2022年信

（这篇是我回顾的一年，今年有点晚了；这是我2021年的来信）

山区提供了最好的躲避国家的地方。

2022 年有很多国家控制需要逃避。在 4 月份上海封锁的前两天，我正搭乘从这座城市飞往中国西南部最偏远省份云南的最后一班航班。云南的陆地面积——略小于加利福尼亚的陆地——具有比大多数国家更大的地理差异。它的北部是历史悠久的西藏，而南部则很像泰国。人们游览该省是为了欣赏其壮观的自然景观：热带雨林、梯田、湍急的河流和雪山。否则，游客会被它的异国情调所吸引。多达一半的官方承认的民族在那里有大量存在，包括许多历史上抵制汉族统治的民族。

随着上海的封锁时间延长，原本计划持续数天的旅行变成了持续数月的旅行。漫步云南，让我有机会去思考大山文化。

它们耸立在北方。这些藏区是喜马拉雅山大块地区的所在地：云南的最高峰是藏传佛教最神圣的山峰之一卡瓦卡波山。这个地区的雪景无与伦比。他们周围的道路上散落着飘扬的经幡，到处都是冷漠的牦牛。空气稀薄中的某种东西会产生更鲜艳的光，当太阳落山时，它会在明亮的红色中点亮白色的山峰。我在卡瓦卡波 (Kawarkapo) 和虎跳峡 (Tiger Leaping Gorge) 周围进行了几次徒步旅行，它们提供了穿越崎岖地形的美妙徒步旅行。 1个

云南北部是一个不可思议的混血之地。 19 世纪，传教士在这些土地上取得了进展，不仅建立了基督教人口，还建立了继续生产酿酒葡萄的葡萄园。在一个偏远的山谷里，我路过LVMH旗下的一个产赤霞珠的葡萄园，每瓶零售价300美元。 2这个地区最刺激的地方不是丽江或香格里拉等城市，而是更偏远的藏区。几十年来，藏人一直被汉族文化强迫同化，但他们仍然有空间进行小规模的颠覆活动。例如，一位导游告诉我，僧侣们在他们寺院的班禅喇嘛画像后面放了一张达赖喇嘛的画像，让他们可以凭良心祈祷。这些轮次的控制和逃避继续进行。

南方的山比较平缓。在位于老挝和缅甸上方的西双版纳，茶山坐落在热带雨林和橡胶种植园之间。那里的天气很闷热。为了降温，人们可以在湄公河中畅游，湄公河携带着从西藏高地流出的非常冷的水，或者吃它的热带水果：芒果、木瓜、榴莲或许多甜瓜。西双版纳是中国生物多样性最丰富的地区之一，拥有数千种树木，以及大量的野生大象、孔雀、熊和鸟类。

在云南南部，大部分人都具有东南亚特色。西双版纳拥有大约十几个中国官方民族，其中一些只有几万人口，聚集在某些山脉周围。最著名的族群是傣族，而较小的族群包括爱尼族、布朗族和哈尼族。 3大多数人以山区农业为生，这意味着种植茶叶、橡胶或香蕉等经济作物（除非他们选择穿上民族服饰来迎合游客）。这种种植与采集野生药草、蘑菇和花卉以及偶尔的非法猎物交织在一起。更危险的冒险是贩毒，因为该地区就在金三角沿线。

我最终大部分时间都在中北部城市大理度过。它地处云南最温和的地区：比西双版纳凉爽，比香格里拉阳光充足，西依山脉，东临大湖。当地人为白族，其文化习俗接近汉族。我的家是山脚下一个白族村落的木结构农舍。如果我住在靠近湖边的地方，房屋将由漂亮的石头制成，装饰着木雕和白墙上的水墨画。白族有着悠久的手工艺文化，生产用于贸易的大理石器皿或扎染亚麻制品。

直到 2000 年代初，一种不同的白族产品吸引了外国游客：大理周围自由生长的大麻。在北京或上海的外国人会怀念在大理的美好时光，在那里，一位面带微笑的女士会招手到巷子里去买一个袋子。大麻贸易已被取缔。 4如今，去大理旅游的不是外国人，而是中国人来这里是为了购买更烈性毒品：加密货币、NFT 和其他 web3 工具。近年来，中国的大量加密货币社区已迁往大理。并不是这座城市想吸引他们；而是因为他们想吸引他们。相反，它的吸引力更为普遍。

大理天气晴朗，适合远足，还有一个大湖。我想起了它的露天市场，每天早上都可以去那里采摘新鲜的蔬菜、水果、米线和各种咸菜。大理提供肥沃的农田，吸引了中国新兴的有机农民，他们通常是年轻人。它有大量的外国人口，他们开设了酵母面包店、提供优质羊角面包的咖啡馆和播放电子音乐的俱乐部。我在中国遇到的第一个户外狂欢是在大理的一个果园里。它也吸引了城市家庭：在深圳或上海开始小学之前，年幼孩子的父母会在暑假或全日制带孩子参加以自然为中心的学校课程。享受阳光的游客称这座城市为“加州”。

除此之外，云南还有很多有趣的地方。它的首都昆明不是其中之一。那是一座与中国其他任何城市都一样的城市，也许最适合与墨西哥城类比：一个有许多有趣的人和地方的行政中心，但与他们相比相对乏味。云南最西部的腾冲，是由生活在火山泉中的傣族人民组成的；历史爱好者可能会参观它，因为它位于滇缅公路沿线的中心位置。更有趣的是位于云南北部与四川接壤的泸沽湖，这是一个难以进入的地方，是母系社会摩梭人的家园。在山上可以找到佤族，他们应该保持着动物祭祀和人类猎头的传统。

爬出文明

高山总是向持不同政见者、反叛者和颠覆者招手。不仅仅是空气在更高的海拔处变得稀薄：国家的卷须也是如此。一小群人只需要徒步一段时间就可以在山上找到一个合适的避难所；对于拥有庞大商队的帝国行政人员来说，要找到所有藏身之处要困难得多。因此，纵观历史，人们一直在向上攀登以逃避国家。这不仅是为了告别税吏令人厌烦的抽吸；它还可以摆脱伴随人口稠密而来的问题——流行病、征兵和国家规模战争的威胁。因此，居住在山区的人往往被视为不守规矩的人，无论他们是阿巴拉契亚美国人还是高地苏格兰人。

