Building U.S.-China Relations through Language and Culture
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
8 May 2014 – National Chinese Language Conference
KEVIN RUDD: Well thank you very much Josette for those kind and exaggerated words.(CHINESE)And for non-Chinese speakers in the audience this evening that is simply saying that Ancient China has a great saying, which is, “There is nothing on earth to fear… there is one thing on earth to fear and that is Kevin Rudd still speaking Chinese.”(CHINESE)Don’t worry, I’m not speaking Chinese for long. I’d just like to acknowledge our distinguished guests from China: Madam Xu Lin who of course is the Chairman of the National Institute for the Teaching of Chinese Studies, as well as the person in charge of the Confucius Institute general office, as well as a Councillor with the Chinese State Council.(CHINESE)And thank you Josette for your kind invitation to be here this evening to make these remarks to our friends at this conference.(CHINESE)David Coleman is here this evening as well, who is President and CEO of the College Board of the United States. But in particular I want to acknowledge and honour and thank all of the teachers who are with us this evening because your position is much more important than mine or anyone else who comes from the official class – because, the future really does lie in your hands.(CHINESE)And the reason for that is you are the serious bridge builders for the China-US relationship for the future.(CHINESE)And it’s not just an important relationship for China and United States. It’s important for the whole world because the future of our planet’s peace, its prosperity and its stability also lies in this relationship’s future. Whether we have these things or whether we do not.(CHINESE)So to our teachers I would simply say to all of you, in your great mission that you discharge, you are the bridge builders of the future, you are the bridge builders to the future.Josette kindly mentioned some things about my past. It’s true I grew up on a farm in rural Australia which meant I had a working familiarity already with lots of snakes. It is true that I grew up in a small country town with a school of less than one hundred kids and four teachers. It is true that neither of my parents ever went to high school, or if they did, for a year or two at best. My mother was self-taught, my father was self-taught. My mother was in particular a student of the world, and she read and she read and she read, and she listened and she watched. The story that Josette just told is absolutely true – I remember it to this day. Handing me the local metropolitan daily, which always arrived in our town one day late, and on it this large photograph as you know it today of the United Nations Security Council with the Chinese delegate for the first time taking his seat at the table. My mother, a simple country woman, from rural Australia, said, “This is important for the world. Remember this day and think about it in the future.”Of course as a young kid growing up in rural Australia, I didn’t know much at all. But that piqued my interest. When I finished high school I had not the faintest idea of what I would do with my life. And, whereas kids in the 21st century Western schoolkids take what they call a ‘Gap Year’, for me that was simply an exercise in the safety and security of putting your thumb out and hitchhiking around Australia. Not legal now, and probably not legal in America now, and dangerous then and dangerous now but I did it anyway. I ended up in Sydney and, for the first time in my life, I met members of the Chinese community. If you grew up in a rural town you didn’t know anyone from China back then. If you went to the high school I went to there was not a single Chinese student, in fact, I don’t think there was a single foreign student. But when I went to Sydney I remember suddenly running into these families and small communities folk living in that great city, and becoming slowly familiar with the warmth of their hospitality, the importance in their lives of the centrality of family, the essential nature of community and their veneration for an ancient culture. Very soon I became deeply, profoundly interested in this part of the world.When I left high school and finished my year of roaming around Australia, I went to the Australian National University in Canberra for five years.(CHINESE)Chinese literature, Chinese history, Chinese philosophy, Chinese calligraphy, Chinese painting. I remember my calligraphy teacher showing me for the first time how to hold the brush. You have to hold it in a way that it is under your nose, down to the table where the paper is – having ground your ink carefully – and get the ink on your brush onto the paper. You would then, in perfect stroke order… execute the fundamental Chinese character, ‘I’. My teacher who was a marvellously encouraging man who I think had studied in Taiwan, said to me, “you know, Kevin, you are such an enthusiastic student of China, you work hard in the language laboratory, you are always in the library studying Chinese history. But when you do Chinese calligraphy why is it that every character you paint looks like a collection of blowflies?” Blowflies are very big flies. He said, “I appreciate your love for China. Scrap the calligraphy.” Of course after I graduated after five years I applied for an institute I knew absolutely about, the Australian Foreign Service, and to my great surprise I was admitted as a career foreign service officer. Of course, in the wisdom of all foreign services in the world, within a year they decided to point me to Sweden – a well-known global centre for China. In those days there was not even a decent Chinese restaurant in Stockholm. Then I eventually ended up in Beijing.In the intervening period since then until now, I have either been a student, a diplomat, a state government official, a businessman, a foreign minister or a prime minister, and know I hope a simple citizen of the world.