景甜，孙宇晨，与中国的男女对立 | Jing Tian, Justin Sun, and the Gender Divide in China
By Timothy Huang & Christina Zhao
最近，孙宇晨一篇以“我的女友景甜”为主题的长文，在中文互联网掀起了一场颇为荒诞的舆论狂欢。按照孙宇晨自己的叙述，景甜试图沿用过去处理富豪关系的某种模式，却最终因为“几代金主之间的代沟”而失败；与此同时，“孙学”与“颖学”交相辉映，景甜本人则始终保持沉默。这一场景本身已经足够具有戏剧性。
然而，如果只把它当作娱乐圈的一桩桃色新闻，其实低估了这个故事的价值。它所呈现的，是一个非常极端的样本：在中国乃至整个华人社会男女对立不断加剧的背景下，男性和女性正在如何重新理解异性、如何重新计算关系中的风险，以及这种计算又如何反过来塑造他们自己的行为。
景甜刚出道时，与年长而拥有资源的男性打交道，至少从结果来看一度相当成功。后来她栽在张继科身上，我们还可以解释为年轻肉体所带来的吸引力暂时压倒了她过去熟悉的判断模式。但孙宇晨却属于另一种人。他与景甜过去在中国娱乐圈里接触的潜在资源提供者，在世界观、财富来源、行为逻辑乃至两性关系观念上，都存在相当大的差异。对于景甜而言，这是一个相对陌生的对象。反过来也是如此。按照孙宇晨自己的说法，景甜是他的“白月光”。而白月光对于男人究竟有多大的杀伤力，这一次算是得到了某种颇具喜剧效果的展示：连“孙学”的创始人本人都险些翻车，长期以收割别人闻名的“孙割”，也差一点成了被收割的一方。
换句话说，这其实是一个双方都在自己并不熟悉的那一类人身上翻车的故事。
更值得观察的是，两人在整个事件中的许多具体选择，都已经深受今天华人社会男女对立这一新常态的影响。因此，这桩故事的意义并不止于娱乐八卦。它更像是一扇窗口，让我们看到，当男女之间的基本信任下降、彼此越来越倾向于按照最坏情形理解对方之后，人际关系会发生怎样的变化。连收割世界的孙宇晨和拥有顶级资源的景甜都难以处理的新常态，普通华人当然也无法置身事外。这已经远远超出了所谓“与异性相处的情商问题”。从宏观上说，它关系到一半人口与另一半人口还能维持多少社会协作；从微观上说，它甚至会影响具体男女的婚姻、生育和家庭选择。
而这一切，都可以从孙宇晨与景甜的故事中找到相当清晰的缩影。
一、当“最坏的打算”变成“最坏的行为”
为什么说这一事件是观察中国乃至整个华人社会男女对立的窗口？因为双方在整个故事中的许多选择，本质上都是对男女关系恶化的一种回应。有些回应具有现实合理性，有些则已经滑向了由理性计算驱动的非理性行为。
其中最具冲击力的情节，无疑是孙宇晨关于取卵和代孕的叙述。按照他的说法，他已经在美国为景甜安排好了取卵和代孕所需的一切程序，也支付了三千万元人民币的所谓彩礼；然而到了最后阶段，景甜临时提出额外要求五千万美元，否则不再取卵。从孙宇晨的视角，以及绝大多数旁观者的直觉来看，这显然已经是一个相当离谱的要求。甚至孙宇晨本人后来都自嘲，需要借助AI帮助自己摆脱情感对于决策的影响。
然而，如果暂时进入景甜可能存在的决策逻辑，这个看似极不合理的选择，却未必完全无法理解。她曾经真正上头的人是张继科，而那段关系最终如何收场，众所周知。经历过这种关系以后，一个人完全可能对所谓“白月光”的特殊地位产生根本性怀疑。
换句话说，她真正否定的，或许恰恰是自己作为“白月光”的特殊性。她可能并不相信孙宇晨对自己的迷恋能够长期持续，甚至不相信这种所谓“上头”从一开始就具有多大意义。如果未来的图景是：今天自己是白月光，明天也可能像曾颖一样给他洗内裤；等到孩子已经出生，双方关系破裂，自己又大概率无法在财力、资源和法律能力上与孙宇晨抗衡，那么最终留下来的，就可能只是一个替孙宇晨生过孩子、随后又被抛弃的39岁女人。如果再考虑景甜今天可能面对的事业和经济压力，她确实可能认为自己已经输不起。
问题因此变成：为什么一个女人会用这种高度自我物化的方式，预先设定自己与男性之间的关系？
在这里，最冷酷地定义景甜价值的人，甚至可能并不是孙宇晨，而是景甜自己。无论是过去帮助她处理张继科事件的前任，还是后来陷入债务和偷拍视频争议的张继科本人，至少从公开呈现出的关系模式来看，都没有把景甜如此彻底地简化为一个生育工具。然而在这套叙事之中，景甜似乎抢在孙宇晨之前完成了这一工作：在孙宇晨真正把她当成生育工具以前，她先把自己理解成了一个生育工具。
