Has China Won

And these people—most of them have no access to education,” he said. “So how can you imagine that these people are in a position to talk about democracy when they are simply illiterate?”

If exposure to Japanese democracy could persuade thoughtful Chinese to consider the virtues of democracy, exposure to Indian democracy would have exactly the opposite effect. Whereas Japanese democracy is reassuringly calm and stable (reflecting the Japanese emphasis on harmony in interpersonal relations and its Confucian heritage), Indian democracy is loud and rambunctious, reflecting the spirit of the argumentative Indian. I know this spirit well as I was born an argumentative Indian.

It was an Indian political scientist, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, who alerted me to a significant difference between the democratic Indian society and communist Chinese society. He shrewdly observed that India was an open society with a closed mind, whereas China was a closed society with an open mind.

Americans fundamentally believe that they should stand for universal values and sincerely believe that the world would be a better place if the rest of humanity absorbed and implemented American values.

Americans hold sacrosanct the ideals of freedom of speech, press, assembly, and religion and also believe that every human being is entitled to the same fundamental human rights. The Chinese believe that social needs and social harmony are more important than individual needs and rights and that the prevention of chaos and turbulence is the main goal of governance.

The word noncontradiction is rarely used in Western discourse. The Western mind is used to black-and-white distinctions. One side is right; one side is wrong. The Chinese mind is different. Both black and white can be right. This mind-set of dualism is best captured in the concepts of yin and yang. In the Western worldview, either yin or yang would be right. In the Chinese worldview, both yin and yang can be right.

Well over a millennium ago, during China’s Sui and Tang dynasties (contemporary with the Nara and Heian periods in Japan), the Japanese acquired their basic culture—including written language, Buddhism, Confucianism, architecture, governmental organization, city planning, and art—from China

In a meritocracy, if you are given a decent start in life, your destiny is determined by your performance in life; in an aristocracy, your destiny is determined at birth.

The US Congress is incapable of voting for gun controls because any members of Congress who vote for gun control will find that their opponents in the next election will be funded massively by the pro-gun lobby

Because Americans enjoy exceptional political and economic freedoms, they believe they can achieve a comfortable middle-class standard of living without legislating income equality