The Perils of Being Associated With China
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Most people in the West assume that there is a natural order of man that sees white man’s civilization at the top of the ranking while all colored ones stack down to the bottom.
Asia has shown precious little to convince them otherwise, with the sole exception, perhaps, of Imperial Japan which had earned the West’s esteem due to its fierce competition with the powers during the age of colonialism.
China, on the other hand, has not taken on much of a fight, notably, because it never showed any aspirations to confront Western dominance outside its borders.
We may refer to this humbleness by what the cultural master Gu Hongming called the meekness of the Chinese people. [Old Gu always cited Western authorities, not Chinese ones, so he got famous.]
The Chinese came to accept Western cultural superiority unquestionably, with the pervasive result that they divide intellectual people in China into roughly four classes:
At the top we find the “authentic” white foreigners that are treated preferentially, followed by the Chinese who were taught by white man’s culture (overseas Chinese, or holders of Western degree); next are the local Chinamen themselves. The lowest class, however, lower than even the common Chinamen, are the white people who were educated in China. Let me explain this.
The very idea that someone from—in their view—superior culture voluntarily descends down the ladder and permanently lowers his status is met with irritation, suspicion, or even contempt.
Chinese society is not prepared for even the possibility that white people should live among Chinese on the same existential level; they’d always assumed that Westerners deserved better.
Can you imagine a white Westerner slaving away together with Chinese migrant workers for $80 a month on a construction site? Or getting a Chinese education?
Naturally, the majority of young Chinese would love to attend American schools or colleges, or at least European ones; however no Western student, if they understand their worth and status correctly, should pursue their entire higher education in a developing country like China. They’d rather build their own ‘Western’ schools in China. These are often called ‘International’ schools, but they really are just that: they are “Hell no Chinese!” schools!
In the West, it is exactly the other way round: Europeans value their own “authentic” people first and foremost, and then the foreigners who want to be like the West; followed by all potential foreigners who may be recruited in the future. Only at the lowest level do we entertain our own people who have “slandered” their inherited cultural superiority and willingly became part of the developing world.
Sure, the media informs us that the Chinese have risen—they have more self-confidence now. China has become a healthier, more mature and advanced society, closing the gap to, say, Germany, Britain, Italy, or even the United States. If that was entirely true, however, then foreign degrees would gradually lose their value and usefulness in China, whereas home-grown talents would be greatly rewarded for their superior connections, knowledgeability, and the loyalty to the Chinese system, just like the situation in Western countries. This all is obviously not yet the case.
Chinese parents still assume that their child would be better off if they earned a degree from the West so that they can return to their motherland and earn twice and ten times more than the local graduates. The ‘West’ is the ultimate upgrade to them.
But “becoming Chinese” is not an upgrade for Westerners for historical reasons. White Chinese speakers are becoming at best entertainers, translators, secretaries, or English teachers. The Western bosses, however, those CEOs, diplomats, leaders, analysts and eminent scholars, are always directly recruited in the West and their power and status is inversely proportional to their lack of Chinese skills—the less they immersed, the higher their status!
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This is especially true for the so-called ‘China experts.’ Henry Kissinger (USA), Helmut Schmidt (Germany), and Hans Küng (Switzerland) are global authorities on China—none of them speak a single word of Chinese. None of the famed Western sinologists that I know of writes in Chinese, let alone underwent a Chinese education. As my supervisors in the UK used to say: “You can spend twenty years in China and recite all the Classics if you want, but it won’t earn you a degree from a Western university in Chinese Studies.”
If the Western expats spoke Chinese and lived like the Chinese, they would eventually be treated like locals, which would jeopardize their entitlement to higher salaries, perks, and Western exclusiveness.
Western peers would find the natural order endangered and quickly eject the traitors.
In the West, again, the complete opposite is true: the value of foreigners increases precisely in proportion to their willingness to be “assimilated.” Assimilation will bring respect, status, and higher salary.
I cannot stress this often enough: Western leaders like the US president Barack Obama pledged to double the number of American students to China, but wasn’t sending them to become Chinese. For the West, there is only one direction of history and culture: from the West to the East.
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Germany is a case in point. Nothing has changed since Leibniz, the first German philosopher, and Wolff, the first German “China expert,” romantically endorsed Chinese culture yet, under scrutiny they didn’t know a single Chinese character, didn’t have a single Chinese acquaintance, and they never set foot in Asia.
Think. The Europeans are tens of thousands in China, praising the culture if they must; however judging from their actions there’s little reciprocity. On the contrary, the Europeans, in fierce competition with other powers, want to earn money, but have neither a strategy nor an iota of a wish to learn anything Chinese. They want China to become like them. That’s why they are here. There is no plan B.
Remember this, in a proper, healthy, and developed society the following order prevails:
First you value your own “authentic” fellows, then those foreigners who want to become like you, followed by distant foreigners who are somewhat innocent. Only as a last resort should you reward those individuals who have chosen to abandon your culture. In China it is still the reverse.
Thorsten Pattberg (PhD, Peking University) is the author of The East-West Dichotomy.
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Take care! T
This just goes to show, Dr. P: the prejudice that the Chinese worship all foreigners is grotesquely wrong. They like everything foreign, everything Western. As soon as the Western gets mixed with the Chinese, creeping contempt sets in. Nobody likes shape-shifters.
It's called white trash. Nobody worships white people in Japan no more thats for sure. People have their own money. They don't need to find an English teacher.