Exclusive | From Deng’s despair to rebirth under Xi – and how I felt about buying (and selling) the SCMP: the Robert Kuok memoirs
In the final excerpt of Robert Kuok’s memoirs, the tycoon remembers how Taiwan hung like a dark cloud over his meeting with Deng Xiaoping, his stint as a media mogul and China’s spiritual rejuvenation under Xi Jinping
ON CHINA’S CULTURAL STRENGTH
At a very young age, perhaps four or five years old, I was becoming conscious of mother’s stories, and her frequent exhortations to me and my brothers. Father, his associates, and even the Chinese labourers working in the shop also had wisdom. I learned from them and from their behaviour that I belonged to a people with a very rich culture.
As I grew older, through the 1930s and 1940s, I began to realise that what the Chinese lacked most of all was discipline and unity.
With our continuous culture going back thousands of years, I think that there are certain good qualities as well as certain defects in the marrow of our bones.
The Chinese are very hard-working. Wherever they go they will try to earn their own living. Some of these migrants started life in their new homes as rickshaw pullers. So the natives of those regions connect the Chinese with the odour of sweat and say they are a miserable lot. I never got taken in by that nonsense. You have to learn to distinguish between form and essence. If your eyes are always glued to form, it is doubtful that you will ever succeed in life.
The Chinese today don’t have to learn about Confucius and Mencius from books. The teachings of Confucius and Mencius are part of our culture; these teachings have been with us since birth.