一旦从这个角度出发，整个五千万美元的逻辑就突然变得清晰了。如果自己的核心价值就是提供卵子和孩子，那么取卵之后，最大的谈判筹码便不存在了。所有能够要求的价码，都必须在取卵之前一次性谈完。从这个意义上说，她甚至没有把自己理解为孙宇晨的长期付费性伴侣。长期性关系至少还有持续议价的可能；生育工具的关键交易节点，却只有一次。
这也让我想到一个过去反复谈过的问题：很多时候，中国女性对于女性自身的物化，可能比中国男性更加彻底。例如在火车是否应当销售卫生巾的争论中，有些女性会主动把月经这种正常生理现象，与随地吐痰、随地小便这种不文明行为进行类比。一个群体如果自己已经接受了针对自己的贬损框架，外部世界反而不需要再完成多少额外的压迫。
景甜的故事如果按照孙宇晨所描述的方式成立，其荒诞之处也正在这里。与此同时，孙宇晨又是在什么时候，从“暴富以后终于包养到了少年时代白月光”的爽文男主情绪里走出来，开始怀疑自己是不是反而成了被割的那个人？
是在马尔代夫的床上，一边摸着景甜后背的纹身，一边同意支付三千万元彩礼的时候？
是在五张银行卡、两个账户轮流转账，转到第三张卡时突然开始犹豫的时候？
还是在发现自己所谓的女朋友，竟然连自己不能去中国这样最基本的事情都不知道的时候？
无论答案是什么，总不会早到修完指甲、听到一句“摸哪里都可以”的时候。
这里其实存在一种非常典型的“麦克白效应”：一个人越相信自己扮演着某种角色，他就越会按照这个角色行动，最终现实中的自己也越来越接近这个预设。莎士比亚毕竟是在写戏剧。曾经身为将军的麦克白，即使一步一步被自己的信念拖入深渊，最后至少还能身披紫衣死在王座之上。普通人若也按照这种方式生活，结局通常不会如此轰轰烈烈。
面对日益激烈的男女对立，华人男性和华人女性在关系中更加谨慎，本来完全可以是一种理性反应。危险之处在于，当男性开始认定“华人女性都想崩自己”，女性开始认定“华人男性都是父权制的煤渣”，很多人便开始把“为最坏情况做好准备”误解成“自己先做最坏的事情”，把心狠手辣、耍阴招当成成年人交易中无需守规矩的通行证。也就是说，就是把play dirty当成了trade dirty。
而这恰恰是一种由理性计算驱动出来的非理性行为。
这里虽然重点谈到了景甜对自己的自我物化，却并不意味着类似的误判只发生在女性身上。在这个故事中，孙宇晨甚至还没有来得及充分暴露自己可能已经形成、却未必意识到的“嫖客”乃至“孕夫”式自我定位，就已经先一步下头了。
二、Claude为什么“不为难”
孙宇晨叙述中的另一个有趣细节，是Claude。
在收到五千万美元的临时要价以后，他让Claude替自己完成两件事情：第一，分析支付这五千万美元是否会伤筋动骨；第二，判断景甜究竟爱不爱自己，以及自己到底应不应该支付这笔钱。看完Claude的回答以后，孙宇晨说了一句话：真正让他毛骨悚然的，并不是Claude有多聪明，而是Claude“一点犹豫都没有”，“它不为难”。
这句话非常有意思。一个人向别人提出问题，看到答案以后评价对方“聪明”，很多时候其实意味着：这个答案说到了自己心里。换句话说，他早就知道答案。
孙宇晨当然知道，景甜与他在一起，不太可能只是因为他的男性魅力，也不太可能是出于类似于当年面对年轻运动员张继科时的那种肉体吸引力。没有财富加持，孙宇晨大概率永远睡不到景甜。即使拥有财富加持，按照他自己的描述，景甜仍然需要相当长的心理适应时间，才能克服最初的生理排斥。这些事情，他其实一直知道。
这与大量中国男性面对自身魅力问题时的心理并无本质区别。
许多男性内心完全明白，自己需要依靠金钱、权力、社会地位乃至语言能力，去补偿自身在原始性吸引力上的不足。他们在实践中也确实按照这个逻辑行动：请客、送礼、提供资源、展示事业、安排生活，以这些东西弥补直接魅力的不足。
问题在于，他们往往又拒绝公开承认这一点。于是，任何看穿这种补偿机制的女性，任何对补偿并不感兴趣的女性，或者任何认为补偿额度仍然不足的女性，都可能遭到污名化。
但事情其实没有这么复杂。既然大家都在交易，谁又有资格嘲笑谁？一个人给自己标价，就不能因为对方开始讲价而感到受辱。现实世界里没有多少人会在完全不看价格的情况下扫货。景甜提出五千万美元，是在给自己标价；孙宇晨包酒店、包飞机、带人看香港豪宅，同样是在给自己标价。区别只在于，后者采用的是试用装、体验装和免费小样的模式：先体验，满意以后付款。
