Technical and cultural modernism in China
Progressive and regressive cultures in the age of globalisation
Palmyra in the Syrian dessert
Lang Lang at the Royal Albert Hall
by Kumar David-June 13, 2015
Is it a paradox that old and strong cultures can confidently absorb modernity with sang-froid, but less secure ones panic when threatened by the onward sweep of the contemporary world? No, I think it is not a paradox but to be expected. Post-revolutionary China engaged with and then amended (purists will say mutilated) Marx; then the "communist" State managed, used, and abused, the tenets of market capitalism without a care for its promises of democracy. Now it is begetting a hundreds-of-millions strong middle-class and transmuting into the next first rank global superpower.
