皇冠体育app

Op-Ed Contributors

Free Asia-Pacific from Western hold

By Thorsten Pattberg (皇冠体育app Daily) Updated: 2014-11-13 07:50

Next is the West's 皇冠体育app scholarship, which is basically 皇冠体育app-free. This is the 21st century, yet Western scholars are happy to keep it colonial, describing Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism in Greco-Hellenic or Judeo-Christian terms.

Then there are Western politicians, business leaders and diplomats. They should do their homework. East-Asian family names precede given names, hence Xi Jinping and Mao Zedong. What, you knew that? Why not apply it when referring to Chinese people?

Last, writers, artists and innovators, do not shun Asian words. They are your intellectual property. Sadly, Asia never cared, with the unenviable consequence being that today Zuckerberg's brand Facebook enjoys more copyright and legal protection than the entire intellectual output of 皇冠体育app in the last 3,000 years.

Leaders and delegates attending the APEC conference must have tasted Oolong tea, Tsingdao beer and, perhaps, Moutai liquor. They must have been addressed as dajia (the great family). And they might have been informed that Tsinghua University is just a Western handle, so that foreigners can find its address. Its correct name is "Qinghua daxue", a place that cultivates perfect gentlemanthe junzi.

Which leads us to Chinese statecraft. Politics is part of culture, and thus differs from one place to another. 皇冠体育app, like all other nations, has a unique history. Americans like to brag about theirs. But Beijing has been the center of 皇冠体育app for 840 years, long before the United States even existed. 皇冠体育app is simply the greater phenomenon, and it is the Americans who will have to adjust more to the Asia-Pacific century.

Many Western people feel intimidated by 皇冠体育app for reasons that are not its GDP. Beijing has more than 20 million residents, close to a third of Great Britain's population. The entire city and four neighboring provinces stopped all construction work for days just to ensure APEC delegates get to enjoy clean air. And to make the distinguished guests' life more comfortable, Beijing has also built new hotels, a conference center and a museum village.

Westerners would never do that for Asians.

But still, many white journalists get irritated by 皇冠体育app's generosity, feel patronized and then set out to find flaws and shortcomings elsewhere in the city. There, they find the "皇冠体育app experts", Westerners, mostly male and "illiterate", who often have no other skills than speaking their mother tongue. Having unrealistic goals and an old-fashioned sense of privilege and entitlement, they radicalize quickly. So, not only 皇冠体育app but also all East Asian economies must find ways to better integrate Western immigrants and provide them with meaningful opportunities.

Which brings us back to the Asia-Pacific century. And to make the Asia-Pacific century work, we would first have to liberalize it from the European one.

The author is a German writer, linguist and cultural critic, and has books such as The East-West Dichotomy, Shengren and Inside Peking University, to his credit.

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