Between the Song and the Tsar: Why China’s Future Hangs on a Forgotten Liberal Legacy

The Song Dynasty (960–1279) was a moment in Chinese history when human creativity flourished at an unprecedented scale. It was during this period that China pioneered some of the most consequential inventions in world history — the compass, movable-type printing, gunpowder, and advanced papermaking — laying critical foundations for global trade, navigation, and communication.

Proponents of Song liberalism, such as Jacques Gernet and Mark Elvin, argue that this burst of innovation was inseparable from a uniquely open social structure — marked by vibrant urban markets, private enterprise, and intellectual pluralism rarely seen in other periods of imperial China.

Yet this historical legacy now stands at the heart of China’s contemporary dilemma: must its future be shaped by its liberal heritage of openness and innovation, or by its authoritarian tradition of centralized control?

Nowhere is this tension more visible than in Beijing’s increasingly uneasy relationship with its most successful overseas Chinese entrepreneurs — figures who arguably embody the Song legacy of market-driven prosperity. In recent years, the Chinese Communist Party has reportedly signaled its disapproval of Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing’s overseas investments — including his planned sale of port assets in Panama — while tightening surveillance over diaspora capital flows to the United States. A proud legacy of decentralized Chinese commerce now finds itself entangled in a fraught contest between market autonomy and state control.

Chinese Diaspora across Southeast Asia: A Realized Song Utopia

If the Song Dynasty was China’s brief experiment in commercial liberalism, then Southeast Asia became its most enduring legacy. Far from the political constraints of the imperial mainland, the overseas Chinese diaspora — particularly in Southeast Asia — mingled with local advantages to cultivate what some historians describe as a realized version of the Song-era economic utopia.

For centuries, Chinese merchant networks, deeply rooted in Confucian trust-based commerce and decentralized market practices, dominated regional trade from the ports of Malacca to the streets of Bangkok and Manila. Among these diasporic communities, the Hakka — known for their mobility, adaptability, and entrepreneurial dynamism — played a distinctive role as frontier settlers and commercial pioneers. Their history of migration and settlement across Southeast Asia epitomized the Song legacy of decentralized governance, trust-based networks, and market-driven prosperity.

Scholars like Wang Gungwu and Anthony Reid have long argued that this economic diaspora carried forward not just the entrepreneurial spirit of the Song, but also its flexible social structures — favoring networks over hierarchies, negotiation over coercion, and adaptability over control.

This legacy is perhaps most vividly embodied in the rise of Southeast Asia’s ethnic Chinese elite — producing figures such as Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew, Hong Kong business magnate Li Ka-shing, and generations of Hakka-led commercial dynasties across Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia that have shaped the region’s political economy.

The Southern Chinese Resistance to Authoritarian Encroachment

Yet as China’s authoritarian resurgence unfolds under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the very communities that once embodied the Song liberal legacy — the southern Chinese diaspora, including Hakka networks — now find their prosperity and autonomy under threat.

While the aforementioned Li Ka-shing has long symbolized the commercial success of southern Chinese networks, he is far from the only target of Beijing’s growing suspicion toward the diaspora’s economic independence.

Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai — a devout Catholic of Hakka heritage and founder of Apple Daily — has been imprisoned for his pro-democracy activism and refusal to submit to Beijing’s censorship regime. Macau casino magnate Stanley Ho’s family empire — historically rooted in Cantonese and Hakka commercial networks — has come under intensified regulatory scrutiny amid China’s anti-corruption and capital control campaigns. Cultural icons like actor Chow Yun-fat, celebrated both for his Hakka roots and his frugal, anti-materialist lifestyle, have been quietly blacklisted in mainland media for their refusal to conform to the party line.

Across Southeast Asia and the global Chinese diaspora, southern Chinese networks — forged through centuries of commerce, migration, and adaptation — now face the same existential question confronting mainland China: can the Song legacy of openness survive the tightening grip of state control?

A Choice Between Two Civilizational Legacies

China’s future — and that of its global diaspora — is approaching an irreversible crossroads. The Song liberal heritage was not an accident of history; it was a civilizational achievement rooted in openness, commerce, and decentralized trust. It shaped not only the golden age of Chinese innovation but also empowered generations of southern Chinese communities across Southeast Asia to build resilient, market-driven societies.

Yet this legacy now stands in stark opposition to the authoritarian model championed by the Chinese Communist Party — a system not organically Chinese, but a Western export from Soviet Russia. It was Russia — not a product of China’s own historical experience — that first married Western industrial modernity with totalitarian statecraft. What the world witnesses today is not simply a political struggle within China, but a deeper civilizational contest: between a native tradition of commercial freedom and pluralism, and a foreign legacy of Western-style authoritarianism.

Disclaimer: this article was produced with approximately 85% human contribution and 15% AI assistance, as assessed by AI.

Source: https://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2025/05/02/between-the-song-and-the-tsar-why-chinas-future-hangs-on-a-forgotten-liberal-legacy/