This Chinese New Year, Joseph Mahoney again made dumplings stuffed with tomato and beef, something he learned in Harbin. He is an American professor at East China Normal University in Shanghai. He says he is"a Shanghainese and a Northeasterner. "
"Shanghai is a big, open city, and one of the things I like about Shanghai is that the vast majority of people who live there were not born here, so I'm kind of a'new Shanghainese'. "Mahoney smiled and said, "I also have a deep affection for the Northeast. The first time I came to China was in the Northeast. I love Northeastern people, Northeastern food, and Northeastern-style humor. This may be because I am from Alabama, and the people from my hometown are very similar to the people from the Chinese Northeast. "
The path to China
Before coming to China, Mahoney's CV was a bit"dazzling": He worked in the financial sector, then joined the US government to formulate public health policies, and then entered academia to study Marxism. In his view, each of these turns in the last decades eventually led him to a path to China.
“To others, my life seems to have gone through some unexpected turns, "Mahoney told the reporter of the Global Magazine with a smile"But to me, these turns all make sense. If you want to find something that you hope to work for, you have to go through a maze full of challenges. "
Mahoney grew up in rural Alabama. Back then, bullying was common in American schools. "This made me especially hate school bullies and people who do bad things. I was also very passionate about helping those in vulnerable situations. As I grew older, I began to try to understand the root causes of social injustice. When I was in college, I traveled to Central America and some poor areas in the United States to do research. But at the time, I wasn't sure how to understand poverty from a social justice perspective. "
After college, Mahoney first worked at a local bank, "and I quickly discovered that it was a very corrupt system. There were a lot of banks at the time that routinely used‘legitimate’investment methods to‘launder'money from some of the mega-rich that came from unclean/unknown sources. I didn't want to be associated with them. "At the same time, working in a bank also opened Mahoney's eyes to the huge gap between rich and poor in American society. He began to think about how he could do something for ordinary people. Soon after, he quit his job and went back to college to study international health. After graduation, he joined the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
This experience gave Mahoney a deeper look at American society. "I left banking because I wanted to do some right. I started in charge of communicating with residents who were suffering from industrial pollution and learning about their health conditions. I soon discovered that when I tried to help those who were suffering, there was still nothing I could do because the government was not doing what they were supposed to do. Our funding is determined by Congress. This means that many times we have to look after the interests of the Congressman instead of serving ordinary people. "
Mahoney gave an example: Through research, his department had found that hospitals at the time were performing a large number of unnecessary back surgeries every year, which not only wasted government healthcare subsidies but also had a serious negative impact on patient's health. As a result, his group published a paper exposing the phenomenon in an attempt to push for government regulation of the issue.
To Mahoney's surprise, the paper was quickly forced to be retracted. "There was a very influential congressman who used his power to pressure us, threatening to'zero out'the funding to my department. The congressman was himself a surgeon and had strong ties to the American Surgical Association. Under pressure, we were forced to publicly withdraw our research, and these surgeons could continue to maintain their wealthy lifestyles on the hundreds of millions of dollars provided by American patients and the government. "
This incident left Mahoney deeply disillusioned with the American reality: "I am no longer a religious person at the time, but I have to say that the tricks of these guys were nothing short of the work of the devil: they were performing surgeries that harmed the health of patients, and then they were sending public funds to the rich and powerful. It's a systemic corruption and I want nothing to do with it. "
Mahoney resigned once again and went back to school to get his PhD. "But before I got my degree, I wanted to work abroad for a year to get more international experience. "It was then that a friend who had worked in China contacted Mahoney and asked if he would be interested in spending some time in Shenyang, China. Mahoney, who was in a"career window period", accepted the invitation. His fated string starts to connect with China.
Explore the"Mystery of China"on the heated earth bed(Kang Tou)
Mahoney first set foot on Chinese soil in 1998.
In Mahoney's eyes, Shenyang was going through a tough time: "When I first arrived in China, Shenyang's economy wasn't doing well, unemployment was high, and it was facing serious environmental pollution problems. "In addition to teaching English and American history at Liaoning University, Mahoney advised the Shenyang Environmental Protection Bureau. He also used his holidays to travel to several cities, including Beijing and Guangzhou.
Despite the many challenges that Shenyang was facing in its urban development at the time, Mahoney was keenly aware that the Shenyang government was trying to solve its problems: "From a social governance perspective, the Chinese had already figured something out, and they knew how to make things work. "But what exactly did the Chinese have figured out?It was difficult for Mahoney to describe it systematically at that time. He decided to take China as the direction of his doctoral research, to answer the"mystery of China"in his mind.
During his doctoral studies, Mahoney systematically studied Marx's thought, especially materialistic dialectics. This opened his eyes: "Many of my previous experiences had an instant explanation. At the same time, I gradually discovered that the success of the Chinese in social governance is precisely because the Chinese have applied materialistic dialectics in practice. "
Mahoney says: "Since the beginning of the industrialization, the West has become extremely rich and powerful, and this has led many Westerners into the myth of the end of history, mistakenly believing that they have mastered'real science', 'real logic'and'real politics'. China, on the other hand, has bridged the gap between scientific means of analysis and dialectics. This allows the Chinese to have strong analytical skills while maintaining a correct understanding of contradictions and the ability to be self-critical. "
During the period of writing his doctoral thesis, Mahoney came to China several times to conduct field research and have in-depth exchanges with different social groups such as farmers, workers, and entrepreneurs. He said, "Although there are many differences between different social groups in China, there is a consensus in their understanding of'development'. More importantly, Chinese people believe that their personal development is closely related to the overall development of the country and the nation, and China's development in the following decade or so has proved this. "
His first fieldwork subject in China was a family of five in rural Shanxi. At the time, the female head of the family and the eldest son of the family had gone out to work, and the other two children were studying, leaving only the male head of the family. “I talked to the man on the bed for more than two hours, "Mahoney said, “My initial plan was to interview him as a'representative'of Chinese farmers, and I had prepared many questions about rural life. Halfway through the conversation, the host got off the kang to make tea for me. As he boiled the water, he asked me, 'I think you Americans want to do something good, so why don't you want to help the Palestinians?'"