云南一直是厌倦国家的人们的避难所。它是 James C. Scott 在《不被治理的艺术》一书中所描述的东南亚广阔高地的中心——这是我今年读过的最好的书（我将在整篇文章中借鉴）。斯科特写到在过去的几千年里，无数的山区人民为了逃避缅甸国家、西藏国家，或者最常见的汉族国家的压迫，在这些山上定居下来。

在斯科特的讲述中，早期国家（几千年到几个世纪前）之所以没有发展，是因为人们被“文明”或光明的宫廷中心所吸引。它们的增长是因为一个对大米或小麦上瘾的暴君的霸道脾气要求越来越多的人口为了他宫廷的荣耀而生产过剩的谷物。这个过程是辩证的，因为战争造就了国家，国家又造就了战争。因此，人口核心中的大多数人都是在军事胜利中俘获的或从掠夺者手中购买的俘虏。斯科特甚至声称，在可以找到早期国家的地方，就会发现一个由强制劳动维持的人口核心。

他的案例是，久坐耕作产生的文明在让社会变得更好之前，先是让人们在健康、安全和自由方面变得更糟。在大量种植谷物之前，大多数人都是某种形式的觅食者。他们往往比束缚在一块土地上的农民更健壮，后者经常面临国家征用、流行病和在环境灾难中失去一切的危险。更容易理解的是，无论是在中亚还是北美，世界各地的人们都强烈反对让他们久坐不动——只有在军事失败后才接受这种命运。

在山区，他们往往更安全。 5而且，云南拥有丰富的资源。斯科特说，逃到东南亚崎岖高地的人们往往有排斥国家的做法。这包括种植多种多样的根茎作物，这些作物不易被税收征税；采用相对平等的社会结构；实践口头文化，这有助于使历史和种族身份更具可塑性。这些民族部落因此成为“有意为之的野蛮人”。时至今日，云南仍是中国最贫困的省份之一。多山的地理环境使其经济比技术密集型产业更适合农业和旅游业。

当我在云南四处闲逛时，读到关于这个高原地区的文章，成为一种安静而激动人心的经历。斯科特写道，在部署铁路、电话、直升机以及后来的信息技术之后，到第二次世界大战结束时，国家行政部门学会了爬山。但我确实觉得云南的文化与北京和上海的帝国核心仍然不同。

在这些崎岖不平的山丘前，官方的举措常常令人喘不过气来。这些山脉保护着各种撤退的军队，包括直到 1960 年代初才完全撤出该地区的国民党军队。他们在大跃进期间保护了人们，当时人们爬上去觅食。即使在文化大革命期间，他们也保护村民：“当红卫兵爬上高地时，他们发现人很少，没有明显有钱的人可以攻击，也没有什么吃的。就跟村民唠叨一会，吵闹示威，就下山了，不太急着回去。” 6个

直到今天，云南仍是一个抵制高效行政的省份。总的来说，云南的规定并没有得到始终如一的执行。那是因为官员懒惰或无能吗？谁在乎，可能两者都有。我看到村民们如何规避威胁他们生活方式的法规。过去十年发生的最重要的事件是习近平 2015 年的访问，当时最高领导人告诫当地官员清理湖泊。官员们随后立即执行命令。他们采取的措施之一是将山上的水全部引到湖中。习惯从山上汲取饮用水和粮食生产的村民现在不得不饮用经过处理的水。

当地人说，引水是村庄历史上最令人沮丧的事情之一。并不是他们反对清理湖泊。最高领导人的一句话促使地方官员拒绝给他们提供中国最好的水，同时为清理工作做出了至多最低限度的贡献。他们的反应是爬到更远的山上，铺设新的管道，将水输送到村里的寺庙。他们教我带上自己的水罐在那里加满水。

当地官员来村庙砸这些管子时并没有用锤子，而是用他们自己的水罐来装水。在这里，仍然可以绕过中央政府毫无意义的指令。大理的公开吸毒文化可能已经消散，但该地区仍然存在无效性。远离党的中心是云南吸引越来越多厌倦城市生活的移民的原因之一。随着大城市的压迫加剧，今年移民加速。

封锁

在大流行的三年中，中国发展了一个更有分量的国家机器，一个能够更好地给臣民留下好印象的国家机器。各级政府，尤其是地方政府，都获得了新的权力，可以更加深入地介入人们的生活。 7上海在春季受到了这些措施的冲击。

焦虑水平在三月份稳步上升。上海变得安静，因为整个住宅区（其中一些有数千人）被告知，由于靠近阳性病例，他们最多两周不得离开家；餐厅被告知必须关门；随着官员多次要求某些地区的每个人都必须进行 PCR 检测。到 3 月底，这些措施显然无法阻止 omicron。所以上海宣布封城，分为两个阶段：3月27日东半部（浦东）四天，4月1日西半部（我住的浦西）四天。锁定是什么意思？踏出门外的能力。少数幸运儿可能被允许在他们的公寓楼外冒险，但不允许在住宅区外冒险。

上海的封锁将持续四天多：八周后结束。 4 月至 5 月期间，有 2500 万人无法离开家园或住宅区。 （有些人甚至更长，因为他们的化合物在 3 月开始锁定。）主要的例外是能够每天或每隔几天出去进行几轮 PCR 测试。

3 月 27 日的公告是在市政府官员一再否认他们将实施全面封锁之后发布的。这消除了我大多数朋友囤积必需品的紧迫感。我也没有囤货，但我确实决定离开。通知后不到一个小时，我就订好了去云南的机票。上海的大多数人都会经历一个凄凉的四月。

食物成了压倒性的问题。大约一周后，新鲜蔬菜和水果就用完了。政府承诺提供食物，但事实证明，对于一个拥有 2500 万人口的城市来说，这在后勤方面是不可能的：卡车司机无法将货物运送到城市，而且农产品要么不够流通，要么被最终运送损坏。几乎我所有的朋友都告诉我，四月中旬有几天他们处理严重的粮食不安全问题。一些有孩子的人禁食，为孩子们节省食物。许多朋友醒着的大部分时间都花在采购食物上，常常天不亮就起床下单。由于人们设法建立了低效的团购网络，或者政府运营的食品物流系统解决了问题，这种情况花了大约三周的时间才得到改善。 8个

