Wang Huning on the Dangers of American Technology

Wang Huning, fourth ranking member of the Politburo Standing Committee and China’s ideologue-in-chief, argues that American technology is the foundation of American power. But when he traveled across the United States as a young man Wang concluded that there is a dark side to scientific progress. Wang Huning describes America as a land where millions of men and women willingly surrender their freedom to technological processes that they believe operate beyond their control. In the United States, it is “not man that masters technology, but technology that masters man.” As part of a larger project examining Chinese thinking on the relationship between technology and national power, the Center for Strategic Translation has published several excerpts from Wang Huning’s 1991 philosophical travelogue, America Against America. In November we published a general introduction to the book, as well as passages from the book that explore the connections between American technology and American mig

Wang Huning, fourth ranking member of the Politburo Standing Committee and China’s ideologue-in-chief, argues that American technology is the foundation of American power. But when he traveled across the United States as a young man Wang concluded that there is a dark side to scientific progress. Wang Huning describes America as a land where millions of men and women willingly surrender their freedom to technological processes that they believe operate beyond their control. In the United States, it is “not man that masters technology, but technology that masters man.” As part of a larger proje