China's anti-West campaign a betrayal of its tradition of intellectual debate

Amid increasing signs of a Sino-Vatican rapprochement, Beijing should ensure this goes far beyond the foreign policy arena. It could open a window of opportunity for a historic compromise between Western culture and that of China, a window that has been beyond reach since the Enlightenment.

Some 400 years ago, the Vatican was a pioneer in China-West relations and cultural understanding. Since a liberal democratic ideology had yet to obtain a sacred position in Europe, it was not relevant at the time to debate whether the Chinese way of governance was legitimate or not. Unfortunately, this is a leading problem of relations between China and the West today.

The only genuine attempt at understanding China was made by Jesuit missionaries at the beginning of the 17th century. Faced with political and military stalemate in Europe as a result of civil wars, the Catholic Church tried desperately to reassert control over territories outside Europe to strengthen what it perceived to be Christian orthodoxy.

Having learned the cultures, customs, languages, religious orientations and thought patterns of their host societies, the Jesuits realised they could restructure Christian theology to bring its basic tenets into local cultures and politics.

Under a policy of accommodation, they launched a major incursion into the non-Christian world, resulting in a process of cultural accommodation between the two worlds.

From the outset, the project had no pretensions and no serious attempt was made to downgrade another culture by delegitimising its existing political system, given that the Jesuits viewed the prevailing political system in Europe to be utterly corrupt and illegitimate. Moreover, there was among the Jesuits no sense of Western cultural superiority.