Traditional culture is not enough

Sometimes even a point of view that churns our stomach or offends us can be food for thought. The very extreme nationalism and populism in the book China Stands Up is case in point.

In his book, writer Mo Luo, a scholar with the Chinese National Academy of Arts, accuses Chinese literary figures such as Lu Xun (1881-1936), Cai Yuanpei (1868-1940), Hu Shi (1891-1962), Chen Duxiu (1879-1942) of cutting short the line of traditional Chinese culture despite the fact that all these figures have been respected as pioneers in the May Fourth Movement on 1919, dubbed China's Renaissance.

Mo criticized them as culprits who have overturned the basic values of traditional Chinese culture. The Western-style education that they helped to establish is said to have given birth to the worship of Western culture. As a result, Chinese have been educated to blindly follow the path that Western powers have designed. China is still on its knees, the writer says, and it will not stand up unless it returns back to the values of its own culture and no longer blindly worships those in the Western culture.