Michel Bauwens' Travelogue on his Visit to Chinese Grassroots Communities in November 2025

Video via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URi93QQOeOM

Discussion

Daniel Garner:

(long comment but worth reading; SCM refers to the Social Coordination Mechanism)

"Michel Bauwens is a major influence on my thinking, and his work at the P2P Foundation is invaluable for our moment. We have discussed him often at O.G. Rose, but here I wanted to note his trip to China and experience with Chinese Grassroots Communities (November 2025), and how it points to the development of a new social, economic, and even political infrastructure that compliments and manifests the spirit of the SCM in the broader civilizational context. Bauwens has spoken with Web3 groups on cosmo-local principles (keep in mind what Luke wrote), which the SCM certainly enacts (for community, culture making, etc.): what is developing in China and other places “on the ground” might be the manifestation of Karatani’s “Mode D” into the world. Time will tell, but Bauwens encourages us not to absorb strawmen of China that are being spread around. He makes a convincing case that China isn’t perfect, but things have changed powerfully over the last decade.

I spoke with Bauwens in March 2026, and he shared his experience in China, which I found magnificent. I visited China over a decade ago, which is around the first time Bauwens visited the country. How he described China a decade ago tracked with my experience, but Bauwens made the claim that China today has a sense of “the common good,” and that it somehow regained this, which for me is a remarkable accomplishment. Bauwens also noted a number of paradoxes that I found surprising: China consolidates power centrally, so organizations end up being very peer-to-peer (P2P) because a clear leader or leadership team could get organizations in trouble. This “loss of freedom” in China as a result helps there be less formations of “vertical organizations and power hierarchies,” helping average people involved in efforts for the commons feel more empowered. This makes people want to engage in P2P activities, which leads to innovation and advancement in the space. Bauwens also made the example where in the Chinese government outlawing speculation in crypto, it ends up being the case that crypto is used in productive and innovative ways that help average people with their daily lives. In outlawing the “Finance Capital” dimension of Web3 and crypto, the new fields end up favoring “Industrial Capitalism” and productivity, alluding to Michael Hudson’s work. Bauwens also described technological and architectural marvels he saw, and though the limits on free speech are troubling, the accomplishments of China are hard to ignore. Nevertheless, problems of “historic cycles” with the youth could lurk."

More can be said, and how exactly China has become what it has needs to be explored. Part of the puzzle, Bauwens emphasized that China believes in “a common good” (as necessary for a Commons that keeps the Capital-Nation-State from overreaching), and this is something the people can experience versus just abstractly know (take how Americans can “know freedom matters” but struggle to experience it). How is “common good” experienced and felt? As Bauwens discussed, there are vibrant social ecosystems in China where people can step outside their apartments at night and find dance squares, vendors, and people congregating. Not always, of course, but I made the point that if on average when people visit their local downtowns, they don’t see and experience a vibrant social ecosystem (think aesthetics and Pierre Bourdieu), people will gradually cease to believe in the Social—not suddenly and directly, but gradually and with Drifting (as I fear has happened in America). Nikos Salingaros spoke with Jim Rutt (Ep 261) on the importance of “living architecture,” and it would seem China has employed such methods (intentionally or unintentionally) to create social ecosystems in which people can experience “a common good” they can believe in because they feel it (which brings Greg Dember’s work to mind, as we will discuss). “Living architecture” hence plays a critical role in helping people believe in the Social over just Capital, and I believe the SCM functions like “living architecture,” knitting together the online and the offline. If belief in the Social is lost, there might only be Capital (“autonomous rationality/quantification”), and if that causes us to repress and “keep energy from flowing” (Gurdjieff), there will eventually be an “explosion” or other pathologies.

Bauwens noted that a way China has maintained “a common good” is by keeping “the merchant class” from dominating. If the merchant class is too powerful, “quantification” (A/A, fungibility) comes to primarily define our thinking, but unfortunately there are psychoanalytical reasons why we might even want “quantification” take over (discussed in II.1): it makes reality more intelligible, helps us avoid anxiety, and also shields us from “otherness” that would overwhelm us. And indeed, “quantification” and Capital play a crucial role in helping make diversity something we can handle, but then we can get trained into “autonomous quantification” we can’t get out of, which also can happen because we enjoy the feeling of understanding quantification/compression gives us (II.1 on Pierce). How do we stop this from happening? Without an infrastructure like the SCM, I think only temporary reliefs are possible.

Anyway, it is not all good in China: Bauwens noted how the youth in China are starting to question the social contract, wondering why they should work nine hours a day and make sacrifices for the civilization. In other words, I would say the youth is becoming philosophical, which means they are at risk of the “philosophical melancholia” and “philosophical resentment” that Hume warned about with the Counter-Enlightenment. To capitalize terms to mean them in a specific sense, history is a story where great Development often leads to Doubt, and eventually that Doubt leaves to a loss of Trust, and then there is a loss of the Social (say in favor of Capital and/or destruction). It’s a large claim, but I would say that history shows a cycle where Development leads to Doubt, and then there is rarely if ever adequate infrastructure and (Bildung) education to address that Doubt before it leads to a loss of Trust. Between Development and Doubt is where A/B and Voicecraft is either maintained or lost, time and time again  (the Fourth Turning comes back around). I would argue that until our current historic moment with the SCM, it was not possible for the average person to be habituated into Voicecraft, especially across (Global) Pluralism, to keep that Development as Meaningful and so Trustable. “Meaning” and “Trust” share a closer relationship than often realized: the loss of meaning leads to a loss of trust that doing x, y, or z is worth doing and/or should be done."

(https://ogrose.substack.com/p/the-social-coordination-mechanism-5d0)