HARMONY RENAISSANCE HERALDS CHINESE CULTURAL RENAISSANCE

I) Current financial crisis and China economic miracle: Does modern China have soft
power?

By all accounts, China is leading the world out of the current global financial crisis. According to
China Daily, Oct 18, 2009, a professor of Economics and Head of the School of Contemporary
Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham in the UK wrote in part: “As celebrations of its
achievements over the past 60 years subside, China can look forward to its next milestone:
surpassing Japan as the world's second largest economy before the year is out. Another target
reached ahead of schedule – and further evidence that China is emerging from the financial crisis
as the big winner.

“Based on past records, and taking into account China's expected growth rate over the next two
decades, China will overtake the United States to become the largest economy in the world
within five years measured in purchasing power parity-terms, and within 20 years measured in
nominal terms. It could be even sooner. These predictions are based on the assumption that the
US economy will grow 3 percent per year and the Chinese economy 9 percent per year,
assuming constant nominal exchange and inflation rates for both countries.

“But if the yuan continues to appreciate against the dollar as it has done in the past decade,
and/or if China's domestic inflation rate is higher than that of the US, China will gain ground
even quicker.”

China’s rise in economics apparently is not accompanied by the same measure of soft power rise
in world influence. There is no lack of Western media and think tank reports on the subject. The
overwhelming Western verdict is that China’s political and cultural influence as a world power
on the world stage will be a long time coming. Although the lack of deserving recognition for
China’s soft power is due to complex historical reasons, the simple verdict given has been that
China does not have the “politically correct” ideology by Western standards. Will this prognosis
persist? Most likely not, should one look back to the history of ancient China’s cultural
influence.

II) How does China’s current soft power stacks up against world religion, Western
democracy, and soft power?

China is currently in no position to challenge Eastern religion or Western democracy and other
world dominant soft power in cultural influences. However, all things will come in due course.
In terms of soft power development, 60 years is a relative short time historically for new China.
Instead of accepting the simple rationale of “politically incorrect” in a Western dominated media,
let us examine the relevant developments revealing why China’s world influence is not in
keeping with its size, population, long historical continuity, and its current economic rise.

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The major reasons for China’s recent lack of progress in soft power are: Western influence is at
its high, particularly coming after America’s post World War II and cold war economic and
ideology triumph; although China has disentangled herself from the cold war ideological
struggle, she nevertheless suffered setbacks in relation to American successes; due to years of
humiliation by Western powers as a semi-colonial state, China has yet to regain confidence; and
through her own growing pains of experimentation, she has lost confidence in not coming to
grips with her long continuous history. Finally, in her eagerness to learn from the West, she has
not given enough emphasis to the importance of her own cultural heritage and innovativeness.
All these and other historical factors have hindered China in rightfully regaining her world
influence, despite her rise in economic power.

III) Harmony, China’s ancient cultural essence and soft power

From the perspective of harmony, human civilization is the progress in resolving relationship
conflicts between:
1) Human and nature (birth of religions, etc.)
2) Human and human (philosophic, religious, and moral teachings)
3) Members of a group (family, tribes’ and nomads’ morals, and codes and standards)
4) Citizens and society at large (philosophy, values teaching, and imposition of laws)
5) Rulers and the ruled (hierarchical social structure, elite values and government
propaganda, democracy development, freedom and responsibility)
6) Clashes between religions (such as the current clash between Muslim and western
religious beliefs)
7) Ideology contests (socialism vs. capitalism, democracy vs. broader harmony)
8) Dependence and Independence development between national blocks (developed,
underdeveloped, developing, poor and rich)

Above is a list indicating, by way of illustration, only some of the major outstanding issues in
conflict resolution and achieving harmony. In the interest of leading toward a current universal
harmony exposition in the following, only major world harmony development movements will
be summarized. These are also past global harmony movements that have by far the major
repercussions on human civilization.

The three major harmony movements of human civilization as listed in above conflict resolutions
are religion, democracy, and harmony. Today’s world is in great disharmony, with religion
conflicts, international inequity, and the disparity between North and South. To lead us out of
this convulsion, we must look beyond religion and democracy to harmony as the basis of
equality, mutual respect, tolerance, and acceptance. Harmony as the universal value envelops
democracy; but, as a basic human longing, it is not institutionalized. The spread of harmony has
been uniquely peaceful compared to religion and democracy. Will harmony bring a more
moderate future world? American democracy faces the challenge of Chinese harmony as the
leading global philosophy in the 21 st century. Teaching harmony in the U.S. is paramount. For
more details, please see China’s Harmony Renaissance: What the world must know by Francis C
W Fung, published by World Harmony Organization.

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IV) China’s harmony renaissance, can the world ignore it?