还有其他问题。任何有健康问题的人都担心他们的药物会用完。每个人都希望他们不需要住院治疗。一位朋友在封锁前不久摔断了脚踝，在等待手术期间卧床休息了两个月。另一个患上了疝气。第三个朋友的叔叔因为患有糖尿病无法进行透析治疗而去世。

如果一个测试呈阳性，情况会恶化。前往集中检疫设施（通常是会议中心的一张床）等待着。这有时是最不关心的。该市的政策是，如果测试呈阳性，则将孩子与父母分开；对分离的恐惧让父母担心得发疯，直到一场强烈抗议促使该市取消了这项政策。 9找不到另一户愿意寄养宠物的狗主人不得不决定是否在生病期间将其单独留在家中；或者让它在外面松散并希望最好。 （一名卫生工作者用铲子将柯基犬打死的病毒视频无助于使决定变得更容易。） 10阳性测试会召集清洁人员到家中，他们可以将所有东西——衣服、书籍、家具——都浸泡在里面。消毒剂。

对于一些人来说，这两个月并不算太可怕。老年人会说，封锁并不是他们生活中发生的最糟糕的事情，他们指的是文化大革命。一个微不足道的笑话流传开来，说上海在中国最资本主义的城市提前十年实现了“共同富裕”，这是习近平的标志性举措之一，因为每个人都有相同的生活水平。有些人与邻居建立了友情，否则他们永远不会认识，这种关系在封锁后持续了很长时间。其他有特权的人可能会更稳定地获得食物，或者能够争取到外出许可。

但对于更广泛的人群来说，情况变得令人绝望。在窗外敲打锅碗瓢盆成了一种常见的抗议形式；偶尔有人会被摄像机拍到尖叫着谴责政权。 11特别是对于年轻人来说，封锁令他们感到震惊。他们试图在社交媒体上发声。 12国家以惊人的审查水平作为回应。微博屏蔽了国歌的第一句：“起来，不为奴者。” 13它停止转发全国人大新闻发言人关于严格隔离可能不合法的言论。 14一度，社交媒体平台屏蔽了搜索结果中的“上海”一词。

从心理上讲，最困难的事情是没有人知道封锁会持续多久：几天或几周。每隔一段时间就会流传一段视频，声称显示有人从阳台跳下。朋友们谈到了三种类型的震惊。首先，延长身体限制的原始新颖性。其次，在这个时代和这个城市感到食物不安全的奇迹。第三，对政府声明的失望。许多人因为相信官方说上海不会实施封城而自责。他们看到了他们所在社区的阳性病例如何不出现在城市的数据发布中。他们分享了一位卫生官员的录音，他说这些控制措施不科学。 15

上海的病例数在 4 月下旬达到顶峰。 6月，该市解除了封锁。那时，许多外国人已经离开了这个国家（经过与当地官员的艰苦谈判才被允许去机场），有些人永远离开了。许多没有出国的上海人会来云南。随后，中国在新冠病毒控制方面享受了大约三个月的相对平静。

当我夏天回到上海时，这座城市看起来已经基本恢复正常。我最喜欢的两家餐馆关门了，但除此之外，这座城市又恢复了生机。常规发生了一个重大变化。政府要求每位居民每 72 小时进行一次 PCR 检测，方可进入任何公共场所。他们通过接触者追踪应用程序强制执行这一要求：卫生工作者会在测试前扫描一个人的二维码；每家商店或餐馆都会要求扫描该网站的二维码，以建立位置跟踪并查看最近测试的证据。由于测试是免费的并且站点很多，因此该过程最终并没有变得太麻烦。但一旦忘记及时试探，就有无法进入空间的危险。

该系统使上海的案件量保持在较低水平。但整个秋天，其他地区未能驯服 omicron。一些地区的情况很糟糕：重庆、新疆、河南和其他地区正在应对不断增加的案件量，这些案件量在封锁后不会下降。人们也厌倦了非凡的控制。两起事件已经引起了广泛的愤慨：在西安一名孕妇流产后，因为医院不会在没有阴性测试的情况下收治她16 ；深夜，一辆载人前往贵州检疫设施的公共汽车出轨，造成 27 人死亡。17这些事件让人们说，控制病毒的措施对人的伤害超过了病毒本身。

10 月中旬党代会后病例开始上升，这次是在关键城市北京。首都通过严格的社会控制，全年将案件控制在较低水平。到 11 月，看起来北京可能会像上海那样封锁。

抗议

政府在 11 月宣布了“优化”控制措施，理由是需要减少其经济影响。这些措施让一些地方政府有机会从根本上放弃限制。北京和上海还没有准备好这样做。他们开始收紧限制。那是抗议开始的时候。

抗议活动在短时间内分散到多个城市。其中两个最受关注：上海的工厂和河南的富士康工厂。那时我在上海。星期六晚上，微信开始流传，呼吁人们参加在旧法租界乌鲁木齐路举行的守夜活动。他们正在纪念新疆乌鲁木齐公寓火灾的遇难者，一周前有 10 人丧生。 18细节尚不清楚，但人们推测大流行控制措施阻止了消防员到达现场。那时，在看到当局如何阻止人们离开家后，每个人都表达了对火灾隐患的恐惧。

那个星期六午夜守夜活动正式开始时，我已经上床睡觉了。第二天早上，我在社交媒体上看到了视频：成排的警察与年轻人对峙，他们有时开始高喊“打倒共产党”和“习近平下台”。我住在乌鲁木齐路附近，这是一个酒吧和咖啡馆区，聚集了很多城市的外国人。我当然得去看看。当我星期天下午去十字路口时，人们和警察四处转转，​​但并没有什么大规模的示威活动。他们将在晚上晚些时候再次开始，届时警方将更加系统地清理该区域。他们设置路障，驱散人们，逮捕了一些人，从而制止了抗议活动。后来我很惊讶警察行动如此缓慢，直到第二天晚上才设置路障。

在面积和持续时间上，上海的抗议活动规模很小：在一个街区内持续了两个晚上。但他们震惊了我们许多中国人，他们从没想过会目睹公开示威。其他几个城市也发生了抗议活动，但绝大多数都是围绕大流行限制本身展开的。我相信，在经历了为期八周的封城创伤后，上海的抗议活动演变为政治活动并非偶然。

