American political economist and writer Laurence Brahm is a senior researcher at the Center for China and Globalization, a Beijing-based think tank. The author of over 20 books on the Asian region, his work covers a wide spectrum including economic development and reform in China.

A photo presents the front profile of Laurence Brahm. He sits with his left hand resting on his chin.

Laurence Brahm

When Laurence Brahm first came to China 40 years ago, it was different from what he had known about it before, and he decided to record what he saw with his own eyes. His “China story” covers a wide range of areas and is the result of his extensive travels in China and speaking with many people. He feels when foreigners write about China, they should eventually write about its people, their lives, cultures and institutions, and hopes that his book series Searching for China can share Chinese traditional cultures with Western readers, break cultural barriers and achieve better communication. According to him, the deficit in the overseas media’s reports on China is that they are always about the China decades before: “In the 1980s they were reporting on the 1960s, and in the 1990s, they were still reporting on the 1970s and 1980s.”

CNS: What do you see as the essential difference between the Eastern and Western cultural values?

Laurence Brahm: In a nutshell, the basic difference between Asian philosophies and Western religions lies in a single concept: Western religion is all about duality while Asian philosophy seeks non-duality.

In Western religion, it is all about opposites, polarities, exclusion, expulsion and conflicting ideologies. In Western thinking there is only black vs. white, right vs. wrong, man vs. nature, good vs. bad, them vs. us and so on.

Asian philosophies seek harmony and balance, equanimity and collective consciousness, and a deep recognition that man does not overcome nature, rather we exist only as a part or even sub-part of the natural world. In Chinese it’s called yin and yang, the harmonious coexistence of opposites; across South Asia it is the Shiva-Shakti synergy, where Shiva is the destroyer of the world in the Hindu concept of the divine trinity, and Shakti embodies Mother Nature as well as female power. All of these seek to explain how we may synchronize seeming opposites into harmonious synergy like protons and neutrons in the symbiotic nucleus, holding together a strong force. It means not judging and rejecting with prejudice but embracing all possibilities.

Ancient Asian philosophies borrowed from one another and integrated ideas as they were all interlinked by the ancient Silk Road and Maritime Silk Road that promoted not only trade but the exchange of ideas. Somehow, with all of our so-called modernity, we lost touch with the philosophies and values that were in many ways more sophisticated than what we have achieved in our so-called modern times. Now, it’s time for us to find our roots and bring these traditions back because they can show us the way to the future.

CNS: How did you observe the Chinese civilization?

Laurence Brahm: For my early films such as Searching for Shangri-la,Footnote 1 Conversations with Sacred Mountains,Footnote 2 and Shambhala Sutra,Footnote 3 I traveled to remote regions in western China, searching for China’s core cultural values of respect for nature, mutual respect among people and harmony with nature. Many of these values could not be felt in the major cities in the competitive rush to get ahead and develop quickly. So I went to the rural areas and ethnic minority regions, searching for these values in their pure form.

Today I am witnessing a renaissance of Chinese culture and traditional values, especially among young people. When a tree has deep roots, no wind or storm can blow it down. But if the roots are shallow, then the tree will be vulnerable. In the same way, traditional values play an important part in the resilience of a people and nation.

To understand Chinese cultural values, we have to look to the core pillars of Chinese culture that have remained unbroken for thousands of years. Taoism is about change. Buddhism is about seeing the past, present and future simultaneously and being able to turn negative situations into positive by realizing that everything is about how something is perceived. Confucianism gives the Chinese the organizational capability to respond to any situation and crisis by utilizing the longitudinal and latitudinal matrix of organization. These are three aspects of the Chinese collective unconscious that are ever-present in everyone in China and constitute a resilience that no Western country or people have.

CNS: How does China cope with opportunities and challenges in its development?

Laurence Brahm: I have both observed and participated in many of the reforms and policies of China to overcome challenges over the four decades of living here. I have seen a consistent pattern of unity and cooperation among the people, and meticulous coordination of government policies when faced with a crisis or challenge. Experience has shown me, time and again, that when a crisis occurs, China’s leadership faces it with a rational clearheadedness. Something seems to kick into the subconscious of the people and they work together in synergy with the state institutions to overcome these moments of crisis.

