Wen Yang: The 21st Century - Private Empire and Public Empire

Wen Yang: The 21st Century - Private Empire and Public Empire The theme of the world in the 20th century is the showdown between socialism and capitalism, and finally the disintegration of the Eastern Socialist Bloc...

Wen Yang: 21st Century - Private Empire and Public Empire The theme of the world in the 20th century was the confrontation between socialism and capitalism, which ended with the disintegration of the Eastern Socialist Bloc and a historic ending. What will be the new pattern of the world in the 21st century? Is this global integration under the unipolar hegemony of the United States? The last decade of the 20th century briefly revealed the prospect of globalization, universal prosperity, technological progress, and the third wave of democracy. The entire world seemed to be developing toward what the United States hoped for, and optimism and high spirits permeated the world. Americans today call that period the Age of Optimism, which lasted about ten years, because a series of major events since then have made it difficult for Americans to continue to be optimistic. The 9-11 attacks and the "war on terror" launched by the United States caused the United States to lose its moral image as a leader. After the subsequent financial crisis and economic depression, the United States no longer became a role model for other countries to follow. This change is huge. In particular, the decline of the United States has coincided with the rapid rise of emerging economies such as China, India, and Brazil. How to understand the new pattern of today's world? It seems meaningless to just focus on the topics of whether the United States has really declined and when China will surpass or even replace the United States, because people have long discovered that the great changes in the entire world are not just the rise and fall of power among sovereign states, but also some huge organizations that are also determining the new world power structure. The comprehensive strength and influence of the world's largest non-state enterprises, such as Apple, Exxon, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, etc., can no longer be described by the term "rich as a country". If measured only in terms of total assets, a new "three worlds" division is actually as follows: the first world is a "powerful country group", which is roughly the group of modern powerful countries participating in the G20 summit; the second world is not a group of sovereign countries, but about 2,000 non-state, private large-scale multinational enterprises. Each of these giant corporations has the ability to buy up a bunch of poor countries that are on the verge of bankruptcy; and the Third World is a collection of all those sovereign countries in name only. According to the standards of the Brookings Institution, there are about 140 countries on the list of "failed countries" and about 40 countries on the list of "heavily indebted countries." In such a new "three worlds" landscape, many traditional dogmas about the international system are outdated. 1. Sovereign states are no longer the only actors in the international system. Many giant private companies are influencing human society on an unprecedented scale. 2. Seventy to eighty percent of sovereign states have degenerated into "quasi-states" that are almost paralyzed and do nothing. 3. Many giant multinational companies are becoming more and more like countries, while many successful small countries are becoming more and more like giant companies. 4. Global power is no longer just balanced and distributed among the public powers represented by countries, but a large part has been controlled by the private sector. 5. The public power of a sovereign country represents the interests of the "people", and large private enterprises are no longer "the people". They are not responsible for any public interests, such as safety, environment, health, education, welfare, cultural undertakings, etc. They just blindly pursue profits; 6. Those giant private enterprises whose business scope covers all parts of the world, whose corporate power penetrates into various fields, and whose number of employees exceeds the population of small and medium-sized countries, has an internal structure similar to an empire, but the nature of imperial power is completely private. Just last month, an English book titled "Private Empire" published in the United States finally broke the story of this new world structure. Author Steve Coll is the author of multiple best-selling books, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Journalism, and president of the New America Foundation. In this book, which deeply reveals the inside story of the American Exxon oil company, the author lets the world know how far this typical modern private empire has developed. It has its own worldview and values, its own foreign policy, its own governance style and its own corporate culture, most of which are unknown to outsiders. The massive rise of private empires, as David Rothkopf, another observer who also pays attention to this field, said, is the most significant but least talked about event of our time. If these keen thinkers are right, then the new landscape of the 21st century is likely to be a game between private empires and public empires. Viewed this way, the 2008 financial crisis was the first scourge of private empires in the new century. A very small number of people did not hesitate to sacrifice the interests of the global community, including the interests of the United States, for their own selfish interests. From this point of view, the United States is the country that most condones private empires in the world, although these private empires based in the United States do not necessarily represent the interests of the United States; China is the country that least tolerates private empires on its own soil, although China also accepts the expansion of major private empires in its own country. Viewed in this way, it can be studied to what extent the Sino-US rivalry is a confrontation between China and the public empire of the US government, and to what extent it is a game between China and the private empire parasitic in the United States. May 25, 2012