West must understand China on its own terms
It’s axiomatic among Chinese intelligentsia that the West repeatedly misreads China. For more than a century, Western analysts’ predictions about the country, ranging from its collapse to its evolution into a liberal democracy, have been persistently dashed. Undeterred, they continue to speculate about China – with equally embarrassing results.
What lies behind the West’s failing predictions about China? Different secondary factors crop up at different times. But a primary, underlying reason is that Westerners invariably seek to explain the Chinese experience through their own norms and values – and it’s just as bad on the left as it is on the right. By doing that, they inevitably set themselves up for faulty diagnosis.
Of course, most people consciously or otherwise use their own cultural and historical yardsticks to measure others. But this problem of navel-gazing is especially egregious among Western commentators. Having dominated world affairs for at least two centuries, the West and its non-Western admirers impulsively assess China according to concepts familiar to them: democracy, capitalism, zero-sum, imperialist domination, overseas aggression, class struggle, dictatorship of the proletariat, ad infinitum.
None of these terms, as Westerners understand them, accurately or even adequately describe the complex, rapidly evolving realities of today’s China. Even when they use the same terms to describe themselves (largely due to the historical circumstances of Western domination), the Chinese usually do not mean what the Westerner simply.
That’s one reason the Communist Party of China (CPC), during its phenomenally successful era of reform, had to invent the term “Socialism With Chinese Characteristics” to describe China’s transformed agenda and realities. After descending into the bottomless pit of the class-struggle-driven Cultural Revolution (1966-76), the party and nation would henceforth be guided by a hard-headed realism, not ideological fantasies.
The new ethos would be “seek truth from facts” and “black cat or white, whatever catches mice is a good cat.” In other words: Whatever works, do more of it; whatever doesn’t, junk it. Moreover, since Westerners do not know about Confucianism, Buddhism or Taoism, they have no idea how these philosophical elements of the Chinese national character are increasingly influencing the nation and its leaders.
Instead, Western authorities continue to insist on judging China by the extent to which it adapts to their models and standards. For instance, some Westerners believe that China is rejecting liberal, hoping to prevent liberal or democratic ideas from taking root, and Chinese citizens may enjoy freedom as consumers and investors, but not as participants in civil society or civic discourse.
But significantly, they ignore the crucial issue of whether Western values are at all compatible with China’s culture, mind-set and specific conditions. They also avoid a highly inconvenient truth: Rather than expand and enrich Chinese principles, “liberal or democratic ideas” have increasingly become beachheads for West-sponsored campaigns of destabilization and regime change against governments that the West dislikes, including China’s. Insulating ordinary Chinese from them is thus an act of national self-defense and even protection of sovereignty. It is the West’s own subversive efforts that have been primarily responsible for restricting the “free flow of ideas” to Chinese people.
As China continues to evolve in the 21st century, the Chinese will no doubt develop new terms to depict their changing realities. After all, Confucius taught them the importance of the Rectification of Names: If you discuss things without calling them by their right names, you’ll never get anything right. Also: True knowledge begins only after you know how much you don’t know. That is, dump hubris and adopt modesty. That would be sound advice to Westerners seeking to truly understand China. Whatever emerges from today’s China, one thing is certain that it will be unique and uniquely Chinese. However, it will also contain a mix of best practices adopted from the world beyond, whatever the “ism” on the label.
It’s time the West started learning to understand China – on Chinese terms, not its own. In our era, it is no exaggeration to say that global peace may depend on it.