Opinion | "China is not Our Enemy"
By Philip Yeung, university teacher
PKY480@gmail.com
That is the in-your-face title of a new book by Dr. Tai P. Ng, a Chinese-Canadian who views geopolitics not through the lens of a parochial Chinese but from a planetary perspective. It is a serious effort by a serious student of China.
It arrives when East and West relations are at a tipping point, thanks to Trump and the Pelosi effect. America and its allies habitually condemn the Chinese government as "authoritarian". They are wrong. Autocracies have a low threshold for war-mongering. In the teeth of relentless Western goading and meddling, China has shown super-human restraint. If trigger-happy America were at the receiving end, the world would have been plunged into a history-ending war. Utter self-control is ingrained in the Chinese character. Its leaders play the long game. They are unshakeable in their determination not to be distracted from long-term goals by short-term political gain or pain. China might not belong to the "democratic" camp by snobbish Western yardsticks, but unlike America, China does not descend into demagoguery. To understand China is to understand its traditional character. That is the principal value of this book.
The world's next flashpoint may be across the Taiwan Strait. That would be the costliest misunderstanding in human history. Those who care about the preservation of peace will profit from Ng's humanistic perspective on Chinese civilization and its status quo.
What sets his book apart from similar works is that it approaches the subject, not from a political or geopolitical perspective, but from the sober angle of culture and philosophy. Ng takes issue with knee-jerk China critics who willfully misread Chinese intentions. The hard-core China detractors' expertise "does not include first-hand domestic Chinese experience." Tone deaf and blind to its macro development, they are "lost in the trees" and never "see the forest". They make a habit of judging China simply by its ideological label.
This mistrust breeds intolerance and hostility. War is only an accidental misfire away. The West, unwilling and unable to accept an alternative system of government, is sleepwalking into another mega-conflict no one in Asia wants.
Yet, vilified by the West, China has, in multiple aspects, outperformed its liberal democratic competitors.
This is evident from how each system handles the pandemic. To the Chinese, it is a collective effort. They crave order and good governance, and trust their government to do the right thing. The West is weaned on personal freedom, and is not at all conflict-averse. One thinks long-term, the other is driven by the election cycle. The West chooses to see China as "a black box" for outwardly lacking in Western-style transparency. In truth, it is "black" only because the West says it is. Dr. Ng attributes this bias to Eurocentric thinking. If you judge by achievements in people-friendly technology, poverty eradication and stunning infrastructure, Chinese efficiency wins by a country mile.
Getting to know China, according to Dr. Ng, includes an awareness of its philosophy of balance, harmony and inclusiveness. China does not play the destructive zero-sum game favored by the West. After digging deep into Chinese history and philosophy, he comes to the conclusion that to deconstruct the Chinese worldview, we need to understand the "three vectors" of its "thinking preferences, historical trajectory and situational context". In their ideological bias, Western critics have overlooked Chinese preference for meritocracy, benevolent governance and the concept of shared destiny---all traceable to its Confucian roots. Their blanket demonization does violent injustice to its Confucian tradition.
The West has a blinkered view of China from its Cultural Revolution days whose excesses Dr. Ng did not hesitate to condemn. But he rightly regarded that period as an aberration in China's history.
Miraculously, China has reinvented itself in the last 40 years. With economic super-success, rationality has become the bedrock of its governance, and harmony in diversity has returned to Chinese society. A rapidly-evolving society, China's speed is too dizzying for America and its allies who remain trapped in an immutable view of this awakened giant.
At the root of Western antagonism towards China lies the "dualistic" thinking in its Greco-Roman heritage. This dualism sees the world as black and white. I have noticed that even English itself is dualistic in nature, with such binary concepts as the active and passive voice, transitive and intransitive, plural and singular, general and particular, direct and indirect, literal and figurative. To Ng, Chinese thinking is "correlative' and "cyclical", and "collectivistic-leaning", in contrast to the "individualistic" Western mindset.
Yes, the world's problems are becoming too big for any one nation to solve, from climate change to supply chain disruptions. But they don't go away by ganging up on China. They grow worse.
Western leaders are social Darwinians; they are for survival of the strongest. The so-called "rule-based global order" is an American cloak for its exceptionalism. With its inclusiveness, the Chinese, opt for the idea of universal harmony and "bringing peace to all under heaven". It promotes social responsibility, rather than unfettered rights of the individual.
Despite this dichotomy, Dr. Ng thinks the two systems are somehow complementary. I am much less sanguine. America is used to flexing its economic and military muscle for the last 75 years. It is unaccustomed to sharing the limelight, and is not about to surrender its primacy to an upstart.
Never in history has another country successfully wiped out widespread poverty. The Chinese have a total and tacit trust in their government to plan long-term for the entire country. Its ability to mobilize resources in fighting disease and natural disasters is unmatched and unique. To lump it together with the likes of Venezuela or North Korea is a travesty. The self-discipline of the Chinese is legendary. There are no idlers in China. Everything they do sub-serves the larger national purpose. In this China stands alone.
Ng quotes approvingly that "Ethics answers the question: 'How should we live?' while politics answers the question: 'How should we live together?'
Understanding Chinese ethics is the royal road to understanding China's politics, both domestic and international.
Dr. Ng has brought his encyclopedic knowledge to bear on this ticklish, vital subject, with a potpourri of his insights from sociology, politics, culture and philosophy. My only quarrel with this book is that it has a tendency to dwell on philosophical musings. Digital-age readers have a notoriously short attention span for metaphysical questions. I wish that Ng's style were pithier or more epigrammatic. For a book with such an important message, economy would have served the messenger far better than a meandering style. As it is, these days, anyone displaying sympathy towards China runs the risk of talking to a wall, or preaching to the choir.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
Read more articles by Philip Yeung:
Opinion | Warning to Pelosi: It's not too late to pull back from the brink
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