Calling shengren in Asia "philosophers," "saints," or any other familiar name is the greatest historical blunder since Christopher Columbus's discovery of "the Indians" in North America.

The modern Chinese word for philosopher, zhexuejia, is nowhere to be found in any of the Chinese classics. In fact, zhexuejia came to China via Japan, where it is pronounced tetsugakusha, after Nishi Amane first coined the word in 1874. Yet, the Western public is constantly told, through our highly subsidized China scholarship, that Confucius is a "philosopher" and that Confucian thought is "philosophy."

As Slavoj Zizek once said: "The true victory (the true "negation of the negation") occurs when the enemy talks your language." He suggested that the West would be irrational to adopt key Asian concepts. It would give away its Deutungshoheit – the prerogative of the final interpretation. Think about concepts like "democracy" or "human rights."

In 1697, when the German culture was still young, the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz famously argued that the Chinese were far more advanced in the humanities than "we are." He never specified how, but I think it is revealed in his urging all Germans not to use foreign words, but their own language instead, in order to build and enlarge the German-speaking world.

And so they did. And so the Germans rose to the top. As expected, the Germans, the descendants of the Holy Roman Empire of German Nation, called Confucius a "heiliger" (a saint or holy man). Now, that's convenient. But is it correct scholarship?

In the 21st century, it will be necessary to depart from certain Western erroneous translations.

The East isn't just an appendix to the Western lingo; it has more to offer than the West could ever adequately translate. The key is to adopt foreign terminology. Only this way we can speak of a truly global language.

So on a future occasion in international relations we could discuss how we're going to improve minzhu in Europe, and how to help America's transition into a decent wenming.

Maybe the West just lacks shengren after all.

Thorsten Pattberg is a German scholar at the Institute of World Literature of Peking University and has been a research fellow at the University of Tokyo and Harvard University.