China (And East Asia In General) Should Return To Its Cultural Roots
There is nothing wrong with wanting to be "westernized", but honestly.....it's getting quite annoying now. It seems every culture in the world wants to be "westernized" (whatever that exactly means). There is nothing wrong with adopting some technology or customs of another civilization......people have been doing this for thousands of years. But now it seems like the latest craze for nations to become western.
East Asia is somewhat of an example of this, though they have done a lot better than other cultures in preserving their cultural heritage. But we can easily see the influence of the west everywhere. In China for example the country itself is run by a party that worships communism and Karl Marx (a western philosophy and a western thinker).......and his later devotees like Mao, while abandoning far better wisdom found in China's true traditions of Confucianism and Taoism.
The unique architecture of China (as well as the rest of East Asia) has all but disappeared in the construction of newer buildings. If you look at a city in China from a distance it looks too much like a western city. You don't see modern skyscrapers with that Chinese look......they look not much different from something you would see in the West.
Now some people may say that this is due to the classical architecture of China being too impractical for today's buildings. I think this is bullshit. Let's say that the Mongols never invaded China centuries ago. During the Tang and Song Dynasty China was already in an industrial revolution of its own and could have colonized the world in the same way Europe did in the 19th century 1,000 years (of course it wouldn't be nearly as brutal as the European conquests). If this occurred I am pretty sure we would see more of the styles of East Asia used in modern construction instead of Europe.
And then of course their is clothing styles. Most Chinese and East Asians have adopted western clothing in nearly all aspects of life. This includes western business suits, jeans, ect. Again, all this isn't bad, but it would be a lot nicer of Chinese people stuck to their cultural identity and wore Hanfu-type clothing instead of copying the West. Some say Hanfu clothing wouldn't be practical in today's world........but this argument is as weak as the architecture argument. The fact of the matter is people have been wearing hanfu clothing (as well as the kimono in Japan and the Hanbok in Korea) for thousands of years to do a wide variety of work and recreation.
There is nothing superior about Western culture.......and I say this as a Westerner that has religiously studied other cultures. Maybe other cultures still think there is something superior about European-based culture because of the last 200 years of colonization and exploitation.....but people of other cultures need to realize that western domination is a relatively new phenomenon. In the past (such as during the Middle Ages) the West was no where near to the top in scientific, technological, and cultural advancement. In fact they were far behind most of the rest of Eurasia during the Middle Ages.
