VOLUME III, SEMESTER 2, CHAPTER 23, SECTION 1
The Eastern Frame, the State Gives the Direction
The last chapter looked at the first use: loosed to the freest. This section looks at the second. It started far later, and started far lower besides. Its core is not to loose, it is to give the direction. Measure it with that same rule of the last section: look first at the core, then at the merit, then at the cost, not one line spared, not one line puffed. This volume does one thing only from beginning to end: set out positions, and let a person look for himself.
One. Look first at its starting point
To look at this use and not look at its starting point is to fail to understand why it walked as it later did. Pull the picture back a hundred years and more. The modern beginning of this land was low to the point of nearly having no bottom: war fought one time after another, indemnity paid one sum after another, factories not a few, railways not a few li, steel not much produced in a year, the literate a minority, the great majority a whole life in the fields.
More crucial still: it was cut off time and again, having just gathered a little holding, and one more war smashed it to pieces. Remember this starting point. A person standing up from a starting point like this, what does he fear most in his heart? What he fears most is slow.
Two. That one decision
The true turning came in 1978. That year, this frame made one decision: to connect the market, this force, back in. See clear the way it connected it: it did not copy over that set of the last section, it did not loose the hands entirely. What it did was: fix the direction first, then gather this force in concentration onto these several directions.
The last chapter spoke of it: this force knows no good and evil, only the differential. Then what this use is doing, said plainly, is one line: it lifts its own hand and goes to build that differential.
Three. The merit it made
Set out its merit. The first line, and the greatest: it pulled several hundred million people out of extreme poverty, in the time of a few decades, more than seven hundred million. This number, look at it slow: more than seven hundred million people, and in the history of humankind, there is no second time.
The second line, infrastructure: a high-speed rail net spread over the whole country, laid in a few decades, and road, power, water, port, network, reaching into the mountains, reaching the far and remote villages. The third line, manufacture: from being unable to make one decent steel pipe to being able today to make the greater part of the industrial goods of this world. The fourth line, fast: the same road others walked two hundred years, it walked in a few decades. These several lines of merit, like the five of the last section, are owned without discount. To own it is not to take a side, it is to see the fact clear.
Four. Where these several merits grew from
These several merits, why could they grow in this frame? The core is still that one line: the state gives the direction, plus the concentration of strength. Think a moment: to lay a railway reaching into the deep mountains, will the market lay it of itself? Most likely not, for that line does not earn in the short term, and it is not on the differential table.
Then what to do? It fixes the direction, gathers the strength over, and in a few decades it is laid. To pull seven hundred million out of poverty in a few decades, leaning on this force to flow slowly of itself is much slower, and it lays road by direction, brings power, opens schools, doing it village by village. See clear the difference of these two uses: that set of the last section trusts this force to run out the best road of itself, and this set does not bet on that, it trusts that a person can, for this force, point out a faster road first. One is to let go of the hands, one is to fix the direction.
Five. Yet this hand has its own greatest risk
The hand that gives the direction is the engine of this frame. Yet it too has its own greatest risk, and that risk is three characters only: used past measure. Laozi, more than twenty-five hundred years ago, in one line pointed out this measure.
Governing a great state is like cooking a small fish, runs the line in Laozi, the sixtieth chapter of the Daodejing. To govern a great state, do it like frying a small fish. How is a small fish fried? The fire must be steady, yet you cannot keep turning it, turn it once, twice, still fine, turn it too often and that small fish falls to pieces. See clear the measure of this line of Laozi’s: he does not say do not fry, the fish must be fried, the fire must be there, what he says is that the hand turning the fish must have measure, must be steady, must know when to move and when to stop. This hand used exact is the greatest strength of this frame, and this hand used past measure, the force that should have run of itself is stirred into confusion, the degree the market should have read is set by force, the road a person should have found himself is pointed by force, and that small fish is fried to pieces.
Six. What this section set, crossing to the next
This section looked at the second use. Its starting point is extremely low, cut off again and again, so it fears slow most. In 1978 it connected the market, this force, back in, yet it did not loose the hands entirely, it lifted its own hand to build that differential: the state gives the direction, plus the concentration of strength. Its merit: more than seven hundred million out of extreme poverty, a high-speed rail net over the whole country, a whole holding of manufacture, and that character fast. Its risk, Laozi pointed through in one line: governing a great state is like cooking a small fish, the hand must be steady but cannot keep turning, turn too often and the fish falls apart.
Speaking to here, this section has spoken only the merit and the measure, the cost is not yet spoken. Remember the meaning the last chapter set: the merit and the cost are two faces of one and the same thing, not two things. Those six costs of the last section grew from the core of loosed to the freest, then the cost of this set too must grow from the core of the state gives the direction, the concentration of strength. The next two sections set the two frames side by side stroke by stroke: first against the merit, then against the cost. And to the deepest place of the comparison, an answer will be dug out that leaves one stunned: the excess of the two frames is in truth one and the same error.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section 2 Merit Set Against Merit, Roads Apart That Come to One Home