China’s civilising mission

Last week, a distinguished Chinese thinker arrived in Oxford University to give a talk. His mission was audacious: to explain to Britain’s brightest young things that far from being a repressive or unhappy place, China is in fact pretty perfect. More to the point: now that Europe is on the rocks, China will be the next great world-shaping civilisation. He began boldly: ‘China is a unique country,’ he said. ‘It is the world’s longest continual civilisation. It is like the Roman Empire, but as if the Roman Empire had continued to this day! The western media presents China as insecure, as if the people are unhappy and the leadership afraid, but it’s not true. The Chinese are happy. We have greater justice and fairness, and now many countries look to us for rescuing.

The speaker was Zhang Weiwei, author of the book The China Wave: Rise of a Civilizational State, a bestseller in China.