Wednesday, April 27, 2011

CHINA

China has taken centre stage lately.  I've always wondered what buttons they have been pushing.
Here's a short "take" on what makes China tick.  I found it in the New York Times.  I was impressed at the simplicity of the writing.  I grasped the characterization of the country instantly, and the concept has stayed with me solidly.  In fact, I heard myself describing it to a friend the other day.  I was a bit taken aback at the fragility of the arrangement there, and the idea that somehow the people in charge had seemingly lucked into the formula for keeping things on an even keel.  But you have to be impressed.  Very impressed.


"China largely operates on Confucian/Buddhist/Daoist values.  "Harmony" and "harmonization" are not euphemisms in China.  They are essential and basic tenets of the need to maintain balance between coexistent opposing and conflicting forces.  The alternative, perfectly understood by most Chinese and anyone aware of China's culture and history, is turmoil and chaos.  
Pew Global opinion polls show that the present Chinese Government enjoys higher public support than most so-called democracies.  The reasons for this are that the present Chinese government, probably more than any other government in China's entire history, is viewed by its public as competently delivering social and economic progress, and harmony.  Today is a very different China from that of the Empress Dowager, of Sun Yat-sen and the warlords, of many years of civil was and foreign incursions, or of Mao Zedong.  It is a reformist authoritarian state with many democratic characteristics.
It is intensely interested in, and is responsive to domestic and global opinion.  But China understands itself: it cannot stay on its path of steady progress without an authoritarian element in maintaining harmony.
To get some idea how different China's concept of harmony is from western values, consider this:
Confucianism is secular - a hierarchical system of sublimation of the individual to the higher needs of society and family.
Chinese Buddhism is intensely spiritual and individualistic.
Daoism is mystical and shamanistic.
While there is a good dash of Islam and Christianity in the Chinese values cocktail as well, there is no acceptance for the traditional claims of universality of any of the great belief systems.  
The result is a paradox: an extraordinarily harmonious, tolerant and peaceable society which is inherently unstable if allowed to slip out of balance.

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