因此，孙宇晨如果主张追回此前支付的所谓三千万元彩礼，那是另一笔账。具体法律结果自然取决于支付性质、双方约定和适用法律，但至少在交易逻辑上，这与他此前试图依靠财富缩小双方原始性吸引力落差，并不矛盾。
孙宇晨有一点反而比很多华人男性坦率：他并不需要假装自己完全不依靠财富。所以他可以大大方方请美女看展、旅游、睡觉；最后价格谈不拢，也可以大大方方要求退回此前款项。两笔账，两码事。“我有钱”和“我愿意撒币”，本来就是两个完全不同的概念。
然而许多华人男性无法接受这种坦率。他们认为，用金钱、权力或者语言能力弥补男性魅力不足，这件事情只能停留在双方心照不宣的层面，不能被公开说出来。一旦说出来，关系就仿佛被贬低了。于是彩礼、嫁妆、房子、车子，都变成了只有所谓“龟男”和“捞女”才会公开讨论的东西。无论伴侣究竟因为何种原因与自己在一起，对外都必须宣布：她被我的人格魅力彻底折服，她心甘情愿爱上了我。她喜欢陪我骑马，陪我打高尔夫；她也喜欢我为她拍下限量首饰。她喜欢大海，我喜欢浪。
如果故事已经被包装成了这个版本，那么此前支付的钱，也就很难再被理解成普通交易中的预付款。既然那是爱情的证明，是对方感情的回应，那么关系破裂以后，又怎么能突然像要求退还嫖资一样追讨回来？想保留遮羞布，就需要为遮羞布付费。
把男女角色对调，道理同样成立。中国乃至整个华人社会的男女矛盾之所以没有停留在观点冲突和网络骂战，而逐渐演化为现实生活中的行为对抗，一个重要原因就在这里：男女双方都需要为自己的遮羞布付费，而不断升级的男女对立，又进一步提高了这块遮羞布的成本。
三、真正让孙宇晨“为难”的是什么
Claude“不为难”，反过来也说明，孙宇晨本人非常为难。他为难的显然不会只是三千万元人民币、香港豪宅或者五千万美元本身。真正困难的，是承认一个更尴尬的事实：金钱并不能彻底抹平原始性吸引力的差距。
一个号称身价惊人的男人，在二十年以后重新面对自己的白月光，最终却发现，两个人在某个层面上依然“配不上”。这种配不上，与谁更富、谁的社会地位更高无关。更尴尬的是，如果他最终拒绝付款，甚至还可能不得不想象这样一个场景：助理在整理账单的时候，心里会不会暗暗觉得，老板终究也做了一回“龟男”？
这些问题并不只属于孙宇晨。
男性常常担忧：自己一旦有钱，女人喜欢的只是自己的钱；自己一旦没钱，女人就根本不会喜欢自己。于是，男性自己的存在仿佛失去了价值。女性也经常面对完全对称的焦虑：自己长得漂亮，男人喜欢的只是自己的外貌；一旦不再年轻漂亮，男人就不会再喜欢自己。于是，女性自己的存在似乎同样失去了价值。
这种焦虑，恰恰暴露了华人社会一个根深蒂固的问题：我们太容易看见一个人的资源，却看不见一个人本身。而择偶，只是这种问题最集中、也最残酷的表现形式之一。
判断这种心态，也不能只看人们嘴上怎么说。毕竟，许多人所做的一切，本来就是为了换取一个体面的“说法”。真正值得观察的，是他们究竟怎样行动。
如果一个男性内心明白，自己在与异性交往乃至建立两性关系时，需要依靠金钱、权力或者语言能力弥补自身男性魅力的不足，那么他很容易对“孙学”这种“每一分钱都必须见响”的理论产生共鸣。因为对于这样的人而言，每一次交往都意味着额外投入资源铺路。他付出的，是正常社交成本之外的附加成本。既然如此，他当然会格外关心投入产出比。同样，一个女性如果知道，自己在两性关系中的主要吸引力来自外貌，甚至来自通过身体向年长男性交换资源，那么当她意识到自己最大的交易优势正在随着年龄迅速下降时，就很容易比过去更加焦虑、更加贪婪，也更加容易作为一个交易者犯错。
观察一个人在一段关系中的行为和状态，往往可以反推出他对自己真实位置的判断。而这里甚至不需要双方存在明显的阶层差异，也不需要男性或者女性中的任何一方成为传统意义上的“舔狗”。更常见的情况是：男女双方都在用自己本来就有限的资源，共同编织一块足以维持生活的遮羞布。
问题在于，这块遮羞布常常试图模拟一种双方实际上都不具备的阶级地位。因此，华人社会里经常出现一种非常奇怪的关系状态：男女双方彼此都“配不上”对方。
景甜与孙宇晨正好提供了一个极端样本。笼统地说，他们都属于有钱、有资源、有社会知名度的人。然而具体到交易层面，今天的景甜是否仍然值三千万元人民币加一套香港豪宅的所谓彩礼，是否值提供一个卵子以后再追加五千万美元，这是完全不同的问题。即使放到中国经济形势最繁荣、资本最充裕的年代，这个价格也已经远远超过通常意义上的“金丝雀价格”。另一方面，孙宇晨如果不真实支付这些钱，即使其财富远远超过景甜，即使景甜与他结婚以后可以获得大量经济和社会收益，他也无法真正完成自己想象中的那个故事——“暴富以后终于包养了少年时代的白月光”。一旦必须按照远远超出市场水平的价格实时支付，他就从爽文男主重新变成了一个支付冤大头价格的嫖客。
