"Thorsten J Pattberg doesn’t know if he’ll ever be widely known during his lifetime"

Next World

Ok, the Year of the Dragon 2024 is closing. I could not beat the hellban. My forays into European media were mostly futile. The West wishes to destroy China, and I am the philosopher of China and procurer of the Chinese key terminologies (and other pitch-black horror stories). However, I met many of you in person, and many more of you online, and I wanted to give some genuine shout-outs.

In no particular order, there were Rurik Skywalker (Russia genius commentator), Michael Grawe (of the Kulturstudio media in Rostock at the Baltic Sea), SL Kanthan (of Geopolitics Demystified in Bangalore), Flavio von Witzleben (Politics, Media and Society), Ayoto Ataraxia (the Taiwanese polymath from Asian Provocation), J. J. Goldstein, Rebecca Z, Kurt, and of course Mya from Life in China.

Had It All, Threw It All Away

It’s been over eighteen years since the release of The East-West Dichotomy, the defining text on the cultural differences between Eastern and Western cultures.

Since then, Dr. Pattberg, of Peking University, has published no less than thirty philosophical books, and over 1000 posts and articles on Chinese-Western relations.

To say Western readers have been anticipating his next text is something of a running joke, because Dr. Pattberg, who had also been a visiting scholar at Harvard and Tokyo University, is completely unknown in Europe and America.

It turns out, one of Germany’s most prolific writers and philosophers is not just ignored by the legacy media but actively banned.

“Unfortunately,” Pattberg explained his situation, “I have a Chinese PhD degree, a so-called ‘Boshi Xuewei’ or ‘Rank of an Erudite Master’, which is not accredited in Europe. As a white man with a Chinese degree, I will never be permitted to work in Western academia.”

“Plus, I have a rare international education, which makes me the envy of my German colleagues.”

Are professors still regarded as a priest class in Germany that shall not be questioned?

“German professors are the priest caste of state education. They are very protective of their power. They are also very censorial.”

Dr. Pattberg told us how he struggled with German narrow-mindedness in school education.

“I never attended a German university because that was too easy for me when I was young, so I went off to Oxford in England. Oxford rejected me because I had worked eight years in the German judiciary and I was too old for Somerville College. Then, I went to Edinburgh University in Scotland, on my own.”

And then you branched off into China?

“Yes, from the UK, I went on to Fudan University in Communist Shanghai. By that time, I had German agents sticking their noses in my work. Usually, the Germans who study abroad are vexed by the German government. I came all by myself to China over the UK. They couldn’t coerce my German employer or supervisors because I had none. They couldn’t explain how I got all those foreign governments’ scholarships.”

Pattberg worked for the German Max-Planck Society for Mathematics in the Sciences, briefly: “The Germans are told to hate China and love the Americans,” Pattberg elaborated. “This is like a mental illness in them, so they can’t communicate well with foreign people.”

Based on Germany's history, and Germany's division into East and West Germany, it must be the case that German education is very biased.

“Yes," Dr. Pattberg explained, "German China Studies is very biased and dysfunctional.”

Related mass media, including the Bertelsmann Media Group, the Funke Group, the Axel Springer Media Group, issued a total ban on Dr. Pattberg, his life and work: “I managed to publish two pieces in the German ‘Times’, but they were quickly pulled once they realized it was Dr. Pattberg of PKU (Peking University)."

“One journalist of the German Academic Exchange Service wanted to write about my research on Pure Land Buddhism,” Dr. Pattberg explained, “but received a call from her higher-ups at the last minute. I was declared a person non grata. She had to cancel the piece.”

Although Dr. Pattberg has been making progress on The Problem of Sinology, Inside Peking University, and Sheng-ren - Above Philosophy and Beyond Religion, writing bits and pieces in over 100 newspapers in Asia, over 700 Western newspapers flat-out rejected his submissions.

“I practically knew all the foreign correspondents in Beijing, Shanghai, and even in Hong Kong. Many were from Harvard as well. It is a very small world here in the expat circles.” Pattberg mused about his feuds with the journalists from The Economist magazine, who rejected his submission but plagiarized his ideas on Chinese key terminologies. “They did it, they knew it, but said to me, they had international lawyers and would sue me if I used the Economist logo in my complaints.”

It did not help Dr. Pattberg’s academic standing with the Western powers when he started to expose their subversive activities in the Far East. His latest title, Press Soldiers - How Western Journalists Subvert and Destabilize China, caused his expatriation from the expats. “I was finished after that. My website got hacked. Google (the global search engine) issued a shadowban. They hated me.”

We asked this wolf soldier who evidently had to battle in his career on his own, if he ever planned on returning to academia? “Currently, it’s off the table, because I have been put on track as a larger-than-life philosopher. My involuntary loneliness paid off, I guess. I have gray hair.”

“I definitely wrote more than German Hegel, but Hegel (the German Philosopher of History) never set foot in Asia. I got into more trouble with national governments than French Voltaire by now, but Voltaire didn’t attend so many elite universities. I really have to think carefully about traveling in Europe. They don’t like free speech and what I have to say about them.”

If you were a betting person, would you put money on Dr. Pattberg ever getting noticed in the West? Will people ever hear about The Sheng-ren or The East-West Dichotomy?

The post Thorsten J Pattberg doesn’t know if he’ll ever be widely known during his lifetime appeared first on Life in China.

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