My Take | When East and West deny each other’s civilisation
- Until we learn how to be nice and respectful to each other, cultural warriors will have much to do to earn their keep by attacking the other side’s most cherished values, ideals and beliefs
Is there such an entity as “the West”? You may have heard of that stupid phrase, “from Plato to Nato”. I ask because there seems to be a new game among intellectual warriors or ideologues in some Western universities and think tanks arguing there is no such thing as “Chinese civilisation” and that “China” dates only to 1949, or at most 1911. Well, if they can challenge whether our culture and civilisation even exist, I think we can ask the same of theirs.
James Millward, a professor of history at Georgetown University, gives a pretty succinct summary of this “no China” view.
“The political history of continental East Asia involves a multiplicity of kingdoms, some but not all now considered part of ‘Chinese’ history,” he wrote.
“Their rulers were of various ethnicities and spoke different languages. Their states occupied many different areas of what is now the People’s Republic of China (PRC), often concurrently and inimically with other states.”
And what of “China”? “What would a more accurate historical approach to ‘modern China’ look like?” he asked.