一个人愿意为自己的个人品格和真实地位支付差价，自然会吸引那些专门冲着这笔差价而来的人。
阶梯 · AI-Generated by Timothy Huang
当孙宇晨坐在维港边，看着海面从蓝色逐渐变成黑色时，真正令他不舒服的，也许正是这样一种极端经验：他忽然通过发生在自己身上的故事，看清了自身真实的男性魅力、真实的两性关系生态位，也看清了为什么一个千亿富豪，仍然可能搞不定自己眼中并不起眼的运动员和演员。
四、男女对立为何会真正改变现实社会
吃瓜吃到这里，其实已经不难发现，中国男女对立之所以能够产生远远超出网络骂战本身的现实后果，关键就在于：这种对立进一步加剧了中国男女乃至整个华人社会原本已经相当畸形的相处模式。许多在西方社会里主要停留在社会理论、公共政策甚至学术时尚层面的概念，一旦进入华人社会，往往很快就会被换算成具体价格。最终，它们又成为男女双方共同编织的那块“伪造阶级地位的遮羞布”需要处理的新成本。
比如，一名西方女性讨论家庭劳动不平等，通常是在试图提醒男性以及公共制度注意：女性承担更多无偿家庭劳动，会如何影响她自己的职业发展、经济地位和社会机会；男性又从这种劳动分配中获得了哪些实际收益。这一讨论最终甚至可能进入离婚审判，使平时根本不会参与伴侣争吵的法官，也能在财产分配时理解夫妻双方各自为家庭付出的贡献。
然而类似概念进入华人社会以后，经常迅速发生变形。
一百年前如此，一百年后依然如此。我们从西方学习一些边角料理论，再把它包装成华人世界里的前沿思想；随后又有样学样，把所谓“家庭劳动价值”直接加入彩礼价格。华人男性看到以后，又可能得出另一套结论：既然彩礼包含未来几十年家务劳动的价格，那么钱已经付过了，女性今后承担家务当然就是理所应当的。于是，正在做家务的妻子，在某些男性眼中与花钱雇来的保洁没有任何本质区别。
关系就是这样一层一层被扭曲的。中西方社会在人际关系上的巨大差异，同时构成了这种现象的原因和结果。
问题最终仍然回到华人自己身上。
如果我们永远不愿意从自身的德性缺陷中寻找原因，遇到任何问题都习惯把责任归结为男人、女人、父母、领导、老师、毛泽东或者习近平，仿佛全世界都有责任，唯独自己永远无辜，那么最终产生的只会是一种极端荒诞的自我想象：十四亿人都是乌龟王八蛋，只有自己偏偏是其中最优秀的那一个；十四亿人都在迫害和糟蹋别人，只有自己始终只是那个被迫害、被糟蹋的人。
一个人究竟属于哪一边，很多时候其实早已写在他的行为里了。
Jing Tian, Justin Sun, and the Gender Divide in China
By Timothy Huang & Christina Zhao
Recently, a lengthy piece by Justin Sun centred on ‘My Girlfriend Jing Tian’ set off a rather absurd carnival of public discussion across the Chinese-language internet. According to Sun’s own account, Jing Tian attempted to follow a certain model she had previously used in dealing with wealthy men, only for it ultimately to fail because of the ‘generational gap between different generations of patrons’. Meanwhile, ‘Sun Studies’ and ‘Ying Studies’ flourished side by side, while Jing Tian herself remained silent throughout. The scene was already dramatic enough in itself.
