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Opinion
China could become a world-class civilisation to rival the West – if it returns to the Singapore model
- Asia has never had an equivalent of the Western civilisation, in terms of global influence. China has a chance to build such a civilisation, though it has strayed from the path set by Deng Xiaoping after his visit to Singapore
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Billy Huang is a media veteran who has worked at leading organisations across the Pacific, including Xinhua News Agency in Beijing, CNN headquarters in Atlanta, MediaCorp in Singapore, KyLinTV in New York and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong.
At the Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilisations, in Beijing on May 15, President Xi Jinping emphasised that “no civilisation is superior to others”. In the first place, it would be quite a challenge to compare Asia’s diverse civilisations. But for the sake of argument, let’s consider India and China, both countries with long histories and deep traditions, through the prism of women’s rights, for starters.
In India, there was once the practice of sati, whereby a widow immolated herself on her husband’s funeral pyre. Although the custom was not widely practised, it was prevalent among upper-caste Hindus until 1829, when the British rulers of India outlawed it following a debate begun by colonial officials. So, for some Indian women, would British civilisation be superior to Hindu tradition?
In China, the extremely painful practice of foot-binding persisted for about a thousand years, until the early 20th century. While sati was about preserving the chastity of Indian widows, generations of Chinese girls endured the deformation of their feet to be more marriageable. The bound feet were called three-inch golden lotuses, with connotations of elegance and feminine appeal.
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