What I told the Chinese grassroots communities: The EASTERN TRAIL VIDEO SERIES — Michel Bauwens on P2P Discovery in China.
My last three articles features what I learned from the Chinese; this one reflects what they asked me!
The readers of this Fourth Civilization substack will have seen various articles that I have published on China, on the occasion of my five week trip to grassroots communities in November 2025. Before you watch the short videos below, here is some background introduction for those who may have missed the previous context.
First, here is the testimony from a young Chinese reporter, which I met in Pignan, one of the three rural reconstruction sites that I visited there, and it makes my visit come alive:
* Where Will Technology and Rural Revitalization Lead Us? And what do Paris-tasting croissants in an isolated Chinese mountain village have to do with this ? A third party account, and guest travelogue, about Michel Bauwens’ visit to grassroots communities in Mainland China.
I also offered my own analysis of the significance of China in the global evolution of human economic and societal coordination system:
The role of the Chinese developmental model in the context of a history of societal coordination. A rewrite of my X diary series, #BauwensInChina, on X.com/mbauwens, with 70 entries so far.
And finally, in this last article, I focused on the ‘peer to peer’ and ‘commons’ aspects of current Chinese society, which, as you know, is the topic that has kept me busy for the last fifteen years.
Industrial Commoning and the Chinese P2P Paradox: What China Owes to Open Models. #BauwensInChina: reflections of a Commons-Oriented Traveler to the Chinese grassroots communities, who are seeking to tackle the meaning crisis amongst Chinese youth.
If you missed them, I believe you will find interesting observations and interpretations of the current situation of this most important country.
But as it happens, these Chinese communities did not only invite me so that I could learn from their experiences, but they were also interested in the findings of my own experience and research. So this is what this collection of short videos is about. Young members of the Uncommons network and community accompanied me, picked me up at railway stations, or filmed me when I was visiting the local spaces. My colleagues at Nunet.io helped me load them to X, so that my followers could share, nearly in real-time, where this trip was taking me. So again, let me express my thanks to all those who made that trip possible: the 4Seas network nation in Chiang Mai, the Global Chinese Community and their Uncommons network, and my colleagues in the governance council of Nunet.io.
Marta Lenartowicz did all the work to put these videos online. I owe her a great gratitude!
EASTERN TRAIL VIDEO SERIES — Michel Bauwens in China
50 Days of P2P Discovery #BauwensInChina
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1. Series Intro: 50 Days Around China
Teaser trailer with Bauwens’ voiceover; frames the trip as tracing a “quiet P2P revolution” from villages to megacities.
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2. Web3 as “Mode D” Coordination (with Pablo)
Deep dive into Kojin Karatani’s coordination modes; Bauwens and NuNet’s Pablo analyze Web3 as associative “Mode D” for mutual aid.
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3. Journey Across China: Meeting P2P Makers
Montage of travels; introduces encounters with co-living communities, DAOs, and rural reconstruction projects.
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4. What Chinese P2P Makers Learn from Bauwens
Glimpses of audience Q&A sessions; Bauwens shares insights on civic self-organization and P2P networks.
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5. Open-Source Culture in Chinese Innovation
Reflections on knowledge-sharing norms; Bauwens notes how “industrial commoning” (Shanzhai to Gongkai) fosters open-source adoption.
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6. Coordination in Local Production & Transnational Code
Bauwens addresses a Web3 group on cosmo-local principles (”heavy stays local, light goes global”).
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7. Scholar-to-Scholar: Tracking the P2P Paradigm
Bauwens discusses methodologies for mapping global P2P ecosystems with a Chinese Web3 scholar.
Michel, I listened to vid above about Karatani's Mode D, a mode that still is unclear to me. You observe that Mode D involves a yearning to return to Mode A at higher level of complexity. That phrase "yearning to return" is clearer than other phrasings I've come across. It resonates. Have you written this in other postings about Mode D, using that phrase?