从零 Covid 到总 Covid

该州在 12 月放弃了零 Covid。是因为抗议吗？我预计抗议是致命一击，但他们不是主要力量。地方政府和民众已经处于精疲力尽的边缘：数周后，各地的严厉封锁仍无法让 omicron 倒闭。北京审视了这种情况，想知道中央政府是否能够对首都人口实施上海式的封锁，这意味着享受最大的政治纵容。 12 月 7 日，中央政府放弃了大部分大流行控制措施。于是病毒来了。

我在 12 月 23 日感染了新冠病毒。我在北京和云南认识的大多数人在一两周前就病倒了，但上海设法推迟了它的传播。在中央政府松绑之前，该市有望加强控制：上海要求人们在进入公共场所前必须获得 48 小时的测试结果（从 72 小时缩短）。然后，在我认为将被历史遗忘的一个脚注中，它禁止前往上海的人在五天内前往大多数公共场所。 19当地政府似乎并不准备放弃其为阻止 omicron 传播而精心调整的系统。

其他人似乎也没有做好准备。对我来说，州政府会在冬季最寒冷的月份之前和允许家庭做好准备之前放弃所有控制，这当然是没有意义的。医生和护士没有特别的警告，让他们面对激增的病人。宣传当局没有特别警告，因为他们从宣布必须在一周内消灭病毒转变为宣布下一周健康结果最终由个人负责。 20上海政府似乎没有特别警告，因为它正在加强控制。

对我来说，突然放弃零冠状病毒最令人惊讶的部分与退烧药（如布洛芬和扑热息痛）有关。政府在过去三年中为人们购买退烧药设置了障碍。卫生当局担心人们可能会在家中自行用药，而不是接受隔离。因此，药店会被勒令在疫情爆发期间将退烧药从货架上撤下，或者他们会要求顾客提供国民身份证以便追踪接触者。这阻止了购买，而且我怀疑制造商增加了生产。因此，许多中国人手头没有多少退烧药就遇到了他们的 Covid 浪潮。据我所知，中国是唯一一个在引起发烧的大流行期间遵循扭曲逻辑拒绝人们服用退烧药的国家。

随着 Covid 的到来，政府试图向所有人保证该病毒并不那么致命。但是，宣传当局派出谁来传递这一令人欣慰的信息呢？几周前，那些专家还说放弃控制是极其不负责任的。一位保持沉默的人是最高领导人习近平。他含蓄地承认了零冠状病毒的放弃，用通用术语来指代困难时期。他没有解释他个人坚持的一项政策的逆转，也没有安慰那些将面临宣传当局花了三年时间恐吓他们的疾病的人们。中央领导层中的其他人也没有。

政府安抚民众的策略是压制死亡数据。我对防止大规模恐慌的意图表示同情。但我觉得北京花了两年多的时间嘲笑西方的高死亡人数，然后不恰当地报告其死亡率数据，这是不公平的。 （截至 3 月 4 日，中国的官方 Covid 死亡人数为 87,468 人。）我怀疑中国确实设法避免了数百万人的死亡：因为 omicron 确实没有那么严重，或者中国疫苗的效果比预期的要好，或者其他原因。但我们可能永远无法确定。

到 1 月中旬，上海将再次热闹起来。酒吧和餐馆里挤满了对恢复正常生活感到兴奋的人们。我很高兴我经历了中国的整个 Covid 大流行，从 2020 年 2 月（当时我在北京）到 2023 年 1 月结束。每个人都为控制终于结束而感到高兴相对较低而不是明显较高。但我相信重新开放不需要如此突然。

我不知道其他上海人是怎么想的。我当地的朋友说，他们曾两次被带到清洁工那里：第一次是在 4 月无法储备必需品时，第二次是在 12 月无法储备药品时。他们想知道，如果北京要在冬天放弃一切，为什么会在春天实施如此严厉的封锁：这仅仅是因为中央政府将大流行控制作为政治事件的人质，即 10 月的党代会吗？我怀疑上海人不会有明显的不满迹象。但我认为会有残留的怨恨，表现得不可预测。

狂欢还是成长？

我们应该如何反思中国的2022？起点必须是一年中最重要的三件事。首先，零 Covid：非常严格的控制措施在 12 月全部被放弃。二是二十大后习近平进一步集中政治权力。第三，在入侵乌克兰前三周宣布与俄罗斯“没有禁区”的“无限友谊”。

在短期内，我预计三年零 Covid 下的大部分痛苦将被遗忘。上海街头的人们已经兴致勃勃，乐于享受亚洲最繁华城市之一的生活。就像欧洲和美国的人们将大流行病抛在脑后一样，我相信中国人也会。 21这不太可能，但几年后我们有可能像今天回顾中国 2015 年股市崩盘那样回顾零次新冠病毒：一个令人费解且痛苦的事件——产生许多关于中国政府失败的头条新闻——但回想起来，这在当时似乎并不是真正的决定性危机。

从长远来看，我相信2022年的事件证实，在习近平的领导下，中国共产党宁愿在意识形态狂欢中嬉戏，也不愿专注于追求经济增长。乌托邦主义曾经引诱过该党。在过去的七十年中，中国经历了长期的稳定时期，但不时被政府引发的混乱所打断。中国政府通常头脑冷静；但时不时地，它会屈服于狂躁的情节，在这种情况下，它会抓住人们，直到将他们从后院的钢炉锅中摇出，将他们从学校中摇出以进行阶级斗争，或将他们从头脑中摇出以实现动态零时，它才会松懈清理。然后它恢复了理智并放下了一个受虐的人，因为世界其他地方都惊呆了。尽管人们偶尔会感到神经震颤，但国家又一次恢复了理智和清醒。

有时评论员会就中国是资本主义还是社会主义、国家驱动还是市场驱动展开有倾向性的争论。当然，它永远不是其中之一。 “中国特色社会主义市场经济”等自相矛盾的口号，为党提供了广阔的意识形态回旋余地。北京的习惯是宣布几项互不相容的政策，同时推行，并在推进过程中调整优先事项。 In my view, contesting China’s system in binary terms will always be vain. But we can describe its tendencies. And on balance I believe we should think of the Chinese state today as an autocratic regime that is occasionally capable of economic pragmatism rather than a technocratic regime that slips occasionally into Marxist faults.