Yet to treat the affair merely as another piece of celebrity gossip would be to underestimate the value of the story. What it presents is an exceptionally extreme case study: against the backdrop of intensifying antagonism between men and women in China, and indeed throughout the wider Chinese-speaking world, how men and women are coming to understand the opposite sex anew, how they recalculate the risks involved in relationships, and how those calculations in turn reshape their own behaviour.
When Jing Tian first entered the entertainment industry, she was, judging at least by the results, once rather successful in dealing with older men who possessed resources. When she later came unstuck over Zhang Jike, we could still explain it as the attraction of a younger body temporarily overwhelming the judgement patterns with which she had previously been familiar. Justin Sun, however, belongs to another category altogether. In terms of worldview, source of wealth, behavioural logic and even his conception of relations between the sexes, he differs considerably from the potential providers of resources whom Jing Tian had previously encountered in China’s entertainment industry. For Jing Tian, he was a relatively unfamiliar type of person. The reverse was equally true. According to Sun himself, Jing Tian was his ‘white moonlight’ — the idealised woman of his youth. And just how devastating a ‘white moonlight’ can be to a man was, on this occasion, demonstrated with considerable comic effect: even the founder of ‘Sun Studies’ nearly overturned his own cart, while ‘Sun the Reaper’, long famous for harvesting others, almost found himself harvested in turn.
In other words, this was essentially a story of two people each coming unstuck on a type of person with whom they were unfamiliar.
More worth observing is the fact that many of the specific choices made by both parties throughout the affair were already deeply shaped by the new normal of gender antagonism in today’s Chinese-speaking world. The significance of the story therefore extends far beyond celebrity gossip. It is more like a window through which we can observe what happens to interpersonal relationships once the basic trust between men and women declines and both sides become increasingly inclined to interpret the other through the worst possible scenario. If even Justin Sun, who has made a career of harvesting the world, and Jing Tian, who has enjoyed access to top-tier resources, struggle to navigate this new normal, ordinary Chinese people can hardly remain outside it. This has long since gone far beyond the supposed question of ‘emotional intelligence in dealing with the opposite sex’. At the macro level, it concerns how much social co-operation one half of the population can still maintain with the other; at the micro level, it can influence the marriage, reproductive and family choices of individual men and women.
And all of this can be seen in remarkably clear miniature in the story of Justin Sun and Jing Tian.
I. When ‘Preparing for the Worst’ Becomes ‘Doing the Worst’
Why can this affair serve as a window onto gender antagonism in China and the wider Chinese-speaking world? Because many of the choices made by both parties are, in essence, responses to the deterioration of relations between men and women. Some of these responses have a degree of practical rationality; others have already slipped into irrational behaviour driven by rational calculation.
The most striking part of the story is undoubtedly Sun’s account of egg retrieval and surrogacy. According to him, he had already arranged in the United States all the procedures required for Jing Tian’s egg retrieval and surrogacy, and had also paid a so-called bride price of RMB30 million. Yet at the final stage, Jing Tian allegedly made an additional demand for US$50 million, saying that otherwise she would no longer proceed with the egg retrieval. From Sun’s perspective, and according to the intuition of the overwhelming majority of observers, this was clearly an extraordinary demand. Sun himself later joked that he needed the assistance of AI to free his decision-making from the influence of emotion.
Yet if we temporarily enter the decision-making logic Jing Tian may have been following, this apparently highly unreasonable choice is perhaps not entirely incomprehensible. The man for whom she had genuinely lost her head was Zhang Jike, and how that relationship eventually ended is widely known. After going through a relationship of that kind, it would be perfectly possible for someone to develop a fundamental scepticism towards the supposedly special status of being another person’s ‘white moonlight’.
In other words, what she may really have rejected was precisely the idea that her own status as Sun’s ‘white moonlight’ was anything special. She may not have believed that Sun’s infatuation with her could last, or even that this supposed state of being ‘head over heels’ meant very much in the first place. If the future she imagined looked like this — today she is his white moonlight, tomorrow she might, like Zeng Ying, be washing his underwear; by the time the child has already been born, the relationship collapses, and she is overwhelmingly unlikely to be able to compete with Sun in terms of money, resources or legal capabilities — what might ultimately remain is simply a 39-year-old woman who had borne Justin Sun a child and was then abandoned. If one also takes into account the professional and financial pressures Jing Tian may face today, she could indeed have concluded that she could no longer afford to lose.
The question therefore becomes: why would a woman pre-emptively define her relationship with a man through such an intensely self-objectifying framework?
Here, the person defining Jing Tian’s value most cold-bloodedly may not even be Justin Sun. Whether it was the former patron who reportedly helped her deal with the Zhang Jike affair, or Zhang Jike himself, who later became embroiled in debt and controversy over private videos, neither, judging at least from the publicly visible patterns of those relationships, reduced Jing Tian so completely to a reproductive instrument. Yet within this narrative, Jing Tian appears to have completed that work before Sun could: before Sun had truly treated her as a reproductive instrument, she had already come to understand herself as one.