Democracy grew out of the 17th century Enlightenment movement as a resolution of the conflicts
between the ruler and the ruled. But, the movement as a tradition had inspired many national
revolutions. The notable ones for this discussion were the French revolution, American
independence war, and the Chinese 1911 revolution extending to the 1949 revolution led by Mao
Zedong. However, three hundred years is very short for human history. Throughout Chinese
history, every 300 years or so peasants would rise up to overthrow the emperor. However, the
ancient philosophies of harmony and moderation were always able to restore stability, prosperity,
and a loosely united empire. Even after foreign Mongolian and Manchu invasions, stability was
restored with the invaders being converted by Chinese culture. The resilience of the Chinese
nation lies in its deep-rooted harmony philosophies coupled with prosperity at the beginning of
each successful dynasty. This typically goes on in every 300 years or so for two millennium.
Then China, after two hundred years of Western and Japanese humiliation and invasion, had lost
its direction for a while. Today, with relative prosperity returning, demands for harmony as a
way to resolve conflicts in a complex modern society are returning in force. This is how China
has rediscovered itself from the roots of its ancient culture. This may prove to be like the
European renaissance after the Dark Ages in rediscovering the ancient Greek culture.

Democracy as a movement for the most part is universally accepted in the world today. One
needs only to look at how many new countries or changing countries are calling themselves
democracies. However, the US has its own definition. This mostly means that countries agreeing
with the US are democracies. Democracy as a system of government needs to take hold and
grow in the fertile soil of developing countries and countries evolving from their old cultures.
This ideal of anti-corruption and anti-dictatorship is changing traditional order by reform.
Harmony advises renunciation of force. In time, democracy will grow and produce its fruits in
the global modern environment. In the 1980’s, the Soviet planned economy dissolved due mostly
to its own non-competitiveness with the Western market economy. In cold war rhetoric, it was
called “US capitalism triumphs over communism”. Communism thus had a bad name. But, the
bad connotation mainly comes from the cold war mentality that “communism means
enslavement”. It is not the intent of the present paper on harmony to take sides. It is important to
point out for those who did not grew up during the cold war era that the US media divided the
world into the free world and the communist world. Today so-called Communist countries can
be very capitalistic and materially very successful. The dividing line is very blurred today.

Due to the rapid expansion of economic and industrial activities in China during the last twenty
some years, China has developed from an egalitarian society to a society of unbalanced wealth
distribution and from a self-sufficient society to one that depends heavily on energy and outside
material resources like all developed nations. The Scientific Development Concept was thus
conceived by the Chinese leaders to provide a blueprint for a long-term sustainable development.
In time, this blueprint has expanded to include old and new conflict resolution in China’s grand
modernization. Harmony being China’s dominant philosophy for 2500 years, it is no surprise,
despite the onslaught of Western culture for the last two hundred years, that China rediscovered
its ancient heritage. This is not unlike the return of harmony philosophy to the golden Han
dynasty after the Spring and Autumn Warring States period. There were thousands of battles

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fought between feudal states at the time, but finally peace and stability was restored through the
institution of Confucius’ teaching.

In the fertile soil of the Chinese harmony garden after Chinese leaders called for Harmony
Society development, ideas of harmony spread like spring bamboo shoots after the rain. Creative
ideas of Harmony Society from government officials, intellectuals, think tanks, academicians,
and the general public are currently sweeping through the country. We may once again witness a
major new harmony movement excelling the ancient teachings of ancient harmony that has
guided China for the last 2500 years. A true period of “let a hundred flowers bloom and a
hundred schools contend” may be in the making, surpassing the Spring and Autumn period
debates in scope and magnitude. If this social harmony movement takes hold, the Chinese culture
may take a leap into the future World of Harmony.

Today’s China is in disharmony. The current modernizing and opening and reform have created a
degree of regional prosperity. But, with the impact of materialism and lower moral values there
are conflicts due to disparity of wealth and privilege and to difference of the new and the old. In
the traumatic changes that are required for modernizing, there is extreme thinking in China that
forgets the old teachings. Today there are Chinese who feel lost and passively admit cultural
inadequacy, under the incessant criticism by U.S. media. Fortunately, the current government, to
deal with the multitude of contradictions, came up with the Concept of Scientific Development
for modernization.

This Concept of Scientific development is widely discussed and covered by the media. However,
the major stroke of luck is that this scientific development concept brought China back in touch
with the forefathers’ teaching of harmony. Harmony as a way of life is deeply founded in
Chinese family unity and is the essence of Chinese ancient teaching. On the current path, China
will transition through the current adjustment and reach a modern society with Chinese
characteristics. This may very well be a socialistic society with harmony. Its development
remains to be seen. In the process, China’s harmony development can only bring harmony to the
rest of the world. The ultimate patience of harmony will work its way by resonance. The often-
used phrase “Socialist Society with Chinese Characteristics” is ultimately the Socialist Society
with Chinese Harmony.