Over the last five years, Xi stepped up admonitions for the party to remember its Marxist-Leninist roots and to adopt a comprehensive view of national security, thus elevating the importance of ideology. China’s pursuit of zero-Covid subsequently allowed the party’s worst impulses to run riot. The state’s commitment to releasing credible data, long the target of skepticism, weakened further as the government simply halted reporting inconvenient data. 22 It expelled the bulk of American journalists in March 2020 (blaming the Wall Street Journal for carrying an insensitive headline on an editorial), while allowing little replenishment in their ranks. Its censorship of domestic voices and reproaches of foreign governments have gone into overdrive. And the pandemic has given it enormous practice in tracking individuals and detaining them.

The Chinese state remains enormously capable. But that statement demands refinements. First, it increasingly resembles a crew of firefighters who bring extraordinary skill to dousing fires that they themselves ignited. Like in 2020, after local authorities in Wuhan censored reports of a new viral infection, requiring a mammoth national effort to contain the spread of the virus later. Or as it tried to stamp out a financial crisis in the property sector this year by triggering a different kind of crisis, as housing demand and construction collapsed. Second, China’s problem is usually not too little state capacity, but too much. Beijing shows that it’s utterly possible to fail when it succeeds, for example by bringing too much state capacity to bear on solutions like zero-Covid or a one-child policy.

2022 is thus the year that China’s long-term growth prospects became more uncertain as its political risks grow more salient. It’s not just the domestic trends of zero-Covid and greater centralization of power. Beijing decided to partner with Russia, an imperial aggressor, when it is the US and Europe that have markets and technology. Beijing views Russia as an ally that can help sustain legitimacy for authoritarian regimes.

These have led two groups of people to express changes of heart on China. First, much of the foreign business community. In public survey results, many more American and European companies are reporting that they’re pausing investments in China. (See Bloomberg: “For the first time in about 25 years, China is not a top three investment priority for a majority of US firms.” 23 ) Over conversations, they tend to be more frank. Companies are no longer viewing China as the most reliable place to manufacture in the aftermath of the Shanghai lockdown; and European executives in particular find it difficult to advocate for greater investment after Beijing embraced Russia. The party’s lectures on Marxism, common prosperity, and “great changes unseen in a century” are bewildering to businesses. Multinationals want the infrastructure, in other words, without the drama.

Executives may not be interested in Marxism-Leninism, but Marxists-Leninists are deeply interested in businesses. Companies are thus starting to think of China as a weird creature: one-third the China of old, which showers riches on the savvy; one-third Japan, an enormous market that won’t deliver booming growth; and one third Russia, a country one must potentially depart from in a hurry. Several embassies are treating China as a hardship posting. Fine, those people are wimps. But capitalists too are hesitating. For executives, a posting to China used to pave the way to the highest corporate ranks. That’s starting to feel less the case, since China is so different a market—given political complexities and data controls—that a posting there is now viewed as often as a quagmire as an essential rung on the corporate ladder. The strategy of multinationals has become to maintain production for the domestic market while moving export-bound production to other countries (chiefly Vietnam and India).

The second group of alienated individuals consists of young, educated Chinese. The November protests, brief though they were, consisted of Shanghai youths frequenting the bar district, workers in Henan assembling electronics, and folks in Beijing who lived around the embassy district. It wasn’t the elderly who were in the streets. My friends despaired at two events in particular in 2022. First, when the government made it more difficult to obtain or renew passports in the spring, citing pandemic controls. 24 That really made people feel stuck. Second, after the party congress, when they saw that the country was intensifying its tightening course. It is perhaps not surprising that there has been a stream of articles throughout the year reporting that many Chinese entrepreneurs decided to decamp to Singapore.

I’ve pointed out in each of my previous letters that Beijing strangles the country’s cultural creativity. So I’m not going to stop now. Visual arts have done okay, but it’s hard to name much else that was vibrant in 2022: most films released this year were either nationalist blockbusters or sappy romances; video games received few licenses; and book publishing slowed due to the party congress. Creative friends of mine knew that it was impossible to publish anything given the political calendar, so some of them went abroad as a kind of sabbatical this year. 25

The censors came for me too: in February, I discovered that the Great Firewall blocked this site. I had to take a bit personally since my name makes up the URL. I haven’t managed to find any censors to be able to explain why, and there’s no reason for me to believe that I will ever be unblocked again. If I’m allowed to offer guesses, my preferred interpretation would be that the party is made up of Wagnerians upset at the strident partisanship for Italian comic opera in my 2021 letter . It fits the evidence, perhaps. The hard men who govern in Beijing have a sense of the grand, treating a party congress as a Wagner opera by other means—featuring less noise but greater downfalls.

Could the state win back broad confidence? That’s certainly possible. By early 2023, Beijing had significantly changed its rhetoric. It dropped not just zero-Covid, but many restrictions on the property sector and hostility towards internet platforms companies. I’m skeptical however that the friendliness will last forever. The party-state is able to say the most tender words of encouragement for entrepreneurs—after it strangled their businesses—and the sweetest words on the importance of growth, after it has delivered a beating to the economy. If growth picks up once more, who can be sure that the party will not return to its ideological revelries?

The authoritarian impulse

It’s time to level set. China’s growth prospects are off track, but the country retains huge strengths. How do we balance everything? I think that a fair assessment should acknowledge these five propositions. First, business can still be exciting as China continues broad catch-up growth that creates flourishing in particular sectors, even if economic headwinds are stronger too. Second, China’s cities continue to be nicer places to live in (especially Shanghai—Beijingers can ignore this part), offering better provision of parks, healthcare, and retail. Third, doomers have wrongly predicted the collapse of China for 30 years. Fourth, Xi has centralized considerable power, and over the past decade has tightened limits not just on freedom of speech, but increasingly on freedom of thought. And fifth, though cities are more pleasant, a small risk of catastrophe threatens to overturn one’s life.

China still has room for economic growth. That’s of course what we should expect given that China’s per capita GDP is one-sixth the level of America’s. I would discount the view that its demography guarantees calamity: a gently shrinking population will create a persistent drag to growth, yes, but it won’t be immediately hefty. At the same time, there are more serious headwinds: the property sector (which has so much economic weight) is at a structural peak, the western world is trying to decouple from China, and Xi’s re-prioritization of the state sector probably won’t do miracles for productivity growth.

