Wang Huning
Article
Wang Huning is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between June 07, 2023 and January 18, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “Enter Wang Huning, a young political scientist at Fudan University”; “Wang Huning grew up in one of the world’s tightest authoritarian societies, where all the news is a carefully-managed propaganda campaign”; “Palladium had an issue on China, industry, and Wang Huning”. It most often appears alongside America Against America, 747, America.
Metadata
- Category: People
- Mention count: 2
- Issue count: 2
- First seen: June 07, 2023
- Last seen: January 18, 2024
Appears In
Related Pages
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- America Against America (2 shared issues)
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- 747 (1 shared issues)
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- America (1 shared issues)
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- American (1 shared issues)
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- American conventional wisdom (1 shared issues)
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- American families (1 shared issues)
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- Are We All Doxastic Voluntarists? (1 shared issues)
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- Assistant Dictator Book Club (1 shared issues)
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- Astral Codex Ten (1 shared issues)
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- Beelzebub’s Tales To His Grandson (1 shared issues)
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- Bill Gates (1 shared issues)
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- Bloxors Greeblic (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
Enter Wang Huning, a young political scientist at Fudan University. He wanted to become an “America expert”. Toward that goal, he got a visiting scholar position in the most dynamic corner of the US - Iowa City, Iowa. His quest: to poke around Iowa until he figured out what the heck was going on with the United States, then report back. The result: America Against America, a 200 page book on US culture and institutions.
Inline links: America Against America
Another result: a career boost for Wang Huning. He got asked to head the Party’s “political research” office, then gradually rose higher and higher through the ranks. Today he’s considered the CCP’s chief intellectual, and has been called the second most powerful man in China (alternately “the most influential man in China”). He’s used his position to push China against American values and towards a sort of anti-Western cultural conservatism. Whatever he saw during those six months in Iowa must have scared him hard. I thought I would pick up America Against America to figure out what it was.
Wang Huning grew up in one of the world’s tightest authoritarian societies, where all the news is a carefully-managed propaganda campaign to make the government look great. He probably has some good antibodies to whatever Xinhua is peddling, but, I’m afraid, might not have been prepared for America’s particular pathologies. So when people told him Americans were quitting work to suck up fat welfare checks, he believed them. When people told him that there were a million teenage runaways in America, he believed them. And when people told him that motorcycle gangs with Treasurers and War Lords were crucifying women with impunity, he believed that too. Probably all of these things are sort of happening, somewhere. But probably Wang ended up thinking they were happening much more often than they were.
Assistant Dictator Book Club: America Against America - Chinese #2 Wang Huning spent six months in America as a budding academic and decided to devote the rest of his life to destroying it.
Inline links: Assistant Dictator Book Club: America Against America