OxBlog

Saturday, November 23, 2002

# Posted 6:06 AM by Ariel David Adesnik  

VERSUS CULTURAL RELATIVISM: This morning the NY Times published an op-ed by Bao Tong, whom it identifies as
former director of the Office of Political Reform of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, was the highest party official imprisoned for opposing the Tiananmen Square crackdown. He was released from prison in 1996 and remains under constant police surveillance.
The words in his column that struck me were:
Mao and Deng both advanced the view that the Chinese national character was something easily differentiated from one that might be called Western. The last three party congresses have all continued to label democracy as too "Western" and therefore unsuited to China. Yet what does the division between "Eastern" and "Western" ideas mean in a post-communist China that has accepted the W.T.O.?

One might add: What did the division between "Eastern" and "Western" mean in communist China, a society based on a philosophy developed by a German exile in London?
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