Wisdom in China and the West


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The Great Thoughts of China


Book Description

From the time-honored sagacity of Confucius to the contemporary words of Deng Xiaoping, The Great Thoughts of China brings together - for the first time - quotations from the wisest, most insightful voices of Chinese history. Compiled by one of China's foremost cultural experts, the quotations have been carefully selected and translated for this edition to make them accessible to contemporary readers, while preserving their original meanings and context.




Cracking the China Conundrum


Book Description

China's rise is altering global power relations, reshaping economic debates, and commanding tremendous public attention. Despite extensive media and academic scrutiny, the conventional wisdom about China's economy is often wrong. Cracking the China Conundrum provides a holistic and contrarian view of China's major economic, political, and foreign policy issues. Yukon Huang trenchantly addresses widely accepted yet misguided views in the analysis of China's economy. He examines arguments about the causes and effects of China's possible debt and property market bubbles, trade and investment relations with the Western world, the links between corruption and political liberalization in a growing economy and Beijing's more assertive foreign policies. Huang explains that such misconceptions arise in part because China's economic system is unprecedented in many ways-namely because it's driven by both the market and state- which complicates the task of designing accurate and adaptable analysis and research. Further, China's size, regional diversity, and uniquely decentralized administrative system poses difficulties for making generalizations and comparisons from micro to macro levels when trying to interpret China's economic state accurately. This book not only interprets the ideologies that experts continue building misguided theories upon, but also examines the contributing factors to this puzzle. Cracking the China Conundrum provides an enlightening and corrective viewpoint on several major economic and political foreign policy concerns currently shaping China's economic environment.




Wisdom Embodied


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Chinese Buddhist and Daoist Sculpture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art --




Business Leadership in China


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In this revised edition of Frank Gallo's best-selling book, the author brings the story of leadership in China right up to date. With new material on Chinese leadership styles and the challenges of going global, the book is ideal for any international manager who wants to better understand how to blend the best practices of Western leadership with traditional Chinese wisdom. The content comes from a combination of English and Chinese literature, interviews with practicing executives in China as well as the author's own experience as a leader in China. Dr. Frank Gallo, the Greater China Chief Leadership Consultant for Hewitt Associates, offers sage advice on effective leadership practices for the China market. His key areas of focus include: the unique challenge and complex issues of leading a firm or division in China major areas of cultural differences such as teamwork, decision-making and employee motivation, between Chinese and Western business practices common areas of misunderstanding such as truth versus courteousness; managing a hierarchy versus empowerment; and dealing with the role of the individual rather than the rule of law implementing effective leadership strategies and development with a Chinese company. This timely book will ensure a harmonious leadership style that draws out the best from both Western and Chinese business practices.




Intelligence and Wisdom


Book Description

This book centers on rethinking foundational values in the era of frontier technologies by tapping into the wisdom of Chinese philosophical traditions. It tries to answer the following questions: How is the essence underpinning humans, nature, and machines changing in this age of frontier technologies? What is the appropriate ethical framework for regulating human–machine relationships? What human values should be embedded in or learnt by AI? Some interesting points emerged from the discussions. For example, the three dominant schools of Chinese thinking–Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism– invariably reflect non-anthropocentric perspectives and none of them places humanity in a supreme position in the universe. While many Chinese philosophers are not convinced by the prospect of machine intelligence exceeding that of humans, the strong influence of non-anthropocentrism in the Chinese thinking contributed to much less panic in China than in the West about the existential risks of AI. The thinking is that as human beings have always lived with other forms of existence, living with programs or other forms of “beings,” which may become more capable than humans, will not inevitably lead to a dystopia. Second, all three schools emphasize self-restraint, constant introspection, and the pursuit of sage-hood or enlightenment. These views therefore see the potential risks posed by frontier technologies as an opportunity for the humanity to engage in introspection on the lessons learned from our social and political history. It is long overdue that humanity shall rethink its foundational values to take into account a multi-being planetary outlook. This book consists of nine leading Chinese philosophers’ reflections on AI’s impact on human nature and the human society. This is a groundbreaking work, which has pioneered the in-depth intellectual exploration involving traditional Chinese philosophy and frontier technologies and has inspired multidisciplinary and across area studies on AI, philosophy, and ethical implications. Chapters “1, 3, 5, 7 and 10” are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.




Unlikely Partners


Book Description

Unlikely Partners recounts the story of how Chinese politicians and intellectuals looked beyond their country’s borders for economic guidance at a key crossroads in the nation’s tumultuous twentieth century. Julian Gewirtz offers a dramatic tale of competition for influence between reformers and hardline conservatives during the Deng Xiaoping era, bringing to light China’s productive exchanges with the West. When Mao Zedong died in 1976, his successors seized the opportunity to reassess the wisdom of China’s rigid commitment to Marxist doctrine. With Deng Xiaoping’s blessing, China’s economic gurus scoured the globe for fresh ideas that would put China on the path to domestic prosperity and ultimately global economic power. Leading foreign economists accepted invitations to visit China to share their expertise, while Chinese delegations traveled to the United States, Hungary, Great Britain, West Germany, Brazil, and other countries to examine new ideas. Chinese economists partnered with an array of brilliant thinkers, including Nobel Prize winners, World Bank officials, battle-scarred veterans of Eastern Europe’s economic struggles, and blunt-speaking free-market fundamentalists. Nevertheless, the push from China’s senior leadership to implement economic reforms did not go unchallenged, nor has the Chinese government been eager to publicize its engagement with Western-style innovations. Even today, Chinese Communists decry dangerous Western influences and officially maintain that China’s economic reinvention was the Party’s achievement alone. Unlikely Partners sets forth the truer story, which has continuing relevance for China’s complex and far-reaching relationship with the West.