Once we start from this perspective, the logic behind the US$50 million suddenly becomes clear. If one’s core value consists in providing eggs and a child, then after the eggs have been retrieved, one’s greatest bargaining chip disappears. Every possible price therefore has to be negotiated once and for all before egg retrieval. In this sense, she did not even seem to understand herself as Sun’s long-term paid sexual partner. A long-term sexual relationship at least leaves room for continuing negotiation; for a reproductive instrument, there is only one decisive moment in the transaction.
This reminds me of a point I have repeatedly discussed before: in many cases, Chinese women may objectify women more thoroughly than Chinese men do. During the debate over whether sanitary products should be sold on Chinese trains, for example, some women themselves compared menstruation, a perfectly normal physiological phenomenon, with uncivilised behaviours such as spitting or urinating in public. Once a group has itself accepted a degrading framework directed against it, the outside world has relatively little additional oppression left to perform.
If Jing Tian’s story unfolded in the way Sun describes it, its absurdity lies precisely here. At the same time, when exactly did Sun emerge from the fantasy of being the male protagonist in an online power fantasy — the man who became fabulously rich and finally got to keep the idealised girl of his youth — and begin to suspect that he might instead be the one getting harvested?
Was it in bed in the Maldives, when he was touching the tattoo on Jing Tian’s back while agreeing to pay a RMB30 million bride price?
Was it when five bank cards and two accounts were being used in rotation for the transfers, and he suddenly hesitated on the third card?
Or was it when he discovered that his supposed girlfriend did not even know something as basic as the fact that he could not go to China?
Whatever the answer, it certainly did not happen as early as the moment after she had finished her manicure and told him that he could ‘touch anywhere’.
What we see here is in fact a very typical kind of ‘Macbeth effect’: the more firmly a person believes that he is playing a particular role, the more he acts according to that role, until the person he becomes in reality increasingly resembles the role he had imagined for himself. Shakespeare, after all, was writing drama. Macbeth, once a general, may have been dragged step by step into the abyss by his own convictions, yet in the end he could at least die on the throne wearing royal purple. Ordinary people who live in the same fashion are unlikely to receive such a grand ending.
Faced with increasingly intense gender antagonism, greater caution among Chinese men and women in relationships could perfectly well be a rational response. The danger appears when men begin to assume that ‘Chinese women are all trying to rinse me’, while women begin to assume that ‘Chinese men are all patriarchal dregs’. At that point, many people start confusing ‘preparing for the worst’ with ‘doing the worst thing first’, and begin to treat ruthlessness and dirty tricks as a licence to ignore the rules of adult transactions. In other words, they confuse playing dirty with trading dirty.
And that is precisely irrational behaviour driven by rational calculation.
Although the discussion here has focused heavily on Jing Tian’s self-objectification, this does not mean that comparable misjudgements occur only among women. In this story, Justin Sun had barely had time to expose the self-conception he may already have formed, without fully realising it — that of the client of a prostitute, or even of an expectant father reduced to a transactional role — before he himself lost interest first.
II. Why Claude ‘Wasn’t Troubled’
Another interesting detail in Sun’s account concerns Claude. After receiving the unexpected demand for US$50 million, he asked Claude to do two things for him. First, to analyse whether paying US$50 million would seriously damage his finances. Second, to judge whether Jing Tian loved him and whether he should pay the money. After reading Claude’s answer, Sun made one remark: what truly sent a chill down his spine was not how intelligent Claude was, but the fact that Claude ‘didn’t hesitate at all’ — that ‘it wasn’t troubled’.
That remark is extremely interesting.
When someone asks another person a question and then, after hearing the answer, says that the respondent is ‘clever’, what it often really means is that the answer has said exactly what he already felt. In other words, he already knew the answer.
Sun of course knew that Jing Tian was unlikely to be with him purely because of his masculine appeal, and equally unlikely to feel for him the kind of physical attraction she may once have felt towards the younger athlete Zhang Jike. Without the support of his wealth, Sun would in all probability never have been able to sleep with Jing Tian. Even with that wealth, according to his own account, Jing Tian still required a considerable period of psychological adjustment before overcoming her initial physical aversion. He had known all of this all along.
This is not fundamentally different from the psychology of a great many Chinese men when confronting questions about their own attractiveness.
Many men understand perfectly well that they need to rely on money, power, social status or even verbal ability to compensate for deficiencies in raw sexual attractiveness. And in practice they do indeed behave according to this logic: paying for meals, giving gifts, providing resources, displaying their careers and arranging lifestyles, using all these things to compensate for a lack of direct attraction.
