It’s a question of faith.
Generally, it comes down to believe.
Billy Joel
Han Feizi believed that time had run out on his carpet-bagging time in the sweet bay after the 2019 protests in Hong Kong. Well, everything excellent eventually comes to an end. The island not stops beckoning, and it was a very good work. But Han Feizi was uneasy. Over twenty years ago, he resided in Beijing and left with a bitter aftertaste.
Han Feizi, who has been dragging users around Beijing for two years, is aware that everything has changed. He has seen the hundreds of motorbikes vanish into the streets of cities, be replaced by cars, and then return as shared versions in candy-colored hues.
Every square inch of the city is now covered by what locals refer to as the” spider web,” which was built from two metro lines in 2001. Han Feizi’s former hangouts have all either vanished or become horribly upmarket.
But nonetheless. We’re referring to Beijing, where Han Feizi has engaged in his fair share of city fights, squeezed through fictitious lines, hocked loogies carelessly, and raised his voice in official settings.
Do n’t ask, but he has even participated in a bloody brawl with steel rebar and cinder block fragments used as weapons. All of a sudden, Han Feizi felt very ancient to continue. In addition to  ,
Han Feizi clicked on a David Brooks content about the Atlantic one day as he was preparing for Beijing’s ups and downs. It was a piece that wreaked havoc on America’s declining cultural confidence. It was written during the obscene 2020 election time, when trash fires appeared to be raging across the nation, despite apparently being overwrought. It was a good article, but Han Feizi laughed at one line:
Countries with high levels of social trust, such as the Netherlands, Sweden, China, and Australia, have developed or fast growing economy.
Brooks does have a keen eye for America, but it is clear that he is unfamiliar with China. It’s alright. China was n’t the subject of the article. Americans were sadly extrapolating from video of China’s shot trains and glittering skyscrapers as they were caught up in a confidence crisis. Han Feizi was wiser. These cultural trust ratings are useful because they take into account various historical interpretations of the queries and responses.
According to an Ipsos survey, China and India had the highest levels of interpersonal trust, with 56 % of respondents saying “most people can be trusted,” followed by the Netherlands in third place at 48 %, dishonest Japan at 21 % ( below the US at 33 % ), Russia at 244 %, South Korea at 233 %, and Columbia at 22 % ).
The aggressive touts in Tokyo’s Roppongi district did n’t look Japanese, but Han Feizi does recall not trusting any of them. Polls, come on. India and China away of Japan And Switzerland, Germany, and Sweden? Actually?
Francis Fukuyama released” Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity” in 1995, not long after his big break with” The End of History and The Last Man.” In it, he outlined his theory of social confidence, which was based on democratic principles and allowed people to organize on their own for the greater great, specifically to create sizable wealth-generating companies.
Fukuyama asserts that impersonalistic Germans, Japanese, and Americans may operate at extremely high levels of social respect, enabling the formation of large corporations naturally, while familistic peoples like Chinese and Italians require state action to create effectively big enterprises. Without a powerful state, Russians degenerate into mafia mayhem because they lack strong familial ties and liberal values. In addition to  ,
Readers are entirely appropriate if they believe that this article will soon turn into another Francis Fukuyama-bashing exercise. We cannot allow” The End of History” to take center stage. Francis Fukuyama has also given birth to various stinkers, and the long-forgotten” Trust” has aged only as ill.
The Chinese have claimed that a technology distance develops every three years since transformation and opening up. Every 36 months, cultural customs, aspirations, and mores change in China due to the country’s rapid change. More than just a remark on unchecked financial growth, it is.
It denoted a turbulent world. As far as he could throw them, Hang Feizi pushed, hustled, bickered, received hustles, fiddled with, howled, and did n’t trust anyone in this heady mix. In addition,  ,
Next everything changed. The shift is difficult to date. Stand Feizi’s trip back to Beijing was postponed by Covid by two times. But there is no doubt that things have changed. Three years, or the typical size of a century distance, passed during China’s sporadic Covid lockdowns. It had to change, of training. The time of go-go were spinning out of control. A new technology was long late.
This innovative Beijing is unsettling to Stand Feizi. How did all the smoking fare? And all the hockers from the loogie? With their phones buried in their faces, everyone instantly forms a line for the subway. Hang Feizi has received a metro seat offer from three young people. Hang Feizi was receiving the older remedy for the first time at the time, and it was just as embarrassing as he had anticipated.
Hang Feizi prepared himself for the administrative headache of opening bank balances, obtaining a local telephone number, and registering with the public protection office, rather than anticipating the expressionless officials and their condescending demeanors.
As if Han Feizi had stepped into the Twilight Zone, the truth was startling. Bank staff stooped down to accommodate Han Feizi’s several unique needs and circumstances. Similar assistance came from the public safety department. For months, Han Feizi worried that figure snatching had entered Beijing and turned the locals into service-obsessed imposters. He had to put it to the test.
