If China does this, can it become more central and important in the world?
Wang: Not the centre of the world, but China will realize its own modernity, which will not be the same as that of the United States, nor, by the way, will it be like the Soviet Union. It will be something new.
What will be distinctive about it?
Wang: We can build our own modernity based on Chinese culture. Of course, we will use some elements of Western culture but we can’t transplant that culture to China. A mistake that Western countries make, especially the United States, is to want to transplant their systems and institutions to other countries. It’s wrong because it ignores the cultural core of a country. I always like to focus on the cultural core: to transform or remove the cultural core is impossible.
And the cultural core is…?
Wang: Five thousand years of history.
What are the values of this cultural core?
Wang: It’s composed of many elements: our attitude towards life, the family, marriage and so on. During the long history of Chinese civilization – because our country is so big – we have developed many different ideas and attitudes.
You and Zhang are both studying international finance and yet your argument is all about the distinctiveness of China.
Wang: Globalization is Westernization. But it should be a two-way process: we accept Western ideas while at the same time people in Western countries should seek to understand and maybe accept some of our ideas. Now it is not like that: we just accept Western ideas, there’s no movement in the opposite direction. That’s the problem. As a result, we lose something from our own culture, which worries us a lot. Now we are afraid of losing our own culture. We accept Western ideas not because they are good for us but because of their novelty. They are new to us so we accept them. But on the whole I don’t think they will be good for us. Maybe in twenty years’ time we will give them up.
Zhang: Historically, there is a part of the Chinese that wants to change and a part that wants to remain the same. We are in a state of conflict, both as individuals and as a society. In the Qing dynasty we shut ourselves off from the outside world, mainly because we wanted to keep our culture and our civilization. Part of the reason for this was unacceptable: we thought we were superior to the rest of the world. When we finally opened our doors, we found that we were backward compared with Western countries. Now we have opened our doors again and with this openness we are, and will be, more and more influenced by Western countries. We are afraid we will lose our culture, our characteristics. I want to change, because the current situation in China is not so satisfactory, but at the same time I worry that when we eliminate the shortcomings in our culture maybe we will also lose the essential part of our culture, the good part of our culture.
Huang: Even now, when Western influence is considerable and intrusive, I don’t think the Chinese will lose their culture because this represents a very thick accumulation of history. It cannot change easily, even if some of the surface things change. There is a very strong core culture inside every one of us. Even if our way of life changes, that culture will not change. Our long history constantly reappears and recurs. Now we are in a period of loss. I cannot deny that. We are lost because of the underlying conflict between modernity and tradition. But I believe that something new will come out of this: a unique China will remain.
Gao: We have been through worse periods, for example when we were colonized. I am more confident. We are in a new period when we are not being invaded but we are being influenced by the West. But for sure we will not be Westernized, the core culture will still be there.
<p>CONTESTED MODERNITY</p>
