The elite society was once a society that people envy and yearn for. This kind of society often appears in economically developed Western countries or countries with a high degree of modernization. Such countries are often well-governed with adequate social security, sound legal system, coupled with democracy being widely accepted and the media enjoy the freedom of speech. Under representative democracy, the society and people often express dissatisfaction, but this kind of social emotion basically can be found in a certain section. The basic power of social governance is still relatively concentrated in the hands of the elites. The elites decide the functioning of the society and its direction.
The elites in the West are selected through layers after layers of major social systems. In the United States, you must first enter the Ivy League school through painstaking hard work, and then enter the mainstream leader training occupational fields, such as laws, government, think tank, college. Finally, after several years of toils and going through stiff competitions, the survivors would become a dominant social force. Such was the journey of the U.S. President Bill Clinton and Barrack Obama.
The current situation in Chinese society is very different from that. While China is prosperous, it only cultivates what is known as "labor aristocracy", and at most, these are people who can make money. To a large extent, China has not realized that in this world, the formation of leadership and controlling power is closely related to the existence of the elites.
Does a society governed by the elites necessarily enjoy continuous stability? The answer is, "not necessarily". An elite society would form a hierarchical order of society based on certain social system design, but there would be a metabolic mechanism in the elite society, so there would also be a cycle of change, and even a fierce confrontation during the changes. Elite society will not directly transform into civil society, and civil society will not replace elite society as some people might have imagined. The actual situation is completely different; in fact, civil society provides the source of power for an elite society. Outstanding figures in a civil society, especially their ideas, often provide the inspirations for the future elite society, laying the ideological foundation for the future elite society. This will happen through fierce social confrontations and impacts, as well as strives, movements and even sacrifices. In short, new generations of social elites are shaped through the metabolic process of society.
The metabolism of social elites is not the same as social transformation. "Social transformation" refers to changes in the society, with the connotation of profound changes in social and economic structures, cultural forms and values, rather than the inherent key in the process of social changing process. In reality, social transformation is often seen as the strengthening of social management, as well as the people's employment and livelihood. In fact, the general plan to improve livelihood is a tactical issue, while the transformation is a strategic issue. Human society is a progressive history of social changes which is a slow process, and transformation is social changes in quicker time, moving from the original development to a new one.
In the past century, China has experienced three social transformations in the true sense. The 1911 Revolution ended the feudal monarchy; the People's Republic of China was established in 1949, and then there is the ongoing reform and opening up. However, the developments and changes of Chinese society are far more complicated than the problems reflected in the concept of "transformation". As the British sociologist Anthony Giddens pointed out, cultural, economic, and political factors are the three major factors of social change. Among them, political factors, which are political organizations and political figures, play a central role. As a matter of fact, the key to social transformation is elite metabolism.
If a social system changes from orderly to disordered, and then from disordered to orderly, and if it is realized through an adaptive process, then the society will not undergo a structural revolution in general. The country will still exist, so will the hierarchical order and the legal system and the governance structure. What changes are the original governance concepts, the civil society contracts, the ideologies, and the survival of some or most of the social elites.
The government and public power are always in the hands of a generation of social elites in either tangible or intangible organizations. When a generation of social elites is effective, the social order will be in order; if not there will be social disorder and chaos which also means that the status of that generation of social elites is at stake. If the elites gradually move from doing great things to doing things whimsically, that would mean they are creating conditions and foundations for eliminating themselves.
Final analysis conclusion:
Whether in the West or China, society is always governed by the elites, and civil society cannot replace elite governance. However, social elites have intergenerational differences. More importantly, elites are metabolized and there could be elite metabolism, which in itself illustrates the health of society. The new generation of elites has absorbed the ideological nutrition of civil society in culture and thinking and therefore is more able to obtain the support of civil society. Once this elite metabolism is blocked, social pressure will accumulate and society will collapse.
