Cultural identity soars up human development

Until he typed the last word of his inspirational book China Developing: Cultural Identity of Emerging Societies, George Fusun Ling must have endured agony and ecstasy during his lifelong search for solutions to the puzzles of human development. A Yale- and Oxford-graduated doctor of philosophy, Ling came to "respect many deep-seated ideas and values upheld in the West" but saw "how unsuccessful those values and ideas had played out socioeconomically as well as culturally in some of the developing countries".

Powering Ling's quest was his larger dream, which was "to establish decency, dignity, order, hope and ecologically sustainable prosperity in the underdeveloped as well as in the developing countries" and to realize the Confucian ideal of Grand Harmony. He kept probing the classics and compared notes with present-day ups and downs for inspiration. Thus in the book he refers to more than 100 authors and thinkers such as Adam Smith, Antony Alcock, Brian Burtch, Charles L.S. Montesquieu, Evelyn Kallen, Mary Dowell-Jones, Reinhold Niebuhr and Socrates. And he articulated his wisdom in fresher and sharper arguments, more insightful and most convincingly persuasive as well.

The spiritual odyssey starts by examining the concept of personhood, "because that concept's implication is far-reaching". As Ling dives into meditative critique on the basic human existential experience, he soon encounters discrepancies in the understanding of individualism, human rights, freedom, equality, democracy and law between developing societies and Western countries.

The individual in Western political thinking is understood as the basic autonomous unit of a society, which is actualized in the United States by the top priority given to the exercising of individual political rights. "When that priority gets translated into foreign policy, it means that America has been promoting America-style democracy worldwide as the number one priority." In China, however, the individual is "a free-spirited moral person" with principles and character and is "always conscious of his/her bond with, and indebtedness to, that community".

After painful and prolonged reflections upon the pros and cons of Asian democratic process, he realizes that "Western democracy does not cure all ills, and even less is it an end in itself so that a developing country should pursue it at all cost". He believes that "while a person's rights and freedom are important, priority should be given to human rights instead of individual political rights, and to freedom from want, instead of freedom of choice".