The problem is that they often refuse to admit it openly. Any woman who sees through this mechanism of compensation, any woman who has no interest in that compensation, or any woman who believes the compensation remains insufficient, may then find herself stigmatised.
Yet the matter is really not that complicated. If everyone is engaged in a transaction, who exactly has the standing to look down on anyone else? Once someone places a price on himself, he cannot feel insulted simply because the other side begins to bargain. Few people in the real world go shopping without looking at the price. Jing Tian’s demand for US$50 million was a way of putting a price on herself; Sun paying for hotels and private flights and showing her luxury properties in Hong Kong was equally a way of putting a price on himself. The only difference was that the latter adopted the model of a trial product, a demonstration version and a free sample: try first, pay after satisfaction.
Thus, if Sun seeks to recover the previously paid RMB30 million so-called bride price, that is a separate account. The precise legal outcome would naturally depend on the nature of the payment, the parties’ agreement and the applicable law. But at least within the logic of the transaction, it does not contradict the fact that he had previously tried to use wealth to narrow the gap in raw sexual attraction between them.
In one respect, Sun is actually more candid than many Chinese men: he does not need to pretend that he relies on wealth in no way at all. He can therefore openly invite beautiful women to exhibitions, travel with them and sleep with them; when the price negotiations ultimately fail, he can just as openly demand the return of money previously paid. They are two separate accounts. ‘I have money’ and ‘I am willing to throw money away’ are fundamentally two different propositions.
Many Chinese men, however, cannot accept this sort of candour. They believe that using money, power or verbal ability to compensate for inadequate masculine attractiveness must remain at the level of an unspoken understanding between the two sides and cannot be said openly. The moment it is spoken aloud, the relationship somehow seems degraded. Bride price, dowry, houses and cars therefore become things that only supposed ‘simp men’ and ‘gold-diggers’ would discuss openly. Whatever the actual reason a partner is with them, the public story must always be that she was utterly conquered by their personal charisma and willingly fell in love with them. She enjoys going horse riding with me and playing golf with me; she also likes the limited-edition jewellery I buy for her. She loves the sea; I love making waves.
Once the story has been packaged in this way, however, money already paid becomes difficult to understand as an ordinary transactional advance. If the payment was proof of love, a response to the other person’s feelings, how can it suddenly be reclaimed after the relationship collapses as though one were demanding the return of payment for sex?
If one wants to preserve the fig leaf, one has to pay for the fig leaf.
The same logic applies if the genders are reversed. One major reason gender conflict in China and the wider Chinese-speaking world has not remained confined to disagreements of opinion and online abuse, but has gradually developed into real behavioural confrontation, lies precisely here: both men and women must pay for their own fig leaves, while escalating gender antagonism raises the price of those fig leaves still further.
III. What Was Really Troubling Justin Sun?
If Claude ‘wasn’t troubled’, the reverse implication is that Sun himself very much was. What troubled him was plainly not merely RMB30 million, a luxury property in Hong Kong, or US$50 million in itself. The real difficulty lay in admitting a more embarrassing fact: money cannot completely erase differences in raw sexual attraction.
A man reputed to possess immense wealth encounters his youthful ‘white moonlight’ again twenty years later, only to discover that, on some level, the two of them are still ‘not a match’. And this mismatch has nothing to do with who is richer or who possesses higher social status.
More embarrassing still, if he ultimately refused to pay, he might even have to imagine another scene: when his assistant later reconciled the accounts, would that assistant secretly laugh at the boss for having become a ‘simp’ after all?
These problems do not belong to Justin Sun alone. Men often worry that once they have money, women are interested only in their money; once they have no money, women will not be interested in them at all. Their very existence therefore seems to lose its meaning. Women frequently confront the symmetrical anxiety: when they are beautiful, men care only about their appearance; once they cease to be young and beautiful, men will no longer be interested in them. Their existence, too, appears to lose its meaning.
This anxiety exposes a deeply rooted problem in Chinese-speaking societies: we find it far too easy to see a person’s resources while failing to see the person himself or herself. Mate selection is simply one of the most concentrated and brutal manifestations of this wider problem.
Nor can this mentality be judged solely by listening to what people say. After all, many of the things they do are undertaken precisely in order to obtain a respectable ‘story’ about themselves. What really deserves observation is how they actually behave.
If a man understands internally that, when interacting with women or entering sexual and romantic relationships, he needs money, power or verbal ability to compensate for deficiencies in his masculine appeal, he will naturally find theories such as ‘Sun Studies’, according to which ‘every penny must produce a result’, highly attractive. For such a person, every interaction requires an additional investment of resources to clear the path. What he pays is an extra cost beyond the requirements of ordinary social contact. Naturally, therefore, he becomes particularly concerned about return on investment.
