Chinese philosophy drives Switzerland
If there is any Western country that has achieved much success by applying ancient Chinese wisdom to its governance, it must probably be Switzerland, said Harro von Senger, a leading Sinologist.
Since the end of 1990s, von Senger, who works with the Lausanne-based Swiss Institute of Comparative Law, has been making efforts to decode the ways behind his country’ s governance tactics.
He found strong links to ancient classics by Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu, who lived more than 2,500 years ago.
Von Senger, who is 73, has been reading Lao-tzu intensivelyever since. His written reflections in German started taking shape in recent years. His book, The Dao of Switzerland, consists of six chapters spread over 70-odd pages, and was published earlier this month.
“Switzerland has realized Lao-tzu’s ideal of governing a small country,” said von Senger during an interview.
Sitting ina bar in his hometown E in si edeln, which is about an hour’s train ride from Zurich, von Senger pointed to a building next to the town square, and said that was his primary school.
But soon, he shifted to the thoughts of Lao-tzu, who he quote sat the beginning and the end of each chapter. The book is peppered with references that appear to suggest strong linkages between Swiss success and China’ s ancient thoughts.
“Switzerland is a successful country and behind its success lie the profound thoughts of Lao-tzu,” said von Senger in fluent Chinese. “Nearly every sentence of my book has references (to) and notes (about Lao-tzu).”
“Let there be a little country without many people.” That is a line from the 80th chapter of Lao-tzu’s work Dao De Jing. With a population of less than 9 million, Switzerland is the kind of country that Lao-tzu dreamed of in size, said von Senger.
Lao-tzu advocated that nations and peoples should be weak, gentle, modest and still (unswerving). He also said that when a plant starts to grow, it is small and weak, which is “good”; but when a plant is about to wither, it stiffens, which is “bad”.
“We don’t have a big population and we don’t have a sizable army and we are small and weak,” said von Senger, who studied in Peking University in 1970s. “These are good things for us and we will not be attracted by other powers .”
In addition, von Senger said the Swiss have also practiced the thoughts of another famous Chinese thinker, Zhuangzi. The duo shaped the essence of Taoism.
Zhuangzi said in his work: “All men know the use of the useful, but nobody knows the use of the useless .”
But the Swiss, von Senger said, know well the use of the useless, and cited the Swiss Army as an example. He said that it is the bravest and most powerful army in the world because it has not been defeated ever and it never killed a single foreigner in the last 200 years.
“No other army in this world has this record. This is because we area neutral country and we have not been involved in any war. We are useless but our army has finally achieved such big success.”
Switzerland, he said, is a “useful” country nevertheless as it takes advantage of being neutral and “useless”.
At the international level, his country has hosted dozens of international organizations and helped offer platforms to solve conflicts and thus contribute to global peace and prosperity.
All these link to anther important part of Daoism, which is moulue .He said this thought has not been properly expressed in the Western languages.
So he coined an English word, “supper-planning”, which he says is higher than “strategic thinking” as many Western scholars have referred to.