“Politics fights; connective governance connects.”
What we need right now is not “politics” (政治) but “connective governance” (通治).
Why “Connective Governance”?
Traditionally, we have called the running of a state “politics” — 政治 in Chinese characters: 正 (upright) and 治 (to govern). It means to correct what is crooked and to establish order.
But what I want to talk about here is something slightly different. When you look at the many societies in crisis today, they are not collapsing because problems exist — they are collapsing because the channels are blocked.
Voices do not travel upward. Grievances are not resolved within institutions. People’s worldviews never intersect at all.
So rather than saying “politics has gone wrong,” it is often more accurate to say “connective governance is simply absent.”
The 通 in 通治 means “to pass through, to connect.” It is about opening roads, making words reach their destination, and linking institutions together. It is a form of governing that unblocks what is clogged and reconnects what has been severed.
When Connection Breaks Down in Four Directions
To speak of connective governance, we must first be clear about what needs to be connected. It can be divided roughly into four dimensions.
The Flow of Roads — 道路
Transportation, logistics, trade, the movement of people. Can cities and rural areas, inland and coast, one country and its neighbors reach each other?
The Flow of Words — 言語
Media, information, education, language, digital networks. Can different classes and generations share the same facts and exchange differing opinions?
The Flow of Institutions — 制度
Law, administration, taxation, welfare systems. Are the procedures between central and local government, between bureaucrats and citizens, actually connected?
The Flow of Empathy — 共感
The minimum empathy between rulers and ruled, majority and minority, groups of opposing ideologies. Is the sense that “that person is a human being just like me” still intact?
Historically, when these four dimensions functioned to any reasonable degree, societies endured. When all four were blocked simultaneously, societies exploded. Rome was no exception. Chinese dynasties were no exception. Twentieth-century totalitarianism was no exception.
A State Where Politics Exists but Connective Governance Does Not
The scene we witness so often today looks like this:
Politics exists. Every day, the news is full of fighting. People frame issues, draw sides, and rally their base.
But connective governance is nowhere to be found. Conflicts do not diminish. Lives do not improve, and people understand each other less and less.
This is because politics has become obsessed with 正 (being right) alone.
“I am right, and you are wrong. I fight to impose my justice.”
This kind of politics is necessary. Politics that fights is better than politics that hides conflict.
But when there is only fighting and no connecting, politics quickly becomes an industry that deepens disconnection. To hold your base together, you must turn your opponent into absolute evil — a being not even worth talking to.
This is the exact point where politics and connective governance diverge completely.
- Politics (政治): The art of fighting over who is right and who is wrong
- Connective Governance (通治): The art of maintaining channels so that society does not fracture, regardless of who is right
Neither alone is sufficient. The problem is that today, many countries pour all their energy into the former while abandoning the latter.
Even War Is “the Worst Form of Connection”
We usually call war “a failure of dialogue.” But if we look more coldly, it is this:
“War is the most violent and costly ‘message’ that appears after every attempt to communicate through words has been destroyed.”
Rebellions, riots, civil wars, and interstate wars always say the same thing:
“Since you refuse to listen to our words, we have no choice but to speak with fire, blood, and corpses.”
Only after war ends do ceasefires, negotiations, agreements, and reconstruction talks begin. Ironically, when connective governance fails to function in time, war belatedly forces open a channel by brute force.
So the goal of connective governance is simple:
“To manage the channels of words, institutions, and relationships in advance — so that war never becomes the last remaining channel.”
If that fails, we end up in a world where artillery shells and refugees speak in place of human voices, once again.
The Minimum Ethics of Connective Governance
Then what should the standard of connective governance be? Summarized as simply as possible, it comes down to two lines.
Do not deliberately block what is already blocked
Media, education, debate, whistleblowing, civic participation. The moment you start shutting these channels down because they are inconvenient, the regime “gets comfortable” but society begins to rot.
Do not deliberately create places that words cannot reach
Groups lumped together under the label “them.” Peripheries where no matter how loudly people shout, policy barely changes. The larger these zones grow, the more certain it becomes that one day, the language of violence — not the language of politics — will break through.
A ruler cannot be perfect. But there is a clear distinction between one who has the will to keep things connected and one who thinks “it doesn’t matter if things get blocked.”
A Proposal: Let Us Speak of Governance, Not Just Politics
I am not saying we should abolish politics. The art of surfacing conflict and fighting it out is necessary.
I simply believe that the word we need to say more often in this era is closer to “connective governance” than to “politics.”
Not who struck harder, but who connects people more broadly, more deeply, and more enduringly.
This applies to nations, companies, and communities alike.
Power should be measured not by “the ability to control many things” but by “the ability to make many people reach each other.”
Politics can take the beating of partisan warfare and survive. But when connective governance collapses, the entire society collapses with it.
That is why I want to ask again, in this era:
Are we doing politics, or are we doing connective governance?
And who are we truly willing to connect — and how far?