A Good Society Gives People Both Roots and Wings
Over the years, moving between China and the United States, I have increasingly felt that many of the disagreements between the two societies are not really about policy, institutions, or even ideology.
Underneath them lies a more basic question:
What makes a good society?
That sounds like an enormous question.
But perhaps there is a simpler way to ask it:
What kind of life should an ordinary person be able to build after being born into a society?
A life with safety, education, work, family, and dignity. A life in which effort can improve one’s circumstances. A life in which one can form one’s own views, make meaningful choices, and perhaps take a path different from what others expected.
If that is ultimately what we care about, then the deepest difference between China and the United States may not be that one cares about people while the other does not.
The more interesting difference is this:
What do we believe people need most in order to live such a life?
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American society begins from a powerful intuition:
An individual should first have a sphere of life that cannot be arbitrarily controlled by others.
The instinct behind it is simple:
My life is, first of all, my own.
If the government, society, family, or any other institution wants to limit my choices, it should have to explain why.
This helps explain the American emphasis on individual rights, privacy, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the ability to choose one’s own way of life.
A child can grow up and leave the family home.
A young person can choose a career completely different from the one his parents imagined.
A person can hold beliefs, values, or lifestyles that the people around him do not understand.
Society may disagree with you.
But it has a strong instinct to ask:
Is this your choice to make?
I have always thought this is one of the great strengths of American society.
It takes seriously the idea that a person should have the chance to become himself.
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Chinese society tends to begin from a different understanding of the person.
We rarely imagine someone as existing entirely outside relationships.
From the moment we are born, we are someone’s child, sibling, student, or friend.
Later, we become someone’s colleague, partner, parent, or neighbor.
There is an interesting Chinese expression:
zuo ren — “how to be a person.”
It means much more than simply being an individual human being.
It carries questions such as:
How do you treat your parents?
How do you treat your friends?
How do you fulfill your responsibilities?
How do you conduct yourself among other people?
How do you find your place in a larger community?
Behind this is a different intuition about human beings:
A person is not only an individual with rights. A person is also someone formed through relationships.
And there is something undeniably true in this.
Who taught us language?
Who took care of us when we were children?
Who helps us when we are ill?
Who catches us when things go wrong?
None of us grows up entirely alone.
This is one reason Chinese society has traditionally placed greater weight on family, responsibility, social order, relationships, and community.
That, too, reflects something real about human life.
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If I had to simplify the difference, I might put it this way.
American society more naturally begins by asking:
What must society not do to me?
Chinese society more naturally begins by asking:
What must society make possible for us?
The first question tends to lead toward rights, boundaries, procedure, and limits on power.
The second tends to lead toward order, development, education, infrastructure, public safety, and collective capacity.
Of course, the real United States is far more than individualism, and the real China is far more than collectivism.
But as two broad social imaginations, this difference matters.
And both questions are legitimate.
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One thing I have learned from China is this:
Do not underestimate the value of order and development.
“Development” can easily become an abstract word.
But in the end, it is about very concrete things.
Can a child from a rural family receive a good education?
Can a young person leave a small city and find opportunity somewhere else?
Can an ordinary family improve the prospects of the next generation through hard work?
Can a person become seriously ill without losing every other choice in life?
Can someone walk home late at night with a basic sense of safety?
These things do not always sound like “freedom” in the conventional sense.
But they determine how much real choice a person actually has.
That is why I have come to think that freedom cannot mean only:
“No one is stopping me from doing something.”
It must also include:
“Do I actually have the ability to do what I want to do?”
If someone is theoretically free to choose anything but has no education, no resources, no security, and no opportunity, that freedom is very thin.
From this perspective, education, infrastructure, public safety, healthcare, and economic opportunity are not merely acts of “state building.”
They create some of the conditions under which freedom becomes real.
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But living and working in the United States also constantly reveals the other side.
A society does not gain the right to decide someone’s life simply because it believes it knows what is good for that person.
That matters just as much.
A society can give you good schools.
It can give you security.
It can give you healthcare.
It can give you economic opportunity.
But at some point, one question must remain:
Can you say no?
Can you choose another path?
Can you preserve a private space that is not entirely defined by family, society, or the state?
Can you become someone different from what others expected?
If the answer is no, then excellent public conditions still do not amount to complete freedom.
This is why I think one of the most valuable instincts in American society is not simply a preference for “small government.”
It is the deeper reminder that:
A society does not automatically acquire the right to impose one version of the good life simply because it believes that version is good.
That boundary matters.
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The more I think about it, the less I want to choose between these two answers.
Because each captures something true about human beings.
We need security, and we need freedom.
We need belonging, and we need independence.
We need community, and we need private space.
We need others to help us grow.
