Tim Clissold on What the West Can Learn from China

By Oscar Holland, March 23, 2016

This is part of our series of interviews with some of the speakers at the 2016 Beijing Bookworm Literary Festival.

Few people will dispute Tim Clissold’s thesis that China knows more about the West than vice versa. Even fewer have been so active in trying to redress the balance.

Best known for his memoirs-cum-business-books Mr. China and Chinese Rules, Clissold has spent the last two decades helping people understand how this country operates. But the businessman’s efforts to inform the West go beyond the realm of multi-nationals – he has also spent the last eight years campaigning to have a Chinese civilization course included in the British curriculum for 16 to 18 year-olds.

“There’s a major knowledge gap and we have to do something about it – rapidly,” he explains. “This is not only to enrich our economy but to enrich our minds. There’s so much we can learn from China.”

In the UK, around 2,500 people take A Levels in Mandarin every year – less than 0.4 percent of the country’s A Level students. Subtract the Chinese nationals looking for an easy qualification, and Clissold estimates that there are only 100 to 150 “indigenous” students of the language in UK schools. So, with the help of 12 leading university scholars, he has designed a Chinese civilization syllabus that he believes “will grab the attention of 17-year-olds.”

Instead of using his Bookworm slot to plug his latest book, Clissold will instead address the asymmetry of knowledge between China and the West. Starting with a comparison of the first lines of the Old Testament and Confucius’ Analects (“If you’re going to try and understand the differences you might as well go right back to the beginning”), he will examine the historical and cultural departures that underpin the imbalance.

“For 30 years or so the Chinese have made it their business to try and understand the West,” he says. “The reason for that was fairly obvious – because they had to, really. They were poor and had so much catch-up to do. But it now behooves us [the West] to go through that same process.

“Chinese politicians are much more conversant with the basic ideas about how Western society works than the other way round. We need to catch up.”

This premise will form the basis of his next book, which he suggests will take at least two years to write. The subject matter seems to be a natural progression from Mr. China and Chinese Rules, which respectively saw him losing (and fighting to retrieve) USD4 million of investors’ money and navigating the Chinese carbon credit market.

“The first book is saying that the rules are different and the second one is saying what those rules are,” he explains. “Now I’m working on one saying what we have to learn.”

The project is likely to take Clissold into controversial territory. He is well aware of the backlash that may follow. Referencing the “hysteria” that surrounded Daniel Bell’s recent book The China Model (which argued that the West should learn from China’s process of political selection), the author admits that he will need to be “very careful” to avoid being branded an apologist.

“I’ll do it cautiously,” he explains. “But I think we have things to learn [from China] in areas like the selection of critical leaders, financial stability, conflict resolution and the environment. I’m not making a value judgment – I’m not saying whether things are good or bad, I’m just saying that we need to rid ourselves of the orthodoxies which, paradoxically, China doesn’t have so many of – they’ve been willing to experiment with [outside ideas].”

Clissold’s case will likely be enhanced by his abilities as a storyteller. His books have been celebrated for being as entertaining as they are informative, with the The Independent describing him in a review as “an exceptional writer… [who] somehow manages to make the complex world of carbon trading read like a thriller.”

“I just strongly believe in the power of stories,” Clissold explains. “Rather than telling somebody, it’s much better to illustrate it through a story – preferably a funny one.”

Chinese Rules: Mao's Dog, Deng's Cat, and Five Timeless Lessons from the Front Lines in China was published by Harper Collins and is available on Amazon and through The Bookworm.

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