Pattberg: Add Daxue, Junzi, and Shengren to the Global Language

Dr. Pattberg explains why certain Chinese words are mandatory for global citizenship:

"China cannot make the West learn the Chinese language. But what it can do is to promote certain key terminologies back into world history. China, to this day, keeps the spirit of the Daxue. It is a living shengren culture." - T. Pattberg

In a recent feature article at Big Think, the global think tank, Dr. Pattberg argues that the future Global Language will have to include many more Chinese key terminologies. The reason why those terminologies are missing now lies in erroneous European translations of Chinese names in the past. Foreign concepts and categories were simply replaced with convenient European words in order to keep what the Germans call 'Deutungshoheit' - the sovereignty over the definition of thought. This kind of 'Language Imperialism' in the 21st Century, says Pattberg, is no longer adequate or called-for. On the contrary, he believes that the world is now ready for Chinese words and what better place to find some than Inside Peking University - China's mother lode of higher education! [Read at BIG THINK]

Thorsten Pattberg is a German writer, scholar, and cultural critic. He received his PhD from Peking University, spent time at Tokyo University and Harvard University, is a former research fellow at The Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies at Peking University and is the author of ‘Shengren’ and ‘The East-West Dichotomy’.