From: joe@astro.as.utexas.edu (Joe Wang)
Newsgroups: soc.history,soc.culture.china,soc.culture.taiwan
Subject: Re: World Culture and Western Culture
Date: 16 Oct 92 18:20:33 GMT
Followup-To: soc.history,soc.culture.china,soc.culture.taiwan
Organization: McDonald Observatory, University of Texas @ Austin

This is a followup to a post in soc.history which may be of interest to
the readers in the soc.culture.* groups.

In article <14918@chalmers.se> d9bertil@dtek.chalmers.se (Bertil Jonell) writes:
>  So, what view do non-Western cultures have on the relative merits of 
>different cultures? 

I can only talk in detail about the Chinese view on the subject.  I'd
like to see exactly what an Arab or Indian netter thinks about comparing
cultures.

The Chinese system for comparing cultures is remarkably similar to the
one that Mr. Carty proposed, which is to say that the "superior"
culture is the one that people will tend to immigrate toward, given
free immigration.

By this standard, one can conclude that "old (or feudalistic) Chinese
culture" is inferior to "modern Western culture," and this conclusion
has largely been accepted by most Chinese in the past one hundred
years.  This has caused a great deal of anguish, especially since
Chinese are used to thinking that their culture is superior, and hence
are not content to be number #2 when cultures are ranked.

Given that "old Chinese culture" is considered inferior, an intense
topic of discussion has been what to do about this and how to create a
"modern Chinese culture" that will presumably be equal or superior to
"modern Western culture."  Basically, there are two major schools of
thought.  The "zhong ti / xi yong" (Chinese base / Western practice)
believes that "modern Chinese culture" should consist of Western
elements (particularly science and democracy) grafted on to a core
which is Chinese.  The other school argues for "total Westernization,"
arguing that the core of Chinese thinking is completely rotten and that
trying to graft Western concepts onto Chinese culture will result only
in cosmetic changes.

Within each major school there are differences.  For example, the
"total Westernization" school contains people who subscribed to
Marxism as well as people who argue that the "essence" that China
should try to capture is the result of a Western oceanic culture which
is different from the Chinese continental culture.

This "search for modern China" has been the driving force behind 20th
century Chinese history.  And discussions on the "problem of Chinese
culture" are still heated ones on the Chinese culture groups.

Personally, I lean toward the "ti-yong" school of thought.  The main
reasons I do so are 

  1) the phenomenal success of Chinese communities in Taiwan and Hong Kong, 
     both of whom have followed policies of trying to reconcile Chinese 
     values with Western institutions and the economic boom (GNP growth
     has averaged 9% per year over the past decade) that took
     place on the Mainland after the government gave up "cultural 
     revolutions" and

  2) the fact that the West itself is trying to incorporate a lot of 
     traditional Chinese ideals.  In last night's Presidental debate,
     for example, Ross Perot stated that "the family is the basic unit
     of government" which is quote that could have come straight out of
     Confucius.

>That their own is superior over all others? That their own
>is superior to some and inferior to some? That their own is inferior to
>all others? Or that 'superior' and 'inferior' don't have any meaning when
>talking about cultures (aka cultural relativism)?

The point I wanted to make most of all was that cultural relativism is
a Western concept.  Even though you will get a lot of argument among
Chinese about what the characteristics of a superior culture are, I
know of no Chinese who has ever believed that "all cultures are the
same" or that "there are no objective means of judging cultures."

It's important to keep these differences in current Chinese and
Western thought in mind when thinking about things which are going on
there right now.