Today's China: Why it is Crucial to Know How Dragons Think

By Jensen Cox

There isn't a day that passes without someone bringing up China, yet both publicly and privately, the topic is frequently brought up using a basic narrative in which everything is black and white and the Celestial Empire is either completely wicked or the most effective location in the world. It is "superfluous" comments Jensen Cox "to underline how much both versions lead us astray".

In this book, the author draws an essential map of a culture full of charm and, at the same time, profoundly different from ours. A compass that, bypassing the many clich? An enthralling journey of discovery that examines some of the most characteristic traits of the Asian giant: from the fascination of writing to the conception of society and time, from power "with Chinese characteristics" to the mechanisms that guide and determine foreign policy; and yet the pervasive influence of Confucianism and that of Daoism, the aspiration to "collective harmony" and the habit of "cinesizing" everything that the Dragon encounters on its way.

Today's China a book-bridge that would like to avert the clash of civilizations for many now upon us. It is time to recognize that "the West needs China as much as China needs the West." On the horizon, "there is a very tiring job to do, a work of connection and weaving that can no longer be postponed, because without knowing and understanding one's interlocutor it is impossible to interact".

• Language: English
• Publisher: Miller
• Release date: May 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223645016

Jensen Cox

Jensen Cox is an esteemed author renowned for his profound insights and meticulous research in the fields of history and business. With an exceptional ability to weave captivating narratives and shed light on complex subjects, Jensen has established himself as a trusted authority in both disciplines. Through his thought-provoking works, he has consistently delivered invaluable knowledge and enriched the understanding of readers around the world.

Book preview

The book

Not a day goes by without China being talked about, yet the subject is often broached, publicly and privately, through a simplistic narrative in which everything is black and white and the Celestial Empire is absolute evil or the most efficient place in the world. It is superfluous comments Jensen Cox to underline how much both versions lead us astray.

In this book, the author draws an essential map of a culture full of charm and, at the same time, profoundly different from ours. A compass that, bypassing the many clich?? An enthralling journey of discovery that examines some of the most characteristic traits of the Asian giant: from the fascination of writing to the conception of society and time, from power with Chinese characteristics to the mechanisms that guide and determine foreign policy; and yet the pervasive influence of Confucianism and that of Daoism, the aspiration to collective harmony and the habit of cinesizing everything that the Dragon encounters on its way.

Today's China a book-bridge that would like to avert the clash of civilizations for many now upon us. It is time to recognize that the West needs China as much as China needs the West. On the horizon, there is a very tiring job to do, a work of connection and weaving that can no longer be postponed, because without knowing and understanding one's interlocutor it is impossible to interact.

Introduction

China is the indispensable Other that the West must encounter in order to become truly aware of the profile and limits of its cultural self.

SIMON LEYS , The Mood, the Honor, the Horror

Every now and then an episode from a few years ago comes to my mind, when I was a student at the Faculty of Oriental Languages and Civilizations at the University of Venice. Every week I attended six hours of Chinese lecture and Professor Xu, a plump, gray-haired, always smiling-eyed gentleman, taught us freshmen how to read characters and held our hands as we improvised our first ramshackle dialogues. in Mandarin.

One morning, at the end of class, a classmate stood up and turned to the teacher from the desk asking him aloud: «Prof, is it true that in China you eat dogs?». I remember feeling a little uneasy at that provocation but also a mixture of horror and disgust at the idea that man's best friend could really be eaten. Professor Xu smiled and as he continued to collect his books and notes from his desk he replied calmly: Yes, it's true, we eat dogs. Then he paused for a long time, raised his head, looked my companion straight in the eyes and added: But we don't eat horses. For me it was a revelation.

I felt like a stupid and arrogant little girl: I had immediately judged, but in reality, I didn't have the elements to do so. I stopped at the first impression, without in the least imagining that there could be another aspect of my truth, another perspective from which to look at the fact.

In the years spent in Beijing, I have found myself in similar situations countless times. With China, an immediate judgmental reaction is inevitable. Yet, the more I studied that country, the more my exclamation marks turned into huge question marks. My granite certainties left room for new curiosities and the desire for new insights.

We talk about the Dragon every day now. It is a positive factor: we are referring to the second world power and it is important to be aware that the world as we have known it so far is evolving and changing. Unfortunately, however, the subject is often dealt with in a superficial way and the media report, from this point of view, does not help. It frequently happens that news is built around preconceived theses or is only half supplied, thus only ending up reassuring and confirming ideas, often negative, that we already possess, without providing useful elements for understanding the many facets of encountering a world so different from ours.

The lenses we wear inevitably have the colors of our cultural upbringing, but relying only on them carries the risk of falling into the sterile simplification of a black and white Dragon: either as absolute evil or as the most efficient and stunning place in the world. world. It goes without saying how much both versions lead us astray.

China represents the unknown, the distant, the other par excellence. Scary, sure. However, it can also be a great opportunity to practice a complicated and tiring empathy exercise. It puts us in front of behaviors and ways of acting that we don't understand or don't share, it displaces and destabilizes us, but for this very reason it can teach a lot, clearly only if you want to learn and get involved.

As the French sinologist François Jullien argues, it is now time to begin «thinking of the cultural dimension no longer in terms of differences (which define an essence), but in terms of gaps (gaps) which open up as many resources, or in terms of fruitfulness . The gap reveals itself not as a figure of identification, but of exploration, which brings out a possible other, does not produce an order but a disorder». ¹

Today's China precisely wants to generate a bit of virtuous disorder, to mix up the most deeply rooted convictions on the table, to try to restore some small fragment of the complexity that China embodies and places before us. It does not invite us to give up our identity or our values, but to suspend for a moment the instinctive habit of judging behaviors and ways of feeling that travel on other tracks using Western categories.