Tailwinds are obvious in particular sectors. In 2022, China became a slightly larger auto exporter than Germany. A lot of that growth came from Tesla’s facility in Shanghai, but I still consider that a marker of Chinese prowess in manufacturing. I suspect that Chinese automakers won’t capture a large share in western markets, but they are in pole position to supply the developing countries that are in the early stages of electrifying their fleets. Chinese firms continue to dominate renewables, especially solar and batteries, with a chance to repeat that success in green hydrogen. There’s so much excitement among investors in biotech and life sciences (though I find these areas hard to judge).

China remains relatively weak in scientific research. But it is making up for that with a sound strategy, which I wrote about in the most recent issue of Foreign Affairs . Whereas the US has a track record of doing great science, China’s technology competitiveness is grounded in manufacturing capabilities. And sometimes China’s strategy beats America’s. Consider the solar industry, for which the US laid the scientific groundwork, only for Chinese firms to make all the photovoltaic cells. The US is undeniably more serious about manufacturing in the aftermath of the IRA and Chips Act. But I think that American policymakers are still not serious enough to pursue commoditized manufacturing for its own sake so that it can rebuild communities of engineering practice.

It’s fair to call out my previous letter as mostly focused on China’s strengths, especially the system’s capacity for reform. And I’m still sympathetic to Beijing’s effort to prioritize certain types of growth over others. Its animosity towards cryptocurrencies, for example, does not feel invalidated by the various blowups in that sector in 2022; and I share the government’s hostility towards video games and social media. I continue to believe that Beijing has an easier time with reforming its institutions relative to the US. And that its pathologies produce a better class of problems than US tendencies: Chinese structural overcapacity due to its supply side focus, for example, is superior to American structural undercapacity due to an impotence to build.

What I did not sufficiently appreciate is that a state that would so casually decapitate a sector like online tutoring would also have the will to visit catastrophe upon whole cities. And fear of those moves is wearing on people. I perceive a fading sense of enthusiasm among businesspeople and youths. The residue of resentment won’t wear on their faces; and I expect that the state will keep a lid on wide-scale protests. But there will be more foot-dragging and less self-initiative in response to Beijing’s centralized campaigns of inspiration.

I acknowledge that my views may be too colored by the resentments of Shanghainese around me; and that I might be wrongfooted in my assessments. 2022 was an annus horribilis for China and a year in which the US gained self-confidence. But the reverse was true at the end of 2021, when the Biden Administration looked beset by crises and Beijing decided to smash its most profitable companies while undertaking structural reform. The tables had reversed and could again. China after all combines lengthy periods of stasis with episodes of extreme movement.

The picture I see for the next few years however is that growth will slow further. The economy won’t return to the 2019 mid-single digit levels of growth, but something closer to US levels. I believe that China is likely to succeed on many technological endeavors, but these bright spots can’t compensate for broad deceleration. The major source of risk is that the political system is more likely to squash growth in the longer run.

Aging autocrats turn easily cranky. It’s especially bad since factional struggle is built into the Leninist system: Xi will likely never stop feeling paranoid even if he has surrounded himself with sycophants. So I think the party-state will continue to make unforced errors. It has, after all, upset many countries with gratuitous insults. And it has managed to pull off the impossible: blowing away China’s enormous stock of human capital. China has superb entrepreneurs and artists who could bring the national glory that Xi craves only if they were allowed to do their creative work. And even any high schooler could be a more persuasive propagandist than the Ministry of Foreign Affairs if they were allowed a platform to speak. But there is so much ruination among Marxist-Leninists, who cannot suffer that there are areas outside of the party’s control. The party in recent years have sequentially alienated people inclined to be more friendly: foreign businesses, European governments, domestic artists and entrepreneurs. I bet these unforced errors will continue.

I find it astonishing that the Shanghai government succeeded in keeping the population indoors for two months without even having to truck the People’s Armed Police out of their barracks. Given the enormous investment into tracking people over the last few years, I think that the leadership will give into its worst impulses as growth continues to fall. That means harsher tightening rather than permitting people a chance to be more free.

To the mountains

Is there room to maneuver in an era of political tightening? Perhaps so. It’s time to follow the wisdom of the ancients and head into the mountains.

The mountains are still high, though the emperor may no longer be so far away. As Scott wrote, the state has mostly learned to climb the hills. Mostly. There are still some ways to avoid central directives once one is in the mountains. Otherwise, a more subtle form of escape is possible in population cores. One of Scott’s earlier works, Weapons of the Weak , documents everyday forms of peasant resistance that falls short of collective rebellion: foot dragging, petty noncompliance, feigned ignorance, or the strategic use of rude nicknames for officers of the state. Chinese are already good at this stuff. We should be sympathetic to their larger “efforts to hold one’s own against overwhelming odds—a spirit and practice that prevents the worst and promises something better.”

There is something about the Han-Chinese gaze that is transfixed by glories of the state, whether these take the form of big walls, big ships, or big numbers. China’s intellectual tradition is to celebrate state power. It’s perhaps not much of an exaggeration to say that imperial China monopolized the entirety of intellectuals, through its administration of the imperial examination system, which induced the country’s most ambitious to spend their lives studying texts aimed at increasing the power of the state. Thus it’s unsurprising that China failed to develop much of a liberal tradition: court philosophers tend not to be enthusiastic advocates for constraints on the court.

Meanwhile, it’s not a hidden fact that imperial China had its most splendid cultural flourishing when the polity was most fragmented—during times that carry faintly apocalyptic names like the Warring States period, when Confucianism and Daoism came into shape—and that it experienced its worst political decay after continuous centralization, whether Ming or Qing. Perhaps these historical patterns will repeat again.

I’m uncomfortable with the Han-centric view that has so many gradations of barbarians, whether these are mountain folks, horse folks, or just foreign folks. 26 I wish we can celebrate the rebellious, marginal peoples that have practiced ways to stay at arms-length from the state. It might be a hard ask for the hard men in Beijing to admire unruly mountain people, many of whom have loose ethnic commitments and no written language. But life in Yunnan was much better than being in the big cities last year. “Far from being seen as a regrettable backsliding and privation,” Scott writes: “becoming a barbarian may have produced a marked improvement in safety, nutrition, and social order.”

I advocate for departing from the court center too. So it’s time to say: it’s a barbarian’s life for me.

I thank a number of people for reading a draft of this section or discussing the core ideas with me.

***

It’s time to talk about books.