In the Chinese language, the word for “crisis,” weiji, consists of two characters: “wei” meaning “danger” and “ji” meaning opportunity. Throughout China’s history, the nation and its people have responded to each crisis and challenge. They responded collectively and united in overcoming the danger of each crisis. More importantly, they turned each into an opportunity to re-build, grow and develop further.

In the past four decades of rapid economic growth, China has met the challenges of alleviating poverty and promoting education and economic advancement with unprecedented achievement. By 2021, China was able to eliminate absolute poverty nationwide and become a model of growth and development. Adopting a policy of developing an ecological civilization, which is a response to pollution and the climate change crisis, China has become a global leader in renewable energy and green finance. The emphasis on smart infrastructure to achieve commerce and connectivity has become the central consideration in the Belt and Road Initiative that has brought so many developing nations together in a matrix seeking a common shared destiny of mankind.

Another factor is the ability of the government to respond quickly to crisis through the matrix of organizations, established at the grassroots to the center of the government since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. This system of government organization is strong and resilient as it is built upon the common and shared characteristics of the Chinese people that have become an inherent part of their culture and cultural response to all situations. These cultural factors make the Chinese resilient and responsive to crisis. Their positivity allows them to turn each crisis into a new opportunity.

CNS: How can China and the United States achieve better exchanges and mutual learning between civilizations?

Laurence Brahm: There seems to be an old formula for thawing cold relations. In 1972, “ping-pong diplomacy” (the Chinese government’s invitation to the American national table tennis team, when they were taking part in an international tournament in Japan, to come and play with Chinese players in Beijing) paved the way for President Richard Nixon’s visit to China and a blueprint for forging diplomatic relations. It was pretty simple and straightforward at a time when world circumstances were complicated. The American table tennis team came and played with the Chinese team, a conversation began around sports and goodwill followed.

Maybe we need a new kind of ping-pong diplomacy in this era of global confusion. So how about kung fu diplomacy? Culture and sports are the fabric of people-to-people communication and everyone loves a Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan movie. The mixed martial arts (MMA) and UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) are ragingly popular in America and many of the really great fighters come from the martial arts traditions. The concept of MMA began with Bruce Lee, who selected and combined different traditions, setting the stage for MMA with his famous fight scene in Enter the Dragon.

People across the world turn to kung fu and martial arts, not for fighting but for the underlying Chinese values of persistence, perseverance, respect and harmony. In the minds of many underprivileged and minority groups, kung fu stands as a symbol of justice, of standing up against unfairness.

I recently had the pleasure of directing a series of short videos called Searching for Kung Fu. I have over 40 years of hard martial arts training behind me in different styles and the film was an exploration into the origins of martial arts, taking me and our team right back to the Shaolin Monastery in Henan Province in central China where the legend began. The journey through China’s legacy of martial arts traditions made us understand that it is not about fighting but striving and there are key values inherent in the martial arts. They range from perseverance, loyalty, respect, roots and identity, moderation, harmony with nature, flow, emptiness, and at the core of everything, non-violence.

Non-violence? Many might jump up on reading this and ask, “What? Non-violence?” Yes, non-violence. The Chinese term for martial arts is wushu (武术). Actually “martial” is a mis-translation. The character wu (武) is composed of two radicals: zhi (止) which means to stop or halt, and ge (戈) which means a weapon. So the literal translation of wushu is the “art of halting weapons or fighting,” more precisely expressed as the “art of non-violence.”

Non-violence is core to everything. Conflicts are just not worth having as nobody gains from them. So if America really adheres to the values of non-violence that Martin Luther King once spoke about, then through kung fu, there should be a lot to talk about and a positive dialogue can begin between China and America. Many of the world’s problems could be avoided if the members of the American Congress practiced tai chi every morning.

A martial artist who is trained in both the fighting techniques and mind management and emotional control that comes with the cultural aspect of such training is the last person to pick a fight, and the first to avoid one.

Hopefully that spirit will set the tone of discussions for upcoming dialogues between Chinese and American diplomatic representatives. The values of kung fu should be recognized as universal values. Today loyalty and respect need to be applied more than ever. You can have a nice democracy with two parties, but when neither respect the other and only fight on every issue blindly, then both sides need to learn respect.

Learning moderation is also core in body and mind training to prevent one from being misled into intractable extremes. This applies to personal beliefs and political posturing as well.

(Interviewed by Wu Xu)