The question took Mahoney by surprise: "This farmer, who lived in the rural areas of Shanxi, was also watching and thinking about what was happening on the other side of the globe. I realized at once how stupid those questions I had prepared earlier were. Instead of asking him a bunch of questions that were imposed on him, I should have listened to him talk about something he was interested in and had really thought about. In the subsequent research process, I abandoned all the questions I had prepared and asked the interviewee to speak freely instead, and I got many answers I had never expected. "
After years of research in China, Mahoney says that one of the important lessons he has learned is: "Never underestimate the wisdom of the Chinese people, especially the Chinese farmers. Many Chinese and foreign scholars love to ask questions with'preconceived answers'when communicating with the Chinese people. But in fact, the Chinese people's understanding of society is often more complex and real than that of many scholars in the ivory towers. And this wisdom from the people is one of the key driving forces of China's development. "
Teach Marxism in English
After receiving his PhD, Mahoney taught at George Washington University and Grand Valley State University in the U. S. and visited China several times. 2010, he came to Shanghai as a professor of Political Philosophy and History of Ideas in the Department of Political Science at East China Normal University, and since 2020, he has been a senior researcher at the Institute for the Development of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.
His long-term study of Marxism and in-depth understanding of Chinese reality have given Mahoney a deep understanding of the modernization of Chinese characteristics. At a symposium, he said that modernization of Chinese characteristics is adherence to the leadership of the Communist Party of China(CPC), socialism with Chinese characteristics, the objective of achieving high-quality development, and the development of the whole process people's democracy. It is fundamentally different from the Western modernization path, which is characterized by imperialism, colonialism, and pseudo-democracy.
Mahoney has offered courses such as Marxism and the History of Western Political Philosophy to his students, all taught in English. He found that students were very interested in Marxism. He told the reporter from Global People Magazine with a smile, "When I first came to East China Normal University in 2010, many students came to my classes only because they were required by the school. Today there are generally two reasons why students take my class, one is that my lectures are'fun'. Nowadays, students like to have fun, and professors need a little'drama'in their classes to capture the students. The second is because more students are interested in Marxism today than in 2010. "
Mahoney feels that contemporary Chinese youth are using Marx's theories to observe life: "Today's Chinese youth are a generation that has grown up in a globalized commodity economy, and they have experienced first-hand the social and psychological effects of that economy. If the revolutionaries were the Chinese revolutionaries from Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao's generation were the first generation of Chinese who really understood Marxism, the post-90s and post-00s generations are perhaps the first generation of Chinese who have directly felt Marxism concepts such as'commodity fetishism'mentioned by Marx. "Contemporary college students also have a clearer understanding of their labor rights, he says: "Some people think Chinese college students are spoiled because they don't have to suffer. I don't think so. Many of my students just don't like the idea that'I work overtime all day but make my boss a billionaire'. "
Mahoney has worked at universities in both China and the United States. He believes there is no need for Chinese students to"romanticize"American universities: "My daughter is now attending university in China. She has researched American universities, but neither she nor I feel that they offer her impressive resources. "Mahoney said that American universities are currently in a long-term decline, with college tuition increasing but the value of a degree decreasing. The widening gap between the salaries of teaching staff and administrators at U. S. universities is also having a serious impact on the quality of teaching at universities. Even among top-ranked universities, the value it can bring to students is declining.
For many years, Mahoney has been concerned about the construction of China's democratic system. He believes that the two sessions reflect the whole process of people's democracy in China: "The representatives of the two sessions are very diverse, encompassing people from different groups and fields in China. The two sessions provide them with a window to share their wisdom. I have been observing and studying China's democratic decision-making process for many years and have sat in on meetings of the Shanghai CPPCC. Unlike Western parliamentarians, the delegates to the two sessions are not politicians, but citizens concerned about the country's social development. Through the sessions, they have the opportunity to directly participate in the process of law and policy-making. "As a practice of a democratic system with Chinese characteristics, representatives of the two sessions engage in constructive discussions based on consensus, a scenario that is difficult to see in the US Congress, which is mired in political division, Mahoney said.
During his years in China, Mahoney has also been thinking about the relationship between the Chinese road, Chinese culture, and Marxism. In an article published not long ago, he wrote that in the process of social progress, some ancient values can transcend history. In China, values such as"harmony"and"Da Tong(大同）"are essentially similar to the concepts of socialism and communism. Driven by the concept of good governance and benevolent politics, "traditional Chinese civilization and cultural values are also evolving with the times". According to him, a long-standing feature of traditional Chinese thought and the Chineseization of Marxism has been to take the strengths of all schools of thought and adapt amid change. "This explains to some extent why Chinese Marxism emphasizes Confucian concepts such as'xiao kang(小康）', but also promotes Taoist principles of harmony between man and nature, and even opens the door to all the best achievements of Western and other civilizations. "
Last year, Mahoney went on a month-and-a-half study tour to several European countries. Upon his return to Shanghai, he wrote an article filled with emotion, "Without China, there would be no opportunities for common development, no strong trading partners, no bulwark against climate change and future pandemics, no respite in the face of U. S. hegemony, and no national security when subjected to foreign military-political interventions and when sovereignty is under constant threat. "Many Europeans, he said, ask"Do we have a future in China?"This question has been answered in the global South: there is no future without China working hand in hand with all countries. "Beauty and beauty together"is the answer to the"mystery of China's success".