Kaiser Kuo, the multifaceted former manager of the search engine Baidu, scholar and creator of «Sinica», one of the best podcasts on China around, in a speech given in 2021 at an event of the National Committee on China-US Relations, said termed this approach informed empathy. ² Kuo recalls how human beings are naturally inclined to use the ability to know how others feel in certain situations. This form of identification, however, occurs spontaneously only when there are shared assumptions: for example, if you speak the same language, if you have significant political, philosophical or religious experiences in common.

In the event that one comes across a country like China, which has a completely different background not only in culture, but also in history and values, one must, however, go one step further, make the effort to learn more about its experience , trying to get a clearer idea of his world view. Only by understanding how the Chinese think and accepting the challenge of not neglecting their perspective a priori (although it must always be kept in mind that the Chinese points of view are many), it is possible to build a true relationship of encounter and dialogue.

Kuo also underlines that empathy does not necessarily mean sympathy, a feeling that implies a more or less profound sharing of mutual beliefs. Empathy keeps us a little further apart: it is not necessary to have the same perspectives, the same values as the other, which however we are able to imagine.

In the current scenario of epochal changes, divisions, fractures and immense common challenges, arriving at a multidimensional understanding of this country with a thousand-year-old civilization, increasingly central to our lives, is an operation that no longer makes sense to postpone. This book is an attempt to provide useful insights into the exploration of that gap between us and China and thus begin the arduous exercise towards conscious empathy.

Taking the risk of summarizing and simplifying, Today's China draws the essential map of a philosophical and cultural system alien to ours and tries to offer some tools that increase mutual knowledge and help to grasp the differences that separate us, beyond the common places. From the fascination of language and writing to the Chinese conception of social life and the past, from power with Chinese characteristics to the mechanisms that guide and determine foreign policy, from holistic thinking to the explanation of why the concept of copy in China it doesn't have a negative value like we do.

The invitation, before starting to read, is to embrace the spirit of the traveler who leaves with the desire to discover another culture and immerse himself in a new panorama that holds together contradictions, distortions, paradoxes and millenary traditional elements combined with the most extreme modernity. A multifaceted panorama like the one in which Chinese artist Xu De Qi's China girl is immersed , who looks at us from the cover.

1 . François Jullien, Cultural identity does not exist, but we defend the resources of a culture , transl. it., Turin, Einaudi, 2017, p. 31.

2 . https://supchina.com/2021/10/28/understanding-chinas-historic-changes-through-informed-empathy/

I

Tongue

Spoken Chinese and writing are two systems rich in expressiveness, independent of each other and at the same time closely linked. Spoken language is music, a system of sounds based on sense contexts. Written language is painting, a character system that goes back to the metaphorical illustration of thoughts and ideas.

THEKLA CHABBI , Signs of the Dragon

The Civilization of Writing

They arrive on time at the park entrance to the Temple of Heaven in Beijing every morning at dawn. They are almost all men and are between sixty and eighty years old. There are about a dozen. They mix with dozens of other retired men and women who come here every day to pass the time and spend a few hours together. They recognize each other immediately because they carry the equipment with them. There are those who show up with a simple plastic jar full of water and a brush built by hand, a bit haphazardly, and those who arrive with a respectable paraphernalia: five, six professional brushes of medium-large size and a water tank supported by a practical belt, to be easily tied and transported. Brushes have a squat shape. The handles are long, made of bamboo, wood or plastic. The tuft of hair that emerges at the end is thick and very thick. The bristles are soft, but not too much: they must be able to change direction easily and accurately register a different pressure during use.

The music that accompanies the other elders present, intent on practicing tàijí ( ch1-1.png ) and keeping fit with group ballets, echoes cheerfully in the air. You can also hear the lively chirping that rises from the swaying cages hanging from the trees, populated by larks. Taking domestic birds for a walk is a habit that spread during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), which still persists today, allowing the various bird owners to meet up to chat and socialize.

Our twelve elders equipped with a brush, meanwhile, seem unaware of what is happening around them. They chat for a few minutes to ideally share the area of the park covered with large smooth gray stone tiles and then they begin their involuntary dance. They dip their brushes in water and begin to trace elegant and perfect Chinese characters on the floor. Stand up, the back bent just enough to allow the right pressure to be applied to the brush. The movements of the arm and the body are harmonious, very accurate. Slow, but with sudden accelerations. They write vertically, top to bottom, right to left.

When they change position to wrap and start composing a new column, the first signs already begin to evaporate and disappear. It is a kind of magic: in a very short time this area of the Temple of Heaven is covered with poems by Mao Zedong, idiomatic expressions ( , ch1-2.png chéngyǔ ) and poems from the era of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD), considered in the history of literature Chinese the golden age of poetry. Texts that can be read only for a few moments, words that quickly disappear. Then it starts again.

For the twelve Beijing gentlemen, the activity has several advantages: it is an exercise for the body, because they move harmoniously for hours and hours, a workout to sharpen their eyesight and, above all, excellent gymnastics to keep activate the mind. Forgetting how to draw characters, if you don't practice handwriting, is far from infrequent.

«Water calligraphy» or «writing on the ground» ( ch1-3.png , dìshū ) is not as ancient a practice as it might seem. It spread to Beijing's parks in the early 1980s, when, following Deng Xiaoping's launch of economic reforms in 1978, people began to be free to engage in hobbies and recreational activities. Now you can see similar shows all over China. It is a modern variation of shūf ǎ ( ch1-4.png , literally «writing discipline»), or calligraphy, one of the four traditional art forms representing the culture of the Celestial Empire, together with music, chess and painting. It is not limited to being a composition of characters