V) China’s cultural renaissance must include harmony renaissance

Throughout China’s long history as an ancient culture, unlike the Middle East, it did not produce
a religion of world importance, and unlike the West, it did not produce a comprehensive
homegrown democracy system to resolve conflicts between the ruler and the ruled. China
obviously, however, had notions of religion and democracy when Confucius admonished his
followers to respect God but keep a distance, and Mencius advocated good government and put
citizens above the rulers. Instead, through considerable debate and evolution, China settled on
the Confucius philosophies of ZHONG YONG, HE XIE (moderation, harmony) and hierarchy
social structures. Family and social order were promoted by emphasizing SAN GANG WU
CHANG, REN, YI , LI , ZHI, XIN (the three important relations in the order of: ruler and the
ruled, father and children, husband and wife and five basic societal moral values) and LUN LI
DAO DE (family and moral values)

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This system of profuse teaching was drilled into students from Day One and all through a
scholar’s life. Youngsters’ first standard reading text was SAN ZI JING (a simple rhyme of
Confucius teaching). This simple moral text is to be recited by students word for word (my
children still cut their teeth on Chinese characters, and Chinese words with this text during the
1990’s in Taiwan). The moderation and harmony philosophy reinforced by morals and values as
a social system was very different from the Western democracy concepts of citizen rights and
duties enforced by law and order.

Ancient China did practice laws, but only sparsely when compared to the comprehensive
European laws and the complex and voluminous US case study system. The strength of US
modern culture lies in the implementation of government and law practices (the so-called “rule
of law”), and not merely in its democratic ideology.

The ideal of democracy, as harmony between government, society, and citizens, is universally
accepted by today’s world. It will take time for the developing countries to grow their own
appropriate democratic systems in their own soil. Harmony, as seen from ancient Chinese
philosophy, included the practices of acceptance, tolerance, mutual respect, equality, and
patience, but not the use of heavy penal correction. Harmony thus is the essence of Chinese
ancient culture. Thus, the Chinese Cultural Renaissance must include Harmony Renaissance.

VI) The world will benefit from China’s harmony renaissance. Harmony is a universal
common value

Let us examine the World Media Summit held in Beijing Oct 8 to 10, 2009. This is a significant
step towards a more harmonious world by bringing all the world media together for the first time
of modern history. Some called it the Olympics of Media. 170 world media and over 300
delegates attended. These included the eight biggest world media house presidents, CEO’s from
Xinhua, AP, Reuters, Time Warner, BBC, Newsgroup, Tass News, Japanese United Press, and
Google. The concluding joint statement emphasized increased win–win cooperation in
expanding world multicultural reporting and also specifically called for more diverse, accurate,
fair, and impartial reporting.

The World Media Summit was hosted by Xinhua News and sponsored by the big eight media.
This is Harmony Renaissance as advocated by China. The Summit and the joint statement
historically herald the beginning of a more harmonious world.

We at World Harmony Organization (WHO) work for Harmony Renaissance to bring back
harmony, a universal value. Harmony is being neglected because world is driven by racial,
religious, and ideological strife. Harmony Renaissance is needed as the ultimate resolution to
unshackle us and to reverse the tide of human self-destruction and environmental degradation.
Harmony with mankind and with nature is necessary for our sustainable development and
survival.

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VII) World Harmony: is it achievable? What promises lie ahead?

World Harmony is achievable because the cycle of self-destruction and deception is reversing.
We can see it coming. The world is heading towards mutual win–win development. We are
beginning to be aware that world development is not a zero-sum game. World Harmony can be
simply defined as a multilateral world set on the course of win–win development. This will
release the energy for mankind to work for common prosperity.

Harmony as a guiding faith is very broad. It includes peace within oneself, in relations between
people, within family, between citizens and nations, harmony among nations, and between man
and nature. Democracy is nothing but harmony between citizen and their government.
Environmental ecology is simply harmony of man with nature.

The practice of harmony can be simply defined as the following twelve virtues: Tolerance,
Acceptance, Respect, Equality, Gentleness, Forgiveness, Patience, Humility, Conservation,
Ecology, Unity with Nature, and Unity of Mankind. With these practices firmly in mind, World
Harmony is on the way to be achievable.

What promises lie in the future? In the future, we will see further growth of developing countries
and multilateralism. This will lead to a more harmonious balance of East and West, North and
South dialogues and cultural exchange. The world is poised for win–win mutual development.
World development is not a zero sum game as some might think. The best way to develop is
openness and learning from the best of each culture so as to move towards common prosperity.

The big media houses and others have come together because of new challenges from the
marching of the developing world and changes of technology and market orientation. Powerful
world media, working for more harmonious reporting, is a major breakthrough for the cause of
World Harmony. The Western powers have dominated the world stage and news reporting for
the last two centuries. By conceding to cooperation and win–win development in world news
reporting, the stage is set for inevitable improvement of East West and North South relations.
This is the important single step the world must take to avoid self-destruction and deception. We
are seeing the coming of a brave new world. We are very hopeful that world harmony
undertakings will flourish.

Harmony is universal. It embraces all human relations and our relation with the universe.
Harmony is the underlying operating principle of the universe. Without harmony
mankind will self-destruct and the universe will not be eternal. "Harmony Renaissance
will release us from the bondage of human strife. It is the next wave of creative energy that
mankind is waiting for. Harmony Renaissance will bring East and West convergence so
mankind will reach higher accomplishments beyond European Renaissance."

In Service of Harmony Renaissance

Francis C W Fung, Ph.D.
Director General
World Harmony Organization.