Traditional culture propels Chinese modernization

As a rule, societies that modernize are more successful, in a Darwinian way. But developed countries, which achieved modernization about 50 years ago, are now struggling. The United States and the founding members of the European Union are having great difficulty reinventing themselves.

It requires a courageous and honest person to admit failure: fewer persons prefer to put the blame on others, in this case for falling behind in the modernization project. Politicians and the media in the West blame factors such as climate change, population aging, refugee influx, attitude of the younger generations, big tech companies, the effects of the three-year COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine conflict, energy shortage, unfair competition and capitalist elite conspiracies as well as cyber spying for their failure.

However, the real causes of the West's failure are increasing homelessness, decreasing reliability of public transport and roads, social unrest resulting in riots, unstable government coalitions, massive national debt and inflation. Insecurity in public spaces indicates the decay.

In the US, this is illustrated by frequent shootings in schools. In the EU, a lesser-known situation is the impotence of governments when it comes to dealing with organized crime. The Dutch government, for instance, has asked Princess Catharina-Amalia, the 19-year-old heir to the throne of the Netherlands, to stay within the grounds of the Royal Palace to avoid being targeted by local drug gangs, instead of coming down hard on the Dutch mafia "capos" and eliminating them once and for all. The princess is confined to the palace for a year now.

The Palace Museum (Forbidden City) in Beijing reminds visitors how cruel it was to keep young princes and princesses aloof from the outside world in the ancient time. In the Netherlands, unfortunately, we see a modern-day equivalent of "overprotecting" a young princess.

In China, the fundamental elements of modernization stem from time-honored principles, including placing the interests of the group before the individual's.

Even in a Chinese family, the most basic group in society, one can see individuals making sacrifices for the common good. Parents invest resources in their children's education, in order to improve the future of the family as a whole. Some elderly people live with grown-up children, thus also being taken care of.

In a broader sense, group advancement is deeply embedded in Chinese culture. For a long period of time, group advancement was paramount in Western society as well. The Roman legions were successful because of their collective efforts in the fight against barbarians who would fight for individual glory.

The cathedrals in France and England were financed and built by communities. Since the Enlightenment, however, individualism and reasoning have been placed upon a pedestal. Affluent white men were supposed to think on a personal level, instead of following the collective principle based on tradition or religion. That resulted in human rights, which for some underlines the priority of the individual over collective interests.

Chinese modernization is also evolving theories in an open-minded way. In socialist theory in the planned economy era, public ownership of resources is a key element. Socialism with Chinese characteristics makes this different.

For instance, private economy is also thriving. Experiments with private ownership have been influencing the housing market and have led to bicycles being replaced by private cars. A huge middle-income group, with private bank accounts and WeChat Pay, travels across the world.

Mainly because of this flexible attitude, China has succeeded in eradicating absolute poverty, and hunger is unheard of in today's China. It is also because of this flexible attitude that the Chinese economy has become the second largest in the world.

Pursuing modernization is a core responsibility of a country's leaders. In the US and in the founding members of the EU, the chosen or appointed leaders are preoccupied with consolidating their own positions, by way of pacifying small but loud activist groups, and little service is provided for the silent majority through redevelopment of society.

Another interesting difference between China and the West is that anyone in the West can contest an election or found a new political party. This gives rise to single-issue political parties which, for instance, are focused only on farmers' rights, or animal rights or immigration. The combination of dogmatic individualism and the eagerness to please leaders makes modernization a challenging task in the West.

Ruism, which has a significant place in Chinese traditional culture, can be described as a vast interconnected system of philosophies, ideas, rituals, practices, and habits of the heart encompassing all the possible domains of human concern. The West today knows Ruism as Confucianism. Western philosophers did research Ruism during the Enlightenment of the 18th century. But in Europe, unlike in China, this did not lead to a general appreciation of harmony of the family, social order and world order. On the contrary, individualism became the principle of Western society.

In order to modernize a society however, flexibility in balancing theory, group interests and individual interests gives better results.

The author, a foreign exchange scholar at Tsinghua University from 2012 to 2015, is a civil law notary at The Hague.

The views don't necessarily represent those of China Daily.

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