Life in a crowd The average Canadian can’t image what it would be like to live in a city of 18 million people and in a country of 1,300 million. That is the case in Shanghai and mainland China. It is little wonder that much of the individual freedom and accommodation of minorities to which we give at least vocal assent are not found there.

When North Americans travel abroad they are often advised to treat tourists from ‘Xinhua’ politely but to resist firmly any obtrusive tendency to elbow their way forward in a queue or to be aggressive in public places. To grow up living in a crowd instils a different set of priorities

The Western mind has tended either to romanticise or to look askance at people from what used to be far-away cultures. Our ancestors went uninvited to trade, live and teach among them in their homelands. Now they prosper and build their cultural centres among us. Fifty years ago when the population of Toronto was just under 2 million there were 21,000 people of Asian origin. Today, when the city numbers 5.5 million there are over half a million ethnic Chinese and 900,000 other Asian residents.

China and India are the rising stars of Asia. Joseph Needham, Pearl Buck and Han Su Yin have written extensively about the former. Rudyard Kipling and E.M Forster gave us varied insights into the latter. But all that belongs to the past. We must live in the future.

As world leaders talk reduction of the rising stockpiles of enriched uranium, India which has so far refused to sign the 1970 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty is looking to buy uranium from Canada. China’s state-controlled energy authority is increasing its investment in our natural resources. Meanwhile, Dr David Naylor, president of the University of Toronto says that Canada must have a “stronger presence” in the world as China and India begin to play bigger roles in global affairs and as the world doubts increasingly the leadership capacity of the United States.

India’s membership in the Commonwealth (New Delhi is the site of this year’s Commonwealth Games) and the fact that it is a developing democracy is a hopeful

Small is factor in international relations. China may be another story. The world’s most populous country is not only a Communist autocracy; it seems to be losing touch with its traditional moral standards and becoming an ethical vacuum.

The recent Chinese novel Wo Ju (‘Crowded Space’ or ‘Narrow Living’) is such an exposure of that problem that its television version has recently been censored. The story centres on the cost of living in Shanghai and in the growing conviction that money and property ownership are the only things that really matter. It concerns a young woman who shares a sub-standard flat with her boyfriend. She meets an amoral government official who provides her with the money needed by her sister and brotherin law to buy a house. He impregnates her. She has a confrontation with his wife and then an abortion. He dies in an automobile accident. A Chinese reviewer says that the film’s profanity and soulless depiction of what characterises a growing urban population has been immensely popular. It indicates, however, the transformation that is taking place in a formerly conservative, family-based society.

China’s great ethical teacher and political theorist before Chairman Mao Tse Tung imposed Karl Marx’s philosophy was Kung Fu Tzu (latinised to ‘Confucius’). His name suggests to some a formal, almost inhumanly correct code of conduct. Actually, he stood for personal internal harmony that mirrored that of the universe around us and a political order that aimed for the welfare of all those governed rather than the entitlement of the privileged.

The Analects of Confucius, collected selections from his teaching, are neither easy to read nor to summarise. He urged people to “act socially” because to act for the happiness of others is to act for one’s own happiness. When he was a civic official a man brought to him a serious charge against his own (the man’s) son. Confucius jailed them both for three months. Reminded that filial duty was important, the sage replied that the father had never taught his son that virtue. Therefore, the real guilt was his. A father whose chief concern is not the loving care of his family will neither be happy nor have a happy brood.

Confucius taught that the state is an extended household. Since its ruler cannot maintain the personal relationship with his subjects that a father can with his children, it is necessary to fall back on symbols of that bond to which all citizens will owe respect. Those symbols may be the Constitution, the flag - but, above all, an exemplary ruler. Human beings are prone to imitation. Personal example is the best way for either a parent or a king to lead. “No one can make anything out of rotten wood”, said the sage. A ruler must be the head of a meritocracy.

Lionel Giles, a Cambridge sinologist, translated The Analects a century ago, in 1910. He exemplified the influence of the great teacher by the way he himself avoided the egotistic and combative scholarship that is too common among academics. He wrote that Confucius believed above all in the political importance of personal probity.

During the 2008 Beijing Olympics visitors were aware of new official support for the teachings of Kung Fu Tzu. Confucian schools for children are popular. “With the fast economic growth many people have become very selfish and have no morality”, says Ren Xiaolin, founder of an academy in Zhengzhou, a commercial centre in Henan province.

Master Kung was born in Qufu, Shandong province, in 551 B.C., two generations before Socrates taught in Athens. The 28th September observance of his birthday becomes more elaborate there every year. The Communist Party sees Confucian teachings as a way of restoring discipline and of increasing respect for both community and authority. Western opinion may see it as evidence that we ourselves need a return to values that once underlay our own democratic and cultural assumptions.