(CHINESE)China has been the common theme in my adult life, in all things that I have done. Barely a day goes past that the things I studied all those years ago in university are not used. Barely a day. Whether it is the language itself, or the classical references we saw on stage today in the performance of the great East-West production now called Cinderella. Or in the common history of China’s past and where it seeks to go in the future. In my discussions with Xi Jinping, my discussions with Premier Li Keqiang to the people who drive the cars when I am visiting some unnamed city, or some unnamed village in a province a long way from Beijing. This knowledge of China for me has been foundational. That’s why I’m at the Harvard University. Harvard has asked me a very simple question to resolve, which is as follows, “Number one, is a new strategic relationship between China and the United States possible? Number two, if it is, can it be sufficiently inclusive of the values and interests of these two great powers? Number three, if so, what the hell is it?” What do we name it, how do we conceptualize it, how do we operationalize it? And, on top of that, what does it mean for the rest of us who don’t happen to be Chinese or Americans?(CHINESE)That is what I’m working on and I believe the project is an important one for our future. Let me make a few general remarks before I yield the stage to others. When China very soon becomes the world’s largest economy it will be the first time since George III was on the throne of England that non-Western, non-democratic, non-English speaking country will be the world’s largest economy. That’s about 250 years ago. It’s worth thinking about, if anyone think that will happen without changes to the international and regional order, they are smoking something (something illegal at least in certain states).But my point about this is as follows, as of today both in the US (the West) and the rest there is a remarkable degree of ignorance about how China perceives the world. And, for that matter, when I travel in Beijing as I do all the time there is still many Chinese misperceptions about how the rest of the world perceives them. Mutual misperception is a very dangerous thing in international relations. This year we commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of the ‘War to End All Wars’, the First World War. Narrowing the perception gap in important. It doesn’t solve everything because sometimes there are conflicting values, sometimes there are conflicting interests and they run hard up against one another. But narrowing the perception gap, or the misperception gap, can reduce the problem to more manageable portions.Within that frame, let me briefly list for you, without any great commentary on each, what I regard to be the seven great mythologies about China. And this is where linguistic and cultural literacy. This is where the work of you good teachers across America and you teaching this extraordinary language help as well.The first great mythology is this, that China is single monolithic state. Anyone who knows China well, as I do, knows that there are many Chinas. Yes, the State does speak with a single voice usually, but the voices within China are now vast and diverse and more diverse than they’ve ever been in its modern history. Therefore, language and a knowledge of culture is a critical vehicle through which to understand the complexity and the diversity of contemporary China and, therefore, where it is going.Mythology two: that China intends to rule the world in the 21st century just as America has ruled the world in the 20th century. Some familiarity with Chinese history would tell us that China’s preoccupations have been primarily domestic. That China, even when it had an opportunity to do so (during the Ming Dynasty in particular), to establish an overseas colonial empire, chose not to because they weren’t terribly interested. They chose to make money instead through trade. Much more interesting when you think about it. Instead, China has focussed its external engagements primarily on ensuring its borders are stable, leading it from time to time towards conflict with its neighbours, particularly to its north. But the idea that China has some long suppressed imperial ambition for the rest of the world is I think the product of furtive imagination in the eyes and the thinking of some in the West.The third great mythology: that understanding China is impossible because the Chinese are, by definition, exotic, inscrutable, evasive about their real aspirations, or just plain too polite as a society to ever penetrate.(CHINESE)My response to that argument is that this is a just a load of nonsense (put politely). The truth is, yes there are cultural forms, yes there are cultural mores, yes there are complex social relationships. But these are no more complex than ours if we have any degree of self-perception about what constitutes the contemporary West and the component parts which make it up, including the United States.The fourth great mythology is this, that China is fundamentally animated by considerations of wealth, power and – above-all – face.