On October 1, 2019, the grand ceremony celebrating the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China is held in Beijing. Around 2,000 overseas Chinese are invited to witness the historic moment.

“Great Unity” Is the Root of Chinese Civilization

The core of the Chinese civilization is its ability to achieve “great unity.” This concept was conceived during the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States periods (770-221 BC). At that time, Confucianism, Taoism, Mohism, Legalism, and other schools of thought all had a goal of “achieving unity.” Over the following thousands of years, “great unity” became Chinese dynasties’ pursuit of governance and conception of value to solve political contradictions, respond to political challenges, consolidate territories, and improve the ruling system. It was not only the goal of the rulers and the theory of governing the country, but also became an ideology deeply rooted in Chinese people’s minds.

Why is “great unity” the root of the Chinese civilization?

First, the concept forges a centralized and unified political form of the country. “Power in the central leadership” (central unified leadership), national unity, and the prefecture and county system are the three political elements of it. A unified centralized governance system conforms to the reality that China has a vast territory, a large and dispersed population, and complex ethnic groups. Today, it is embodied in upholding and improving the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and other fundamental systems of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

Second, the concept helps to construct a community of the Chinese nation united in diversity. It is this notion and the practice of it in governance that has resulted in the unity of the Chinese nation for such a long time. Today, it is embodied in the adherence to and improvement of such basic socialist systems in China as regional autonomy of ethnic minority groups and self-governance at the community level.

Third, “great unity” embodies “inclusiveness and harmony,” which facilitate exchanges and convergence of different cultures to form a magnificent Chinese civilization. Today, it is embodied in upholding and improving the Chinese socialist cultural system.

History has proved that it is only with the ideology of “great unity” that China can secure the unity of the whole country and the smooth operation of its political system. Today, this ideology has developed into the ideal and belief of the Chinese nation that national unity and ethnic solidarity is sacred and inviolable.

“Unity” or “Division”: Differences Between China and the West

For Chinese people, the national unity is their most widely held consensus.

The political systems of China and the West are not different stages of the same system, but of different civilizational genetic strands in nature. Under the political tradition of “great unity,” the Chinese civilization has always emphasized “unity,” while the West attaches more importance to “division.” Since the disintegration of the Roman Empire, the European countries have been divided once and again and have never regrouped. However, the Chinese civilization has been constantly evolving, and even though it has encountered major setbacks, it has not fallen apart. The root cause lies in its political community featuring “great unity.”

The “great unity” has shaped the political bottom line that the country cannot be divided, nor be left in chaos, nor be separated, and the civilization cannot be broken up. It determines that China always regards national unity as the greatest consensus that must be adhered to and never takes the disintegration of greater China as the cost.

Therefore, since 1840, even when China was at its weakest, it did not fall apart. Of the over 300 political parties and over 100 warlords that once appeared on its political arena, none dared to declare “independence” in public. Instead, they all pursued unity of the country.

The results of the race between the CPC and Kuomintang (KMT, the Nationalist Party) also show that the CPC represented the comprehensive advancement, especially when it protected Chinese people’s fundamental interests, successfully reconstructed China’s civilization as a community, and realized the political and economic unification, talent aggregation, and the consensus of different cultures. These things made the CPC the political backbone of the Chinese community.

On March 11, government officials and local volunteers are carrying out the control and inspection work on the epidemic in the Jiaotong Community, Shuitajie Subdistrict in Jianghan District of Wuhan, Hubei Province.

Differences in Democracy and Equality

Serving the people is the fundamental purpose of the CPC.

What China is now carrying out is people’s democracy, which is a creative transformation of China’s people-first tradition. Compared with the thousand-year-old tradition of “people coming first” in China, Britain did not achieve equal voting rights until 1928, and the true age of modern Western democracy is only 92 years old.

Western democracy is a representative democracy with “the minority controlling the majority.” It takes elections as the highest appeal, tearing up the social consensus, and turns the checks and balances of power into the rejection of the regime, where populism is rampant, and party disputes are constant.

In China, the essence of the people’s democracy is that people get to discuss their own affairs. The CPC puts the people in the center and assumes unlimited responsibilities for the people. The consultative system allowing the CPC to govern the country and various non-communist parties to participate in state affairs represents not only broad direct interests, but also profound fundamental interests. The system represents not only local interests, but also the overall interests of all ethnic groups and sectors in China; it not only represents the fluid public opinion, but also a solid public support.

The concept of equality in the Chinese civilization is also different from the idea of private possession of wealth in Western capitalism. Ancient Chinese society advocated the spirit of social equality, and the ideal of “great harmony” may be regarded as the earliest version of modern socialism. China’s social psychology of “worrying more about inequality than scarcity” is completely different from the logic of capital expansion. As a kind of production relationship based on private ownership, the root and logic of capitalism is always unlimited profit grabbing and unlimited expansion of capital, which will inevitably lead to the polarization of the rich and the poor, land annexation, and industry monopoly, which are exactly what the Chinese civilization has opposed and dispensed with for thousands of years.

Differences in Value Orientations

In its cultural exchanges with foreign countries, China has always taken an attitude of equality and inclusiveness.

Different from the presupposition of the capitalist market economy, the Chinese civilization advocates a business spirit valuing the Greater Good as well as self-interest which are believed to promote each other. For example, Zhang Jian, a pioneer of China’s modern private economy and industrialization, founded more than 20 enterprises and 370 schools in his lifetime, making valuable contributions to the rise of China’s modern national industry and the development of education. He perfectly combined entrepreneurship and traditional scholar-official spirit, and fully embodied the core value of the Chinese business. The Chinese civilization has always placed the market, commerce, and wealth under the higher goal of cultivating the people and making full use of resources to enrich the people, a sharp contrast to the “market omnipotence” and “market society” advocated by Western liberalism.

The Chinese civilization has always pursued making contributions to the society. Different from the exclusive culture of capitalist expansion, it has shaped an “inclusive” cultural community, generated the Chinese wisdom of “harmony without uniformity,” and put forward the initiative that “the world is one family.” However, Western hegemonic countries still follow the “imperial” style, monopolizing the market, or imposing military intervention, or inciting color revolution, creating a “hegemonic world” under the cloak of modern civilization.

Therefore, many values in the Western capitalist system are in genetic conflict with the Chinese civilization. This is one of the reasons why the Western capitalist path does not work in China.