US-China conflict? Not really - with respect to freedom, both nations share a common heritage

Those calling for Anglosphere resistance to China's rise are framing the matter as a zero-sum battle for freedom, yet British columnist Kenan Malik, in a recent piece for The Guardian, disputes the notion that the "Anglosphere" was ever freedom's flagship. As early as 1900, American historians imagined a nationalist contest between the English spirit of liberty and the dictatorial spirit of Slavic nations. He wrote: "A century later, it's not Anglo-Saxon pitted against Slav, but the West against China."

In the new Cold War, the Anglo-American media pit freedom and democracy against the Despotic Oriental, but, as Dr Malik warned, things are not so simple: "Only by reducing liberty to notions of the 'free market', 'small government' and 'common law' could the idea of the Anglosphere as the principal fount of liberty be imagined."

Malik's survey of English history showed that the free market doesn't always promote democratic ideals. In fact, the free market demands austerity measures, but that fuels inequality, whereas Thomas Jefferson held that government should foster equality and the people's happiness.

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Inequality in turn, invites populist movements, and those movements have now claimed the word "freedom" for themselves.

George Monbiot explained: "After left-ish political parties fell into line with corporate power, the right seized the language they had abandoned . . . Now there has been an almost perfect language swap."

And so Jair Bolsonaro's fascistic party in Brazil now labels itself "pro-democracy". So does the Republican Party in the United States along with its "Freedom Caucus", despite the fact that the V-Dem Institute, which measures political parties against democratic values, ranks America's Republicans alongside other authoritarian parties, such as the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey and Fidesz in Hungary.

Together with Boris Johnson's Tories in the UK, right-wing populists in the US and Brazil demand the freedom to spread disease and disinformation. The latter two even claim the freedom to incite insurrection against the standing government.

In response, columnists in leading centre-left outlets have called for curbs on disinformation, treating it as a product of the digital age - but as a historian, I see it as a modern upgrade from doublespeak.

Arguably, doublespeak has been deployed throughout European history to justify minority rule. China had a role to play in that process, but not the one you might imagine.

In his political writings, the Greek philosopher Aristotle made use of terms that later were translated as "freedom" or "liberty" - but for Aristotle, freedom wasn't for everyone. Only the hereditary patrician class was free.

That idea was parroted by European thinkers from medieval times onward. British conservative Edmund Burke described it this way: "By this means [inheritance] our liberty becomes a noble freedom. It carries an imposing and majestic aspect [and so] nature teaches us to revere individual men; on account of their age, and on account of those from whom they are descended."

In that system, a nobleman's freedom allowed him to use tax monies for personal benefit, appoint relatives to office, or order the magistrate to hang the guy who poached rabbits on his estate.

In the early 18th century, a group of Englishmen called the Free Thinkers began to challenge that notion of freedom. In the Free Thinker issue of March 1718, an anonymous pamphleteer wrote: "To think freely is not to think at random: it is not to think like a fool or a madman; but like a philosopher: it is not to think without the checks of reason and judgment; but without the encumbrances of prejudice and passion."

Two decades later, another Free Thinker wrote that the "edicts" and "speeches" translated from Chinese "may be affirmed to be as noble essays upon liberty and government, as ever appeared in any country of Europe, not excepting Great Britain itself".

For that writer, "liberty" could include people who weren't noble, or even "Anglospheric". Freedom didn't depend on lineage. The only requirement was respect for reason and judgment. That meant putting limits on what a writer could say, but it also meant limits on what government could do.

The Free Thinkers had noticed that Chinese "philosophers" could express opinions on government, and even serve as officials. Since many in their circle weren't noble, they styled themselves philosophers, and quoted Chinese essays to support their arguments.

One of them, Eustace Budgell, made regular use of Chinese essays in an argument for freedom of the press. Samuel Johnson admired Chinese policy documents where you could "read of emperors who (have) ... brought their actions willingly to the test of reason, law, and morality, and scorned to exert their power in defense of that which they could not support by argument."

Another freedom mentioned in the Chinese translations was freedom from poverty and distress, as in the Mencius: "Endeavor all you can to render your people happy; take care they are reasonably provided with all necessaries: see that the grounds are cultivated, and that plenty reigns."

Thanks to Mencius, social spending in Imperial China was the norm, in contrast with the austerity measures of European aristocracies. Eventually, in the "Anglosphere", the likes of Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson would echo the Free Thinker pamphlets, insisting that public policy should be debated according to the facts, and should promote the people's happiness.

The irony here is that the traditional English notion of freedom looks rather authoritarian, while the modern ideal drew from what the French philosopher Montesquieu called Chinese "despotism". To make sense of that today we must remember that Montesquieu was given to doublespeak. By "despotism" he meant depriving the nobility of their "liberties".

To this day, politicians use doublespeak to hide the fact that populist "freedom" still means "privilege". Because even liberals understand freedom as a contest between nations, they may fail to distinguish between freedom as a privilege and freedom as a right.

A classic case is freedom of speech. When right-wing media outlets spread disinformation, or encourage the overthrow of the standing government, some on the left will defend those actions as freedom of speech, but it is privilege they defend.

Freedoms are enjoyed by all citizens, like the right to argue against policy, or to bring grievances to a court of law.

On the other hand, when media moguls encourage insurrection, an act that could be deemed criminal under US law concerned with conspiracy, it isn't because Americans enjoy freedom of the press; it is because those people are wealthy and have powerful friends in Congress.

If Americans truly enjoyed press freedom, why is it that for decades television meteorologists avoided mentioning the climate emergency? Dennis Muller wrote for The Conversation on this problem last year, noting that "freedom of the press does not mean freedom to publish false or misleading material. Harm is a long-established criterion for abridging free speech. John Stuart Mill, in his seminal work, On Liberty, published in 1859, was a robust advocate for free speech but he drew the line at harm."

Genuine freedom requires equality, and that means limits. For those of us in academia, speech is always subject to rules. If a professor habitually distorts the facts or serves up specious arguments, she won't get promoted, and may lose her job, yet no one regards those limits as an attack on free speech.

Those limits protect everyone's freedom to debate public issues, since anyone can make use of facts and reason. If you remove those limits, no one is free to debate, because mere wealth has the power to outshout the truth.

China and the US share a common history, where government once was charged with fostering equality and the people's happiness. The conflict, then, isn't between a freedom-loving West and a Despotic Asia, but between thinking "like a madman" versus rational debate.

On paper, both nations today accept equality and the people's happiness as ideals. Actually working toward those goals is more a matter of policy than ideology, and effective policies can be shared between nations when they both compete and cooperate as equals.

Unless, of course, you think the most crucial matter is establishing "from whom [someone is] descended". Some might prefer it that way, but on no account could that be construed as democratic.

Martin Powers has written three books on the history of social justice in China, two of which won the Levenson Prize for best book in pre-1900 Chinese Studies. His recent book, published by Routledge, traces the impact of Chinese political theory and practice on the English Enlightenment. He is currently professor emeritus at the University of Michigan.

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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