He is a Marxist who understands the importance of money and markets; without Marx, you cannot understand the movement of history, but without money, you can’t do anything about it.

First of all, times are changing, and we have to change with them, and if we don’t we’ll die, which is completely normal.

There are companies and organizations that are very interested in ideas and culture and are very willing to support projects related to these themes.

Elites no longer know what guidance to provide, and debate constantly among themselves over what aspects of our civilization to embrace, meaning that we lack values and a clear sense of direction.

When secularism overwhelms civil society, people’s mentalities always change and morality declines.

But once such a value system is established, I think Chinese civilization will become universal, at which point, people will no longer identify with American values, and instead Chinese values that will become a truth acknowledged everywhere.

Thus what we propose is to “face the future, rely on tradition, engage the present.”  In other words, we should be guided by the future even as we keep our basis in tradition and continue our search in daily practice.

We cannot, in the name of pursuing socialism, disallow the market economy, because pure socialism is inefficient.  So we need the market economy to be in the mix, and the core elements of the market economy are private capital, which means the long-term existence of private ownership.  But on the other hand, it would not be right to merely emphasize the efficiency of the private economy and cast aside state-owned enterprises. State-owned enterprises play many roles that are irreplaceable; they form the basis of the national economy and are important in strategic development, high-end technological research, and the relatively even distribution of social wealth.  So both are indispensable.

A truly constructive and effective media atmosphere is built on a premise, which is that all actors possess a high degree of civic engagement.  This is not only a right but a responsibility, meaning that you cannot only criticize others , but have to be adept at self-criticism as well.  This is what a mature citizen of a modern country should be.  However, a large number of people active in online media do not possess the abilities that healthy citizens should have. They actively fight for rights and freedom of speech but have little awareness of the responsibilities that these rights imply. What we see on the Internet is very much like a cultural atmosphere formed on the basis of a small-scale peasant economy.  They focus on one thing to the exclusion of everything else, they band together with people who think like they do and denounce everyone else, inciting extreme emotions.  The media ecology in such an atmosphere is truly very bad.

The most critical thing for the media is not the degree of freedom of speech, but whether the media can grasp the main line of historical progress, at a moment when history is at a turning point and nothing is very clear, and then follow that line and direction and its internal laws and demands to run your newspaper, write the articles, and have your say. Generally speaking, the chance of making mistakes will be smaller this way.

In an era of rapid industrialization, as wealth increases, people’s awareness of their rights and the importance of contracts also increases.  So in times like these, people will be thinking more in terms of liberalism, so how can we not reflect this in what we publish?  But for similar reasons, as wealth increases, so does inequality, moral corruption, and environmental harm.  So socialist demands for equality and for attention to the environment bubble up, and how can we not reflect demands for socialism in our work

But sooner or later, questions concerning the longer term or the essence of something will surface, at which point the best of these younger generations, the true elites, will feel the pain that comes with these questions, and they will wake up from their immersion in instant gratification and look for answers to the problems.

There are fewer and fewer intellectuals who can relate to reality, and they have been replaced by more and more academics who write for smaller and smaller audiences.

If contemporary intellectuals cannot grasp today’s practice of social production and today’s technological revolution, then they will be eliminated sooner or later. In my opinion, 95% of intellectuals are already gone.

https://www.readingthechinadream.com/yang-ping-on-beijing-cultural-review.html