2022 was one of my worst reading years. Covid was the cause. No regrets, of course. Travel is usually a greater source of learning than the page.

James C. Scott wrote most of the books I took with me on my trips through Asian highlands. The least interesting of his works, in my view, is Seeing Like A State: like the ministries he describes, it uses a top-down perspective to view matters more interesting from the bottom-up. Far more engaging is The Art of Not Being Governed , which describes state-repellent practices among mountain folks in Asia. Against the Grain is superb in a similar way: the careful marshaling of extensive details, written as usual in his appealing prose, to arrive at conclusion with quixotic undertones—favoring something between the gradual elimination of grains in the human diet to the total expulsion of governments in human society. I also enjoyed one of Scott’s earlier works: Weapons of the Weak , an ethnographic account of his fieldwork in a Malaysian village.

My favorite magazine is the London Review of Books, and my favorite series there are the portraits of delightful animals by Katherine Rundell. (See, for example, Consider the Golden Mole .) Her new book, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne , works so well because she wrote Donne as a delightful animal. Just as some animals can be talented in many things, whether digging or hunting, so too Donne: an erotic poet turned Protestant preacher, a former Catholic turned anti-Jesuit propagandist. The book also works because Rundell adores her subject: “His poetry will not hold still. It tussles and shifts, the way desire does.” She is so earnest. After reading her on Donne, I picked up an earlier work: Why You Should Read Children’s Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise , writing there: “I believe in the wild and immeasurable value of pouring everything you think good or important into a text, that another might draw it out again.“

Virginia Postrel’s The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World is a book on math, markets, female labor, science, and industrial production. Textiles stimulated many things: development of bills of exchange (started by clothiers in London), the creation of the global chemicals industry (the A in BASF stood for Anilin, a synthetic indigo dye), and the first rung on the ladder of industrialization (since so many countries have their manufacturing start by producing textiles). It is another book of fascinating details. I did not know, for example, that a Viking sail of 100 square meters would require 60 miles of yarn, such that it took less time to build a wooden ship than to spin its woolen sail.

China’s Motor: A Thousand Years of Petty Capitalism by Hill Gates feels remarkably fresh and true for a book published in 1997. Her argument is that China has been locked between the “tributary” mode of production, or trade meant for the pleasure of the emperor, and the “petty capitalist” mode of production, which is the trade between cunning traders. Gates is a committed Marxist, and her book is weakened by this insistence to examine imperial China through an Marxist framework. But it makes up for that with several brilliant insights.

The most valuable is her view that there has always been duality in China: court and traders, self-professed Marxists and rough-and-tumble entrepreneurs. Somewhat opposing tendencies are often simultaneously true in China, and that dialectic can resolve unpredictably: “In individuals and collectivities, vigorous support of some grand moral program was abruptly succeeded by equally vigorous support of something entirely different.” And: “A sophisticated bureaucracy in which poets were also expected to be engineers have been locked in an endless, cruel, but also fertile embrace with the world’s best businesspeople.” Some things really haven’t changed from imperial times. “Officials, in the name of the emperor, had many times in the past entirely restructured the agrarian economy… and always claimed the right to determine the relationships between people and land.”

Highly stimulating was The Jesuits , by Markus Friedrich. The Society of Jesus has been impressive for several reasons. First, its enormous capacity for feuding; it doesn’t matter how powerful the opponent was—Jansenists, the Inquisition, the Propagation for the Faith—Jesuits were willing to fight anyone, over grounds doctrinal or jurisdictional. (Their enemies paid them back in 1773, when Clement XIV suppressed the order.) Second, its robust tradition of scholarship: the Society built a network for exchanging objects and scholarship across its research centers all over the world. Also: “The fact that books by Jesuits kept landing on the papal Index of Forbidden Books was extremely embarrassing to the order’s superiors.” Third, their focus on cultivating the political, commercial, and religious elites in cities. That strategy helped the order gain political access to the Qing court in Beijing, but from a missionary point of view it was unsuccessful: the orders that focused on the Chinese countryside, like the Lazarists, won far greater numbers of converts.

I had not known that Jesuit entertainment drew large crowds: “Burning props were as much a part of the repertoire of Jesuit drama as scenes of war and nature. In light of such sensational multimedia spectacles, it was no wonder that Jesuit plays were often extremely well attended.”

I couldn’t help, as I read about this Catholic order, to compare the Vatican with the Communist Party. It is not only that China is moving towards life terms for the top leader. Both the Holy See and the CCP must dedicate an immense amount of thought to make doctrine fit into a practical philosophy of governance. Sometimes they fail, producing cadres willing only to mouth Marxist or Christian pieties without believing in all the tenets of the faith. A tendency to invoke philosophy sometimes allow scholarly corners to become centers of reaction: just as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was viewed as holding back reform in recent decades, so too was the Theory Bureau of the Propaganda Department a thorn in Deng’s side during Reform and Opening. Meanwhile, every so often the leader must enforce a message for everyone to get in line, as the Jesuits did with their Thirteenth Rule: “We ought always to hold that the white which I see, I shall believe to be black, if the hierarchical church so stipulates.” That sounds quite in line with a party that would produce something like Two Establishes and Two Safeguards. 27

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I wrote that Yunnan has greater geographic variation than most countries. Its cuisine does too.

“Yunnan cuisine” may be an unsound category as such. Sichuan, just north of Yunnan, has a cuisine that yields easier summary, given the centrality of peppercorn and spice in a set number of cooking styles. That standardization helps to explain why Sichuan restaurants have successfully expanded throughout the country and also overseas.

