The Chinese – personality profile of a global power
China – the Middle Kingdom. But what do we really know about the country with the largest population of the world? Despite the better and better means of communication, especially connected to the internet, the People’s Republic is still one of the great myths in our world. The government is quite strictly spreading information.
And all that we here about China in the media is rather negative when it comes to freedom of speech or human rights. Econmically the Republic is on the brink of taking over the global power from the United States. For the time being it is the fear of the Corona virus that takes the banner headlines of the newspapers.
But what makes the Chinese really tick? What is their cultural heritage and how good are our prejudices and what do we have to expect from the future relationship with that country? In his book: “The Chineses. Personality profile of a global power” the authors try to shed some light on what drives the Chinese. The outcome is a 400-pages-book that is divided into three parts and examines both the private and public life of the far eastern people. It also gives insights on the historical and thus cultural development of the country and therefore provides us with information on how the population turned into what they are by now.
Being influenced by different schools of thought, such as Taoism or Confucianism, the Chinese aim to improve themselves continously. Chinese consider their lives as a kind of pilgrimage aiming at self-cultivation. The “good” within human kind has to be developped during lifetime. Education therefore has a high significance.
The couple Baron has published an interesting and important book. In my attitude the cultual part is the enlightening and advantageous section. Partly however, the paragraphs are too detailed and the mental leaps too confusing. Overall the plot could have been shorter and condensed. That would have helped the reading fluency and made the book thus more fascinating.
