communist ideology actually is rooted in Christianity. And the Russian Orthodox would beneficial more from this route. So put all of this together. Indeed, the Russian Orthodox, Russian Orthodoxy and Russian Orthodox Church, these are essential parts of the Bosch Wake Party. And the Stalin he himself was educated in the, in the, in, in, in Orthodoxy. And so as many others, top leaders. Founders of, of the Bosch Wake. But the Confucianism and the Confucianism and the Koji system, these are indeed important institutional genes of today's China. Indeed. But these are more related to the way of ruling China, rather than creating the Communist Party. So the, if we look at today's operation of the Communist Party, then you'll find that the essential parts of Communist Party were not from Chinese tradition. So these were all from Soviet Russia. And the Soviet Russia actually inherited partly from the Orthodox Church. Okay. Before I put the next question to you, Professor Xu, would you mind ending this live show so that you can see you in larger screen than the thumbnail? Brilliant. Thank you. The next I'm picking is, comes from Ying Zi. And in fact, Ying Zi is asking really two questions, but they are both interesting and relevant. So I'll put that to you. The first question really is about what impact do you think COVID-19 pandemic has on the resilience of China's totalitarianism? And the second question is about the urbanization in China, since you talk about the control over land being a very important part of the institutional genes. And the question then is whether the fast, faster pace of urbanization is going to change that? If so, how? Okay. Yeah. Very good question. In the COVID period, we see huge impacts in two opposite directions. So one direction is related to controlling the whole society through all the means. So because the Communist Party imposed this zero COVID policy, and then they have a great excuse to impose the truly totalitarian control over the whole population through all the means. So it's an important exercise, it's important training, and reinforced their way of controlling every citizen through high tech. However, just exactly because of this, and exactly because of the brutality of this controlling everyone at every time for anything. So the resentment became so strong. So at the end of the zero COVID period, there was a nationwide waves of resistance. So here we can see that it has two impacts. Right. Talking about urbanization, urbanization actually, if we look at it, this happened during the reform period. At the beginning, at the earlier stages of the reform, the urbanization was not planned. The urbanization process, just like private firms, this or unintentional, this just happened. So these were the consequences of the land reform in agriculture. But the impact is huge. So through this urbanization process, here in the mainland China, there are hundreds of millions of the second citizens living in the cities. So with such huge proud in the city, it's actually a huge unstable factor for the society. So we may recall what happened when Cai Qi became the mayor of Beijing. So just a month or couple of months after being the mayor of Beijing, he made a brutal decision to destroy homes of hundreds of thousands of the pleasant workers, try to get rid of them from the city. They were different interpretations why he did it. So my interpretation is that because he realized he anticipated the social unrest from these second class citizens in the city, so then he would try his best to get rid of them from his jurisdiction to reduce the pressure. So that's my interpretation. But whatever interpretation is, this is going to be a huge factor, hidden there. And when things go wrong, when the whole system becomes unstable, so you are going to anticipate the social unrest from this foundation. Next question comes from somebody who likes to stay anonymous. And the question is not actually directly about your presentation, but I think it's something that people will be interested in. And the question is about what do you think the death of former premier Li Keqiang means in terms of his impact on Chinese society, Chinese politics, and perhaps even on your analysis on the resilience or not of the system. Right. It is relevant. Right. Yeah, I would interpret this incident as a triggering incident. So the next issue or what we are going to observe or waiting to observe is how much this is going to trigger. So it becomes a more like a coordination mechanism. So under the totalitarian rule, information is censored and people's behavior or monitored. And the totalitarian rule is ruled by terror. So under the rule of terror, under the censorship of information, under the closed monitoring of behavior, essentially that would make everyone isolated. Because isolation means that they are not able to coordinate. But as long as people are not able to coordinate, then the totalitarian rule would sustain. But once you have such a triggering event, it might trigger, might become a coordination mechanism. So then people were sort of coordinated to participate. So they were examples. Historically, they were examples. One example was at the end of the Cultural Revolution in the April 5th of 1976. So the coordinating mechanism was the Chow Nian Lai, the morning of Chow Nian Lai. And the second would be the Zhong Fos event in China that was triggered by the death of Hu Yaobang. And all of these actually share these kinds of similarities. But of course, the Communist Party learns the lessons. So by learning the lesson, they were now under high alert and tried their best to contain. But at the same time, people are also learning. So they have their way of coordinating. But again, I'm not able to predict. But my anticipation is that this is going to become a triggering event, helping lots of people to coordinate. So even in case they fail to have immediate action, observable action, but this coordinated call, the coordinated voice is going to have deep roots. So it's going to change people's mind in a very strong way. Thank you. This being potentially the last question that I can pick for you, hopefully we can squeeze in more, but it could be the last. I'm going to pick something that is completely different. And this comes from Conor Yang. And the question is about what do you think the Moqueta countries should treat China, should deal with China in light of your thesis that China is this type of totalitarian system? Right. I believe a very good question. Actually, part of the motivation for me to write this book is to talk to the people who are not in China, who are not Chinese for their understanding of the nature of the Chinese regime. So my concern is that the misunderstanding of the nature of the Chinese regime is a huge issue, and it contributes to many mistakes. So there's a word called got China's wrong. So why they got China's wrong is because they didn't understand the nature of the regime. But actually, if they understand the nature of the Chinese regime, which means that it's essentially the same as the Soviet Union in the Cold War. And then no matter the policy and the public opinion, all of this should move to the direction, to the past, that how they deal with the Soviet Union. So here a key issue is to separate the Communist Party from the Chinese people to separate the regime from the Chinese people. And they should support the Chinese for their efforts, for their endeavors towards constitutional democracy. So they must support. And so this is not something anti-China. This is something about supporting China. So supporting a constitutional China, supporting a democratic China against a totalitarian regime. We are one minute from closing, but since you answered the last question on the point of constitutionalism, there is actually a question from Kristin Yang, who wants to ask you about if China would move in the direction of constitutionalism. Where do you see the driving force coming from public mobilization or from internal changes within the Communist Party? Okay, great question. It has to come from within. But when I say from within, I didn't mean mainly Communist Party. I meant mainly from the Chinese, from the Chinese citizens within China. So who are they? They are the... So if we look at today's China, we find there is a very large community of private entrepreneurs. There's a very large community of owners of private properties. And they are large community of NGOs, large community of civil society. And we have numerous great lawyers, intellectuals. So these are the foundations for China to transform from a totalitarian regime into a constitutional regime. And of course, the international support is crucial, is always crucial. So that requires the democracies not getting China wrong. So when they get China wrong, they refuse to support the Chinese. When they refuse to support China, then they trade China simply as an administration. When they get China wrong, then they make Chinese transformation extremely difficult or almost impossible. Well, thank you very much. I'm afraid that it is my duty to have to draw these very interesting webinars to a close. I do apologize to those of you who have put questions to Professor Xi and the questions I simply cannot find times to fit into this webinar. But please be reassured that your questions will be saved and they will be shared with Professor Xi so that he will know what were the questions and comments that I have not been able to put to him at this webinar. And I'm delighted that at least at the end of this webinar, we end on a rather more positive note than on the more pessimistic note. With this, let me draw this to a close. Thank you very much, Professor Xi. And I hope to see some of you in person next week at SOAS when a more positive picture of China will be presented. Thank you and goodbye. Thank you, Steve. Thank you, everyone. Bye. Thank you, Professor Xi. That was great.