Politeness, meekness, and eloquence won't help, Chen Dingding

Thorsten J. Pattberg

Politeness, meekness, and eloquence won't help, Chen Dingding. Your thoughtful response to David Shambaugh reminds me about Gu Hongming's 1922 genius attempt to explain to Sir Arthur Smith why the West was wrong about China. Next thing you know China lies in the gutters. That's because "a peaceful rise" is not China to decide. I say this a thousand times to Chinese scholars that nobody in the West cares what you think. Not even if its the truth. Scholarship, in fact, the history of the world, is not a string of truths, but a chronology of survivors. Chinese scholars either "westernize" or they will be ignored, marginalized, or, if they caused trouble, ostracized. You may take comfort in the fact that China isn't the only victim. There's nothing that those non-Western nations, governments, and their people can do; although, of course, most are still trying to please. The reality is, it never was about what they did or do; their mere presence (or shall we say "existence") as non-Western nations, governments, and people was (and always will be) the single most important factor as to why they were routinely patronized, coerced, and, if need be, attacked. 

Comment on Chen Dingding's "Sorry America, China is NOT going to collapse", National Interest

Looking for Confucianism in Language (Video)

Sometimes the study of cultures makes you wonder: What if there's more Confucianism (or any other tradition) in language than in the real world? In that case, translation is to words what assimilation is to individuals. The only way to keep cultural pluralism alive is to respect and protect the terms on which each of traditions was build. Your author explains that with the example of  'daxue' which is not just a simple translation of the Western concept of 'university' but also plays into the realms of Confucianism -the 'Daxue' or the "Great Learning." We have addressed many areas of oppression in the world such as slavery, gender inequality, racism, and human rights; however, one aspect of life has never been touched: translation. We do it all the time, and often recklessly: targeting the words of others by deliberately translating them into convenient and familiar vocabularies of our own, and, therein claiming what the Germans call 'deutungshoheit' -the sovereignty over the definition of thoughts of others. That said, it is my strong belief that in particular the Chinese world, which for historical reasons (and in a Hegelian sense) had been excluded from participating in 'world history', should start to actively pursuing its cultural core interest and expand human knowledge by adding the correct names and brands of its own inventions (of the past three thousand years) to the future global lexicon. READ AT BIG THINK/DRAGON AND PANDAS.

Thorsten Pattberg with Wang Jisi, China’s most respected expert on the United States

裴德思和王缉思（09/2013）

Wang Jisi is Professor and the Dean of the School of International Studies at Peking University. In 2012, he was named one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers and “China’s most respected expert on the United States” by Foreign Policy magazine. He is or was also the supervisor of quite a few of my friends here, so it was good to see him in public at ThinkInChina in Bridge Cafe in Beijing today. Go to Wang’s Talk. Go to ThinkInChina. Go to Foreign Policy.