As the tide of history turns, China may yet save capitalism from the capitalists

This summer holiday, I finally read the book Thirty Years River West, Thirty Years River East, written by the grand old man of Chinese cultural linguistics, Professor Ji Xianlin. The title is the summation of his view that culture and civilisation are like a river that flows east for 30 years and then west for the next 30.

His main theme is that, even though the tide of economic dominance and intellectual thinking has been Western since the Industrial Revolution, it is turning. By extension, he is telling this generation of Chinese intellectuals who are infatuated with Western technology and science not to forget their Chinese cultural roots.

At a time when the world is preoccupied with the possible decline of the West and the rise of the East, the thinking of an intellectual giant on Eastern culture, who is relatively unknown in the West, is particularly relevant.

Ji cannot be accused of being a parochial Chinese nationalist. Born in 1911, he studied Western language and culture at Tsinghua University and from 1934 to 1946, pursued research on Indian languages and culture at the University of Gottingen in Germany. On his return, he became the first lecturer in Eastern languages at Peking University. Zhou Enlai and other leaders often consulted him for his insights into the importance of cultural exchange, particularly with India.

Ji's view is that Chinese culture is like a long river that is sometimes full, at flood, or low in a drought, but never dry. The reason is that it is always replenished by fresh water. Chinese culture has been profoundly replenished twice in history, once by Indian/Buddhist culture and more recently by Western culture and technology. Such rejuvenation depended critically on effective translation between cultures.

Ji does not see culture as static, but a dynamic exchange (or mutual borrowing) between civilisations, even though each has kept its own original character.