(CHINESE)Of course, when it comes to wealth, power and face – none of us in the West have ever been concerned about those things have we? Oh, I’m sorry it must just be an Australian problem. My experience is, frankly, with a level of self-reflection we in the collective West have also been concerned with wealth, power. And, if we think about it, questions of face or social standing are not alien to our consciousness either. I think we need to be careful about throwing stones in glass houses.Number five, the fifth great mythology: that there are fundamentally conflicting values between China, the US and the rest. Let’s look at the cardinal values of the West. They are often described in terms of liberty, equality, solidarity sometimes, perhaps even more recently sustainability, perhaps security. Of course, if we argue that do we argue that the Chinese have no aspirations for liberty, for freedom? They do. Do we argue that, in fact, the Chinese people have no interest in the question of equality within their nation? They do. Does China have no sense of solidarity with people beyond its borders? China does. Is China now concerned about questions of environmental sustainability? It’s come late but China is. So I think it’s important that we reflect carefully before we conclude empirically that there is a deep, fundamental conflict or clash of values. There are different values and traditions. Anyone who is a student of the Chinese classical tradition will tell you – look at the classical Confucian values, the hierarchical values of, for example: concepts of yi (righteousness); xiao (filial piety); concepts of ren (benevolence). These do not have ready translations in the Western canon. But when we look at other values in the Chinese tradition, and one of them was reflected before in the Taoist tradition, in the Buddhist tradition and other philosophical traditions alive in China which deal with harmony, with balance, with unity. These concepts are very central to traditions within Western thinking as well. And, therefore, I believe we need to be very cautious about reaching conclusions about fundamental conflicts of even values and, if we look through a philosophical and historical lens – if we look at the classical traditions of China and the West (in Greece and Rome), it is important that we subject that careful analysis as well. I find many things are, in fact, there to be discovered for us.My seventh and final mythology is this, and this goes to the question of you folks who are teachers in the room. A great mythology across much of the Western world is that Chinese is just too hard to learn. Just too difficult. Enter a school somewhere and they’ll hang their head and say, “it’s just too hard for you big nosed foreigners to learn – you foreign barbarians, there’s no hope.” Mind you that’s what we say to each other as foreign barbarians. The truth is, any cursory familiarity with Chinese will tell you that, if you’re lousy at grammar, Chinese is the language for you. It’s true!(CHINESE)If you really want complexity go off and study French or German – German in particular, if you’ve got a grammar fetish. That’ll take you generations to master as a foreigner. Sure the sounds are a little different but if you can sing in the shower you can work out your Chinese as well. What it requires, like everything else, is a bit of commitment and hard work and being good bridges between West and East, between China and the US requires hard work. It requires hard work on the language. But if our kids are starting earlier and earlier and, even if they’re not and they start at the age of 18 (which is when I started), it is perfectly doable. And guess what, you can make it happen. I conclude with this – to learn anyone’s language, let alone the language of the country which is about to become the world’s largest economy is a very simple mark of respect. How many folk in China now speak and study English? How many in the West speak and study Chinese? I don’t know the numbers precisely but I’m pretty confident the Chinese will win out in their study of English, as opposed to us studying Chinese. It’s a mark of respect, it’s a doorway to understanding.Recently, attending a seminar in which Xi Jinping recently participated in Beijing, one of the seminar participants from the Chinese side said this, and it’s stuck in my mind ever since. He said, referring to a comment from one of the Westerners attending this symposium on China in the 21st century, (CHINESE). He said, “For the first time today, as someone who has been a career diplomat for China (and I’m in my late 60s), I’ve heard a Westerner say ‘this is something we can learn from China’.” Think about it Westerners – ‘this is something we can learn from China’. We’re constantly saying, “here’s a bunch of stuff the Chinese should learn from the West, can learn from the West, are learning from the West.” And by the way look at our universities, they really are learning from the West. But put the shoe on the other foot and as a mark of respect for – not just for language, not just for culture – but, in fact, a deep and profound civilizational heritage including some of the new and innovative things that China is doing today. There might just be a few things that we in the West can learn from the East. Humility, after all, is supposed to be a cardinal virtue of those of us in the West as well.To conclude, I could give you a long lecture of Chinese misperceptions of the United States, misperceptions of the West, misperceptions of the rest. I’ll leave that to another day. My purpose this evening is simple to say there is much work to be done, but you – the great teachers of this great language in America – are part of our vanguard. I thank you.