THE MYTH OF CHINESE CIVILISATION
How does Chinese civilization differ from Western civilisation? A distinguished Chinese Professor at Tsinghua University (Note 1) expresses a view shared with Harvard’s Professors William Kirby and Peter Bol (Note 2)) that the core difference between Chinese and Western culture is that Chinese culture is based on ritual and western culture is based on law. This is the wrong answer to the wrong question. There was a difference between China in 1840 and the US/Europe in 1840 but was…