Likewise, if a woman knows that her principal source of attraction in relations with men is her appearance, or even that she has exchanged her body for resources from older men, then as she becomes aware that her greatest transactional advantage is rapidly declining with age, she will naturally become more anxious, more greedy and more prone to making mistakes as a trader.
By observing a person’s behaviour and condition within a relationship, we can often infer that person’s real understanding of his or her own position. Nor does this require an obvious class difference between the two parties, or require either the man or woman to become a ‘licking dog’ in the traditional Chinese internet sense. More commonly, both parties use their already limited resources to weave together a fig leaf large enough for them to live beneath.
The problem is that this fig leaf frequently attempts to simulate a class position that neither party actually possesses. Chinese-speaking societies therefore often produce a peculiar relationship in which both men and women are, in a sense, ‘not good enough’ for each other.
Jing Tian and Justin Sun provide an extreme example. Broadly speaking, both are wealthy, well connected and publicly prominent. But once the matter is reduced to the level of a transaction, the questions become quite different: is Jing Tian today still worth a so-called bride price of RMB30 million plus a luxury property in Hong Kong? Is providing one egg worth an additional US$50 million? Even in the years when China’s economy was at its most prosperous and capital was at its most abundant, such prices would have far exceeded the usual rate for what might crudely be called a ‘golden canary’.
On the other hand, unless Sun actually pays these sums, then even if his wealth vastly exceeds Jing Tian’s, and even if Jing Tian would gain greatly in financial and social terms from marrying him, he cannot complete the story he had imagined for himself — ‘after becoming fabulously rich, I finally got to keep the idealised girl of my youth’. Once he is required to pay in real time at a price far above market level, he ceases to be the male protagonist of an online power fantasy and becomes a client paying a sucker’s price for sex.
If someone is willing to pay a premium to compensate for his personal qualities and his real social position, he will naturally attract people who come specifically for that premium. When Justin Sun sat beside Victoria Harbour watching the sea change gradually from blue to black, what may truly have made him uncomfortable was precisely this extreme experience: through what had happened to him, he suddenly saw clearly his own actual masculine appeal and his real ecological niche in relations between the sexes. And he also saw why a billionaire could still fail to get the athlete and actress whom, in his own eyes, he might regard as comparatively insignificant.
IV. Why Gender Antagonism Really Changes Society
By this point in the story, it is not difficult to see why gender antagonism in China has produced consequences in real life far beyond online abuse itself. The crucial point is that this antagonism has further intensified the already highly distorted patterns of interaction between men and women in China and throughout the wider Chinese-speaking world. Many concepts that in Western societies remain largely within the realms of social theory, public policy or even academic fashion are, once introduced into Chinese society, rapidly converted into concrete prices. Ultimately, they become yet another cost that must be dealt with beneath the ‘fig leaf of fabricated class status’ jointly woven by men and women.
Take, for example, a Western woman discussing inequality in domestic labour. Ordinarily, she is trying to draw the attention of men and public institutions to how women’s greater burden of unpaid domestic work affects their career development, economic position and social opportunities, and to the material benefits men derive from that allocation of labour. Such arguments may ultimately even enter divorce proceedings, allowing judges — who obviously do not normally participate in couples’ arguments — to recognise, when dividing property, the different forms of contribution each spouse has made to the household.
Yet when similar concepts enter Chinese-speaking society, they are often rapidly transformed.
It was like this a century ago, and it remains so a century later. We learn scraps of theory from the West, repackage them as cutting-edge ideas within the Chinese-speaking world, and then imitate their outward form by directly inserting the supposed ‘value of domestic labour’ into the price of bride money. Chinese men, seeing this, may then draw an entirely different conclusion: if the bride price includes payment for decades of future domestic labour, then the money has already been paid, and the woman’s subsequent performance of housework is naturally something to which the man is entitled. The wife doing housework consequently becomes, in the eyes of some men, fundamentally indistinguishable from a cleaner they have hired and paid.
Relationships are distorted layer by layer in precisely this way. The vast differences in styles of interpersonal relations between Chinese and Western societies are simultaneously a cause and a consequence of this phenomenon.
Ultimately, the problem returns to Chinese people themselves. If we are forever unwilling to look for causes in defects of our own character, and if whenever anything goes wrong we habitually assign responsibility to men, women, parents, leaders, teachers, Mao Zedong or Xi Jinping — as though everyone in the world bears responsibility while we ourselves remain permanently innocent — then what eventually emerges can only be an extraordinarily absurd form of self-imagination: 1.4 billion people are all bloody bastards, yet somehow I alone am the finest among them; 1.4 billion people are all persecuting and ruining others, yet somehow I alone am always the person being persecuted and ruined.
Which side a person truly belongs to is, very often, already written clearly in the way that person behaves.
Turbocharger · AI-Generated by Timothy Huang
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