Chinese peculiarity, as I understood it in intelligence and business

Recently, in book shops a new book of our author Andrei Devyatov appeared, with the title which became the title of this article (Muravei edition, 2002). The book has got to our editorial office as well. So, the time of critique has come… After 11 September events in the US, it became obvious that the unidirectional world with one hyper-power, the USA, had split up into two poles. Though politics and culture scientists, journalists, while in different ways repeating this thesis in mass media, still cannot define, where this second pole is. In 20th century, there were no doubts. In the world, there were two superpowers: the USSR and the USA. Now, after the Soviet superpower broke up, Russia’s place and role in the world changed: in their investigations, “progressist Westernizers” try to divide the world into so-called “civilized” one, with the USA at the head, and so-called “underdeveloped, not completely civilized” one, where extremists and terrorists hide themselves. At the same time, culture scientists, journalists pass over in silence another obvious thing: on the planes, there are nations that eat with knife and fork, take aspirin while being ill, celebrate New Year on January 1, and write with letters, while there are nations which eat with sticks, possess their own medicine, celebrate New Year according to their own calendar and write with hieroglyphs. The letter world is called Great China, and it is obviously occupying the second pole’s position. In this second world, all dimensions are different: different time; different elements, of which there are five, but not four, while there is not air element; different numerals, where there is no zero, while zero hieroglyph has the sense of a drop, which is the smallest, but it can be divided into splashes; different music, where there are only five notes; different painting; different food; different richness measured not with capital, but with luxury. All this is described in the notes of “secret service man and businessman.” The book is unusual, because the author presents the material not while leaning against academic science’s authority, but “from bottom,” using his own experience and in Chinese thought’s trinitary frame of reference, which is based not on letters, but on hieroglyphs’ symbols. These differences are commented on with adequate symbols of mathematics. The most valuable thing in the book is the method, the author presents, through which anybody who has to do with the Chinese, after having mastered it, can draw the formula of success. Spite the text is scientific, with complicated comparisons of philosophical and ethical categories, the author presents living and bright examples from his own 30-year intelligence practice in China, explains concrete schemes of his own business cooperation with the Chinese. It is the first time in Russian sinology, that the “Chinese soul” is being described. To make it more understandable, the author compares 42 differences in “heart call” and “blood voice” of Chinese, Russians and Western people. The author interprets the “socialist experience with Chines specifics” in an unusual for Western standards way, while not proving it from sense’s view, but showing its obvious uniqueness and futility for other nations. At the same time, the author formulates some lessons for Russia, while finishing the book with description of necessary for Russia “strategy of retreat,” of economical retreat, in the manner of that one used by Russian field marshal Kutuzov in 1812. Though the most valuable for the reader and probably the most questionable is the author’s reconstruction of Confucius’ cycles of historical development of China, the West, and Russia. It is notable, that while writing about raising and collapses in China’s development, the author uses Chinese numerology, Russian scientist’s Chizhevsky’s rhythm of solar activity, and “generation’s step” foreseen by Russian poet Velemir Khlebnikov. PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Vera Solovieva

Read the original in Russian: http://www.pravda.ru/main/2002/02/26/37595.html