Interesting article, which could just as easily be applied to today's Australia, and our politics/politicians!?

Truth used to be the first casualty of war, now it seems to be the first casualty of political expediency!
Rhrosty.

"The Western ideology of Communism does that to societies. It degrades natural goodness. It forces people to discard traditional values and replace them with opportunistic or self-protective behaviours."

The Western ideology of Capitalism does that to societies. It degrades natural goodness. It forces people to discard traditional values and replace them with opportunistic or self-protective behaviours.

Let he who is without guilt cast the first stone! And 'natural goodness"? Where is that found?

Great article Brian

And I'm glad the Party is tolerating your Occidental essays. Pray that you are not exiled to the Gulag that is Cairns.

But seriously one is sure to generalise about a society of 1.4 Billion souls (give or take a worker).

Confucianism is indeed confusing - especially trying to mix it with a 150 year old idea of communism that real humans can never attain. As the original developer of communism, Marx, preferred to be called "Count", communism was sure to be a non-starter.

China's 3,000 years of civilisation also overrode some German or Russian blokes' fantasies.

Your words that follow are especially accurate and can be rebuilt for Australian conditions:

"There are no truths in [Australia]. Truth is relative. Truth is what the government says it is, and truth is what [media or business sources may manipulate] if it serves their purpose. Truth may change from day to day."

As the Australian Government's concerns are the Big End of Town's - its time to worry.

Pete

China is just more up front about its oppression. The Western Oligarchs are more cunning by using the media to etherise the population into compliance.

Why do people from Western culture have difficulty in understanding China? I do not know. One hazardous guess of mine is that it is becaue people of the West take it for granted that their liberalism will not fail to be attractive to the Chinese people. "And it is a good inference that John Dewey, Bertrand Russell, John Ford amd Joseph Stalin will separately and collectively make no more dent in this inner adamantine core of Chineseness in a fifth the world's population than prophets of the past. In deviousness of thought, evasiveness, obstinacy and prevarication, the Chinese will likely be themselves (Ralph Townsend, Ways That Are Dark.)" (Of course I do not count in Stalin as a liberalist.)
As George F. Kennan said, "Unquestionably, our relation to the peoples of the Far East has been colored by a certain sentimentality toward the Chinese...(American Diplomacy,)" so it seems that Pearl Buck had felt it. "Pearl Buck and her husband escaped from that atrocity and fled to Japan. From there they wrote how good it felt to be where things were peaceful...'I like the Chinese as they really are,' she wrote. 'The glory and the strength of the Chinese are in their humanity' (R. Townsend, ibid.)"