But eventually, we also need enough distance from the lives others have imagined for us to decide who we want to become.
If I had to capture this in one image, I would still use two words:
roots and wings.
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A good society must first give people roots.
What are roots?
Safety.
Education.
Basic healthcare.
Stable and predictable rules.
A minimum level of trust between people.
A child who believes that effort matters.
A family that feels able to plan five or ten years into the future.
A young person who believes that learning and work can change the direction of life.
An entrepreneur who believes that the rules will not become entirely different tomorrow.
These things are not glamorous.
But without them, many freedoms become difficult to use.
That is why a good society cannot simply say:
“I will leave you alone.”
It must also be able to answer:
“Who will solve the problems we share?”
State capacity matters.
A government that is incapable of doing anything does not necessarily create more freedom.
Often, it simply makes wealth, connections, private power, and luck more important.
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But a good society must also give people wings.
Because human beings do not live only for security.
Eventually, a person asks:
What do I care about?
What do I believe?
What kind of work do I want to do?
Where do I want to live?
Who do I want to build a family with?
What kind of person do I want to become?
If every one of these questions comes with a socially predetermined correct answer, then even a very stable society may not allow people to live fully their own lives.
So when I speak of “wings,” I mean something quite simple:
A person should have the chance to become himself.
That may mean becoming someone different from what his parents expected.
Different from the people around him.
Different from the social norm.
One of the real tests of a society is not whether it permits people to do what everyone approves of.
It is whether, so long as they are not harming others, it can tolerate people making choices that others do not fully understand.
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Roots and wings also describe two different kinds of social failure.
One society may provide many wings but too few roots.
People may have many formal choices.
But education, healthcare, housing, safety, and social support may depend heavily on personal resources.
A wealthy person has many real choices.
A poor person may have mostly theoretical ones.
The problem in such a society is that:
Freedom exists, but freedom is expensive to use.
Another society may provide strong roots but too few wings.
It may give people security, education, opportunity, and stability.
But it may also define too clearly what a good life is supposed to look like.
What kind of career counts as successful.
What kind of path counts as stable.
What kind of choice deserves approval.
Much of this may even come from good intentions.
But if a person increasingly finds it difficult to say:
“Thank you, but I want to take another path,”
then what is missing is not resources.
It is the ability to direct one’s own life.
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This is why I increasingly think the question, “Which society is better, China or the United States?” is too simple to be very useful.
A more interesting question is:
What part of the human condition does each society see clearly, and what part does each risk overlooking?
The American tradition reminds us:
Do not let the community swallow the individual.
The Chinese tradition reminds us:
Do not pretend the individual exists apart from community.
America reminds us that power needs boundaries.
China reminds us that public institutions also need capacity.
America repeatedly asks:
Who protects the individual from power?
China more naturally asks:
Who creates the conditions in which millions of ordinary people can live better lives?
I do not think either question can disappear.
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This is also why I am increasingly uncomfortable with the simple contrast between “individualism” and “collectivism.”
It hides the real problem.
The real question is not:
Which matters more, the individual or society?
The real question is:
How can a society build the capacity for collective life without allowing collective life to overwhelm the individual?
We need other people in order to become who we are.
But a mature person also needs enough room to become someone who is not exactly like everyone else.
Those two truths are not contradictory.
They are simply in permanent tension.
And perhaps the task of a good society is not to eliminate that tension.
It is to make room for it.
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So if someone asks me today:
What makes a good society?
My answer would probably be:
A good society gives people both roots and wings.
It gives people enough security, education, order, opportunity, and social support to stand firmly on the ground.
But it also leaves enough freedom, space, and tolerance for people to choose lives different from those others would choose for them.
It has enough public capacity to solve collective problems.
But it also recognizes something equally important:
The success of a society is not measured by whether everyone eventually becomes the same kind of person.
Community matters.
Order matters.
Development matters.
But ultimately, all of them should serve a simpler purpose:
to expand the real possibilities available to ordinary people.
Perhaps this is also where China and the United States have the most to learn from each other.
China can continue to ask:
As we become better at giving people roots, can we also create more room for them to spread their wings?
America can continue to ask:
As we fiercely protect people’s wings, can a person really fly freely without enough security, education, healthcare, and social support beneath them?
This is not an argument for a vague compromise.
It is simply a recognition that:
A complete human life needs both.
A good society should not force people to choose between security and freedom.
It should try to make possible a fuller kind of life:
a place where people can belong, and still have the freedom to go somewhere else.
And if I had to reduce my judgment of a society to one final question, it would be this:
How much real possibility does an ordinary person have, in this society, to become the person he or she genuinely wants to become?
If a society can keep expanding that possibility,
whatever name we give its system,
I would call it
a better society.
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