D 篇 Understanding Chinese Culture: The Challenge to the West Late last year, a New Zealand newspaper reported that China was sending 120 doctors to a Pacific island to assist with their community health. A positive action, one might think, but the focus of the story was to ask what China was doing in the Pacific, and how we have failed to the extent that we have allowed this to happen. What are the Chinese doing on “our patch”? In fact, the rise of China is to a certain degree promoted as a threat. The challenge to the West, then, is to improve an appreciation of what China is. How does China’s cultural heritage present a positive advantage to the world? To understand this, it is important to consider the foundations of Chinese culture and society. China has more than 5,000 years of uninterrupted cultural development. We at least need to go back 2,500 years to study Taoism, for its cultural and philosophical roots, and Confucius for his social philosophy and influence on society. Taoism provides us with many aspects of the special nature of Chinese culture and philosophy. The concept of yin and yang in Taoism, which brings us balance through the integration of opposites, is well-known but not fully understood in the West. Chinese medicine, which tends to take a longer time to take effect, with a focus to work in harmony with the body, is to restore imbalance causing diseases rather than targeting only the specific symptom or problem area. Confucius’ contribution to Chinese society also provides a difference to Western society. Eastern society places the community as the most important component of society. In Western society, it is the individual that is considered to be the unit of society, compatible with an objective analysis of issues. Considering a monkey, cow and banana, which is the odd one out? The vast majority of Chinese will choose the cow because the monkey eats the banana, which gives food to the monkey. Western people invariably choose the banana because they see the objective classification of the monkey and cow. The consideration of these two responses, and extension into deeper philosophical understanding, presents a major difference between Chinese and Western thought. Therefore, the challenge to the West is to embrace an alternative perspective on issues. It is time f or W e s t e r n m ed i a t o s e ek a ba l ance i n r e p o r ti ng a f f a i r s, a nd c r iti q u ( e It is time for a Chinese voice to be heard in the West.