The Wise Man from the West


Book Description

This is the amazing story of the famous Jesuit missionary priest to China, Fr. Matteo Ricci, revered as a "Wise Man" by the Chinese. He arrived in China in 1582 and died there twenty-eight years later, having developing a deep knowledge of and love for the country, the culture and the people. Before Ricci's heroic mission, China was an unexplored land bordering on the vague, mysterious Cathay, and the West was no more than a rumor to the learned Mandarins, a distant unknown region lying beyond the bounds of geography. In the person of Father Ricci these two worlds met, and Vincent Cronin dramatically recreates the romance, the crossed purposes, the potential tragedy of that meeting. He shows us ancient China, the timeless state, with a civilization older than that wherein Christianity first found expression. Because Ricci loved this civilization and honored it, he was able to teach his strange new Christian doctrine with tact and sympathy. He carried much of the technological and philosophical wisdom of the late Renaissance Europe, and thus found favor among the Mandarins, the men of learning who enjoyed high status at the Imperial Court. He learned Chinese to discuss with them the problems in science and technology, and also questions of religion and the hereafter. He lived as a great scholar among great scholars and left behind him a memory worthy of the Christian faith he served. Well researched and written with an enchanting style, Cronin relied almost entirely on contemporary material only recently assembled, including Father Ricci's own letters and reports, and his account of China written in Peking before his death. The seed of Faith was sown and the crop, even after a century of atheistic communism, continues to grow in present-day China.




Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power


Book Description

From China's most influential foreign policy thinker, a vision for a "Beijing Consensus" for international relations The rise of China could be the most important political development of the twenty-first century. What will China look like in the future? What should it look like? And what will China's rise mean for the rest of world? This book, written by China's most influential foreign policy thinker, sets out a vision for the coming decades from China's point of view. In the West, Yan Xuetong is often regarded as a hawkish policy advisor and enemy of liberal internationalists. But a very different picture emerges from this book, as Yan examines the lessons of ancient Chinese political thought for the future of China and the development of a "Beijing consensus" in international relations. Yan, it becomes clear, is neither a communist who believes that economic might is the key to national power, nor a neoconservative who believes that China should rely on military might to get its way. Rather, Yan argues, political leadership is the key to national power, and morality is an essential part of political leadership. Economic and military might are important components of national power, but they are secondary to political leaders who act in accordance with moral norms, and the same holds true in determining the hierarchy of the global order. Providing new insights into the thinking of one of China's leading foreign policy figures, this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in China's rise or in international relations.




China Versus the West


Book Description

China Versus the West is an innovative book. The author, a leading specialist on the international and Asian economy and business, presents the most comprehensive picture of the changing power balance between the emerging superpower China and the "old" developed economies of the West: mainly the US, Europe and Japan. The reader can clearly see in what areas and to what extent China has become the world leader, in what areas it is catching up and in what areas the West retains its superiority and has a chance to strengthen it further. At the same time, I. Tselichtchev unveils a breath-taking story of the global economy and business in the brave new world which is non-"West-led" and where major growth dynamics are coming from large emerging economies. A radically changing economic environment requires new government policies and business strategies. The book contains many valuable suggestions and ideas. Using his own analytical framework, the author presents a set of options and alternatives for Western businesses in the wake of China's production and export offensive. The book provides a uniquely sharp and thought-provoking analysis of the factors behind the global crisis of 2008-2009, largely different from what we see in other publications, and examines its implications for the global power balance. I. Tselichtchev vividly shows that it was not global, but Western crisis of a structural character which drastically changed the China-West power balance in the former's favor. He provides strong arguments showing that today's China is structurally and macro-economically stronger than most countries of the West. This leads him to rethinking the very essence of the Chinese model of capitalism and to its new definition. He expresses unconventional, sometimes controversial, but well-founded views about China's problems and weaknesses and the prospects for its political evolution. The book ends with invaluable insights into China's unique role in the world economic history, the essence of the non-"West-led" multipolar world and the positions of its major players. Arguing that from now on no single country will be ever able to "rule the world", it shows new opportunities dynamic China is opening for the West. Thoroughly analyzing and discussing a wide range of the key, often complicated issues which are now in the focus of the world's attention, the book remains very reader-friendly. It is written in the form of an unconstrained dialogue with the reader, containing a lot of the author's on-the-spot impressions, interesting facts, remarks and quotations. China Versus the West is a must reading for everyone who wants to know more about the global developments, China and the West, and also, perhaps, to get valuable inputs and hints to find his or her own place in today's new world. It is highly recommended for policy-makers, business people, academics, analysts and journalists. It is a valuable source for professors and students of the universities and business schools.