Yunnan resists any underlying unity in its cuisine. It’s a land of jungle food and mountain food, in which cooking methods that make sense for the northern snowlands don’t bear any resemblance to those in the southern rainforests. It’s not just that culinary trends tend to splinter when they enter the mountains. Border cities tend also to take inspiration from nearby regions: Tibetan, Burmese, Laotian, and Thai traditions in the west, and Sichuan, Guizhou, Guangxi and Vietnamese traditions in the east. There are many dishes particular to a mountain and its tribe. Consider the Yi people of Chuxiong, who “occasionally host a grand banquet in which they cook an entire ram. The first set of dishes comprises of up to 30 cold cuts, prepared from the hooves, face, and head, dipped in soybeans with mint.” 28

I can describe Yunnan cuisine only through dishes special to me. I think of pickled bamboo shoots, gently fried, lending their funky sourness to fish soups. I think of ham, sometimes steamed on its own, sometimes sautéd with some chili peppers, sometimes dropped in the pot to enliven a broth. I think of whole stems of flowers, tossed with vinegar in salad. I think of various types of rice noodles, in thick strings like Udon or as thumb-sized slices, which are more supple-bodied and offer greater chewiness than noodles made of wheat. I think of simple farm cheeses—a rare find in Chinese culinary traditions—steamed with slices of ham. I think of spicy pickles, indiscriminately sharpening the flavors of noodle soups or a vegetable dish, say a quick fry of lotus root. I think of yellow strips of pea pudding, tossed in chili oil, vinegar, and some bean sprouts. I think of a simple lunch of rice cakes fried with ham, eggs, and chives. I think of stewed beef garnished with handfuls of fresh mint, of mashed potatoes that do not drown in butter but are suffused with salty pickles, and of simple pans of soup that have up to a half-dozen types of dark, leafy greens.

I think most of all about mushrooms, which are the pride and glory of Yunnan. Mushrooms are still too smart for us to tame in greenhouses, so the best are foraged in the wild during the rainy months of the summer. The best types offer mesmerizing combinations of flavor and mouthfeel. Their flavors tend to be best with a light sauté, combined with chili peppers for a jaunty kick, and ham slices if need be. My favorite is the Ganba, found only under pine trees, which release so much gorgeous savoriness that it can suffuse a whole plate of rice with its musk when fried. Hot butter awakens the flavors of the matsutake, a delicate and savory mushroom. (Anna Tsing’s The Mushroom at the End of the World is a fascinating account of this commodity trade, especially how Yunnan satisfies a large portion of Japan’s appetite for the matsutake.) Various types of porcinos taste best when fried with chilis, releasing their rich and meaty taste into the spicy edge into the peppers. I remember an excellent meal of morels stewed in fresh cream served over a yak steak.

There are two ways that one can go wrong with mushrooms. The first is to eat them in hotpot, where their textures dissolve and flavors die over a boil. Unfortunately I have had to endure this waste before. The second is to be poisoned. Unfortunately that has happened to me too. The first time wasn’t too bad, only some vomiting. The second time was worse, involving hallucinations over the course of several days. That has not put me off from putting on boots on my feet and a basket on my back to continue my foraging adventures. Of course one has to be more careful, since every year people die of such poisonings. But one also can’t allows a fear of misfortune to develop into an impediment to culinary pleasure in the mushroom paradise of Yunnan.

For my money, the food of Yunnan’s northern snowlands tend to be relatively less interesting. Tibetan dishes are simple and doughy affairs, enjoyable mostly because they offer warmth from the cold: a hotpot of yak meat accompanied by yak butter tea can be delightful. But it remains a treat only if it’s enjoyed infrequently. The food of the Naxi people in Lijiang is mostly unremarkable, which is another reason to minimize time in the city. I found a lot more to eat in Dali. It has a liberal use of pickles to enhance its dishes, and the nearby lake also offers nice assortments of fish. I never however managed to find time however to enjoy one of the local Bai traditions, which is to eat the skin and raw meat of pork in the morning.

When I miss the food of Yunnan, it is the dishes from Xishuangbanna that make me most dreamy. The city’s lifestyle is nocturnal since the people are dependent on rubber production: rubber trees are best tapped at night when temperatures are cool. Therefore the streets are fairly empty in the midday sun, coming alive in the evening. That is when people crack open beers and enjoy grilled meats before they enter the forests.

I’ve had meat skewers in night markets all over China. The best I’ve had is in Xishuangbanna. The Dai people tend to wrap meats with sweetgrass or banana leafs when they grill using charcoal: the result is that the meat is charred on the outside with the moisture still sealed in on the inside. They use a wide variety of meats: pork cheeks that offer wonderful chewiness, long lengths of spare ribs, and tilapia fish stuffed with herbs and chiles. These meats are garnished with piles of ginger, chilies, garlic, and lemongrass, or served more simply with a dip of chili powder.

Charcoal grilling is not the only way to cook meat in Xishuangbanna. The Dai would also throw certain meats like tripe and beef arteries into a fry, then lace the plate with ginger, chilies, garlic, and lemongrass—sharpening the fatty meat with a dazzling edge of flavor. Another way to cook, more common with the Jinuo people, is to wrap mushrooms or chicken in banana leaf with spice mixtures over a low flame. Chicken is common either over the grill or in a soup. Some of the best noodles I’ve had in China are in Xishuangbanna: tangy rice noodles in chicken broth, garnished with a few pieces of liver and an assortment of pickles.

The rice is sometimes cooked inside bamboo tubes turned over a fire. A more photogenic dish is sticky rice baked inside a pineapple, in which chunks of the fruit would lend their tangy sweetness to the carbs. The vegetables in Xishuangbanna are special as well. Locals prepare salads made with young papaya or green mangoes, dressed in chilies and lime juice. Whenever I have grilled meats, I take care to order both a salad or a soup made up of bitter greens (like squash leafs and mustard greens) sometimes made more sour with tomato or pickled bamboo.

At one corner of northwest Yunnan, three rivers have their headwaters, at one stretch running parallel with each other at close distance: a raindrop in that area might be blown into the Mekong and be carried off towards Vietnam, into the Yangtze and go towards Shanghai, or into the Salween and end up in the Indian Ocean. I’m a fan of this nice little painting from painter Zhou Rui, depicting the course of the Mekong. Image credit to the Xishuangbanna International Art Exhibition. Elsewhere, there is something called the Yunnan School of Painting .

Open questions:

1. Why did the minority groups in the flat plains of China’s north (be they Mongolians, Jurchens, or Manchus) tend to model themselves after the Han state, adopting its language and court customs, while the minority groups in the southwest have tended to focus on running away from Han civilizing efforts? The northern peoples were both able to quickly assume imperial rule when they conquered Han forces, but they also lost their distinctiveness after a few generations. Does geography explain this difference?
2. I wonder how other writers are integrating ChatGPT in their work. I still haven’t quite found it to be a necessary tool. I want it to be a research assistant, but that’s a non-starter given that it can’t provide research citations. And I want to use it to brainstorm, but so far I’m not good enough at prompting it to be helpful yet.
3. What are other people’s favorite things to read about mountains?

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