believe are the right and wrong ways for people to be with each other. Given China’s impressive track record and
how deeply imbued the culture behind it is, there is no more chance of the Chinese giving up their values and
their system than there is of Americans giving up theirs. Trying to force the Chinese and their systems to be
more American would to them mean subjugation of their most fundamental beliefs, which they would fight to the
death to protect. To have peaceful coexistence Americans must understand that the Chinese believe that their
values and their approaches to living out these values are best as much as Americans believe their American values
and their ways of living them out are best.
For example, one should accept the fact that when choosing leaders most Chinese believe that having capable,
wise leaders make the choices is preferable to having the general population make the choice on a “one person one
vote” basis because they believe that the general population is less informed and less capable. Most believe that the
general population will choose the leaders on whims and based on what those seeking to be elected will give them
in order to buy their support rather than what’s best for them—e.g., the general voting population will choose those
who will give them more money without caring where the money comes from. Also, they believe—like Plato
believed and as happened in a number of countries that turned from democracies to autocracies through the
millennia (most recently in the 1930-45 period)—that democracies are prone to slip into dysfunctional anarchies
during very bad times while people fight over what should be done rather than support the strong, capable leader
who will tell them what they should do. They also believe that their system of choosing leaders lends itself to
better multigenerational strategic decision making because any one leader’s term is only a small percentage of the
time that is required to progress along that developmental arc.10 They believe that what is best for the collective is
most important and best for the country and is best determined by those at the top. Their system of governance is
more like the governance that is typical in big companies, especially multigenerational companies, so they wonder
why it is hard for Americans and other Westerners to understand the rationale for the Chinese system following
this approach and to see the challenges of the democratic decision-making process as they see them. To be clear
I’m not seeking to explore the relative merits of these decision-making systems; I am simply trying make clear that
there are arguments on both sides and to help Americans and the Chinese see things through each other’s eyes,
most importantly, to understand that the choice is between a) accepting, tolerating, and even respecting each
other’s right to do what each thinks is best and b) having the Chinese and Americans fight to the death over what
they believe is uncompromisable.
The American and Chinese economic and political systems are different because of the differences in their
histories and the differences in their cultures that resulted from these histories. As far as economics is concerned—
i.e., 1) the classic left (favoring government ownership of the means of production, the poor, the redistribution of
wealth, etc.), which the Chinese call communism, and 2) the classic right (favoring private ownership of the means
of production, whoever succeeds in the system, and much more limited redistributions of wealth)—exists and has
had swings from one to the other in all societies especially in China, so it would not be correct to say that the
Chinese are culturally left or right. Similar swings in American preferences have existed throughout its much more
limited history. I suspect that if the United States had a longer history we would have seen wider swings as we
have seen in Europe through its longer history, so we should consider even wider swings possible. For these
reasons these “left” versus “right” inclinations appear to be more Big Cycle swings around the evolutionary trends
than core values that are evolving. In fact we are seeing these swings now taking place in both countries so it’s not
a big stretch to say that policies of the “right” such as capitalism are close to being more favored in China than in
the United States and vice versa. In any case, the deep cultural preferences and the clear distinctions are not there.
In contrast the cultural inclinations of the Chinese to be top-down/hierarchical versus bottom-up/non-hierarchal are
deeply embedded in them and in their political systems and the cultural inclinations of Americans to be bottom-
up/non-hierarchal are also deeply embedded in them. As for which approach will work best and will win out in the
end, I will leave that for others to debate, hopefully without bias, though I will note that most knowledgeable
observers of history have concluded that neither of these systems is always good or bad—that what works best
varies according to a) the circumstances and b) how people using these systems are with each other. No system
will sustainably work well, in fact all will break down, if a) the individuals in it don’t respect it more than what
they individually want and b) the system is not flexible enough to bend with the times without breaking.
So now, as we imagine how Americans and the Chinese will handle their shared challenge to evolve in the best
possible way on this shared planet, I try to imagine where their strong cultural inclinations, most importantly
where the irreconcilable differences that they would rather die for than give up, will lead them.