How the West invented colonising racism
- Philosopher Xiang Shuchen talks to My Take columnist Alex Lo about her new book, which argues premodern China had no conception of biologically determined races, only a culture of mutual assimilation that may serve as a template for contemporary cosmopolitanism
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Scholar Xiang Shuchen on race attitudes in premodern China
One of the most fundamental commands of Confucius is “the rectification of names” so that the meanings of words must correspond to reality. Otherwise, all descends into chaos under Heaven.
According to Xiang Shuchen, the Mount Hua professor of philosophy at Xidian University in Xian, Shaanxi province, many of us are confused about basic words such as “China”, “Chinese”, “the Han”, “the West”, “race” and “racism”, and “colonialism”. And based on those misconceptions, many of us proceed to stake out dogmatic and antagonistic positions.
In a provocative new book, Chinese Cosmopolitanism: The History and Philosophy of an Idea, she attempts to recover a forgotten Chinese tradition that would help lend clarity to that confusion and perhaps put us in a better position to understand each other from different societies and across cultures.
Chinese Cosmopolitanism is part of a book series written by contemporary Chinese scholars, and published by Princeton University Press.
Was racism a Western invention? Most Westerners would think that’s ridiculous.
Different cultures have different ways of thinking about differences.
Westerners would think that it’s ridiculous that we are not all racist, but this very opinion is actually a product of deliberate miseducation and a very manufactured narrative.