From 1978, Chinese certainly did try to learn about the industrial models, and the thinking and the processes of the outside world. This was done under the instruction to free our minds. It did not, however, ultimately change the commitment within China to produce something that was first of all adaptive to and according to local conditions, and which also had to relate to the narrative of the country from 1949 during its foundation stage. What we see today therefore is a Chinese economic and social political model which is highly indigenous.

Socialism with Chinese characteristics is bespoke to China. This uniqueness poses many challenges, not only to China, but also to the wider world, where many know little about China, and are therefore beset by confusion about how to respond to its extraordinary and novel system of thought. It may have ingredients and elements that are familiar, but it is underpinned and circumscribed by a cultural and intellectual background that is distinctive.

So we are living in an era in which the Western mindset will have to change, and yet it is poorly prepared to properly do this.

Every country is unique, for sure. But China's scale and its prominence as an economy mean that its uniqueness has a particular potency and reality. For Western minds, who are keen on orderliness, and universal principles, and who like the neatness of absolute standards that are unrelated to localities, this attribute of China is hard to handle - it, after all, resists such thinking. It does so with an immense tradition of diverse thinking over 2,500 years within China.

To the intellectual traditions of ancient Greece, and the Roman empire, to the vast developments over the extent of Christian Europe through the Middle Ages and beyond, China, more even than the Islamic World whose intellectual ascendancy after all only started in the ninth century onward, offers the one great parallel - a tradition which is every bit as extensive, and maps out a world every bit as powerfully as the Christian West.

These two great intellectual traditions therefore can both claim unique legitimacy. But neither can easily claim dominance or ascendancy. The question now is how they can comfortably live in the world with each other without tension or the ambition to control and monopolize?

It is likely that China with its ability to accommodate different and often radically divergent ideas and principles over the last two millennia, such as Daoism, Confucianism, Buddhism and then more modern world views are more flexible and accommodating. The Western intellectual tradition seeks to consolidate, systemize and aims for comprehensiveness. This of course has been its great strength. But perhaps in today's world, there is now an opportunity for liberation of thinking so that the West and the East can finally engage in a fruitful dialogue where they are able to accommodate each other, rather than either striving for dominance.

These deeper intellectual and cultural phenomena are not easy to address simply because there are few who are well versed in the two great intellectual traditions spoken of above. People can be bilingual, and speak two different languages fluently. But being comfortable with two different views of the world and two different intellectual traditions - sometimes seems to be impossible. But it is my belief that one of the most urgent tasks for Europe and the United States now is to address this lack of fundamental knowledge about the Chinese intellectual tradition, so that at least they know what they are trying to manage and work with rather than operating on assumptions. On the whole, China and of course other Asian countries have done far better at acquiring at least some knowledge about the Western world view. This situation now needs to be rectified.

It will not be easy living in a world with no universal intellectual language. It will be challenging particularly for those in the West who like to see orderly systematic completeness and some idea of an underlying unitary truth. Even so, there have to be ways of communicating. A century after relativity became such key idea in science, we should be able to produce a similar notion into the understanding of each other. Of course, commitments to something called "the truth" are hugely important.

But so too is accounting for different cultural inputs and dimensions of what that "truth" might be. We may need to operate on different intellectual planes, and seek a new mental order, rather than a geopolitical one. These are all part of the deep structure readjustment we are witnessing now.

The author is a professor of Chinese studies and director of the Lau China Institute at King's College London.

The author contributed this article to China Watch exclusively. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of China Watch.

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