Han Feizi chose to fight a DiDi pilot who was anticipating the same old Beijing retaliation. everything else. Simply a courteous nod and de-escalation. For seizing an aerosol can, Han Feizi’s better third chewed out train security.
A security guard pursued her while she was still steaming on the train platform and offered to store the offensive material for afterwards set in her workplace. Han Feizi does not like it at all that figure thievery have invaded Beijing. For goodness sake, this is Beijing, no Tokyo!
Han Feizi might not be aware of everything Brooks and Ipsos are. Street violence is all but nonexistent. In the libraries, college students leave their devices and other items unattended. Simply because, the hairstylist will give you a fruit plate. Beijing residents ‘ brash exterior, which they had previously used to fortify themselves against a perilous people, has vanished into subdued courtesy.
Part of the intense focus on company can be attributed to “involution,” a Chinese term for diminishing returns for extra work. As development slows, competition intensifies, leading to over-the-top attempts by companies to meet clients. Opinions on e-commerce programs are a slave to Chinese retail businesses.
Nine times out of ten, the vendor will get in touch and offer to make up if a negative review has validity. Although there are undoubtedly customer benefits, services workers are also expected to carry a heavy workload. Han Feizi observes the expanded service but questions whether it is only a sign of deflation, deferring judgment until the economy recovers.
The real and, equally important, the perception of public safety have been influenced by technical innovations like widespread CCTV cameras, physical recognition, and real-name phone registration. All is aware that CCTV is keeping an eye on them. This has caused a previously high-tension public’s body pressure to drop.
People are less vigilant, less willing to find their tails up, and less likely to show their teeth when there is no property offense. A once-favorite sport of Beijingers, public shouting matches, has unfortunately vanished. We point out that none of this is the result of a” social credit index,” which has only ever existed in Western media’s fevered imagination and as small aircraft plans.
After stories about people ‘ Kafkaesque experience navigating bureaucracies for routine services were made public by the media, a campaign was started to redesign government buildings that faced the public. This was a logical continuation of the ten-year anti-corruption battle that ended low-level governmental misconduct.
The 12345 people line was expanded and given the authority to register complaints; reducing complaints has grown to be a key KPI for government agencies that deal with the public.
Han Feizi is left scratching his head in China as Brooks chronicles the decline of interpersonal trust in America. He is terrified of this innovative Beijing. It was n’t meant to be feasible. Fukuyama asserts that social confidence cannot be created:
Today, having given up on social engineering’s potential, almost all major observers are aware that the vitality of liberal political and economic institutions depends on a vibrant and healthy civil society.
We are all aware that civil society is a voluntary organization made up of organizations like temples, charities, unions, and businesses that help people become high-trust citizens. Fukuyama asserts that there are no options for the authorities in these institutions, which are the results of liberal cultures and revolution principles:  ,
As in the case of additional forms of human capital, the social capital required to establish this kind of social group may be obtained through a wise investment choice.
Of course, Francis Fukuyama’s traditional interpretations have not been well received over the last three years. China had already established colossal private firms like Alibaba, Tencent, Huawei, and BYD, which Fukuyama had deemed impossible, even before it recently ascended the cultural confidence group furniture:  ,
Germany, Japan, and the United States are examples of high-trust civilizations that have access to a lot of social capital as well as the capacity to establish sizable, personal businesses. Contrarily, family firms have historically populated the economy of somewhat low-trust cultures like Taiwan, Hong Kong, France, and Italy.
Fukuyama offered a sort of mea culpa in his 2014 book,” Political Order and Democratic Decay.” It turns out that high trust civilizations would not survive without civil society as their key sauce. Fukuyama has recently learned that civil society can create interest groups that may ossify the democratic system and turn America into a vetocracy.
Next, how do we balance these diametrically opposed stories—that interest groups are tainting democracy and impeding economic development, and that they are prerequisites for a strong democracy?
How, in fact. Han Feizi may left that decision up to Brooks, Fukuyama, and people of a similar caliber. Han Feizi is more intrigued by the young, high-trust world that Beijing seems to have attained.
Han Feizi recently visited Hong Kong and had the unsettling impression that the locals there were disrespectful, contemptuous, and uncouth. Han Feizi has undoubtedly heavily discounted his studies in his mind by pointing out that Beijing might not be a member of all of China, that superficial niceties might mask more profound pathologies, and that it’s possible that some intangible power was sacrificed.
Han Feizi’s specific plans have also been thrown off course by this alien high-trust Beijing. Han Feizi came back to Beijing primarily for the benefit of the following century. Han Feizi’s sadistic parenting philosophy also holds that young people who have not lived in a developing economy and all of its ills will be too delicate for the foreseeable future, in addition to giving them an improved understanding of China.
This is proving to be a huge failure. Also, in America, there are a lot of institutions.