The Roots & Soul of the Chinese People is a brave and ambitious attempt by author Mr Xu Jun to connect the dots between the ‘socialist core values’ drawing on Marxism espoused and promoted by the Communist Party of China (CPC) today with China’s long cultural heritage - including Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Mohism, Legalism and numerous other -isms - dating all the way back to the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods and to the pre-historic mythological times of the Yellow Emperor and the Yan Emperor.
So, in addition to a lot of information about China’s history, culture and traditions, Roots & Soul touches on what Chinese consider to be some of the best of the rest of the world’s great civilisations, including sections of chapters on the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians and India.
Mr Xu is a Han Chinese born in 1958 who hails from Chengmai county, Hainan island (which is today a province in its own right after being spun off from Guangdong province in 1988). With an educational background in research at the central party school and currently serving as deputy director of the National People’s Congress standing committee, Mr Xu’s is very much a senior insider’s view of how China’s modern socialist path is linked to the illustrious past of China’s long historical line of cultural traditions.
With lots of references linking the threads running through current President Xi Jinping’s modern-day speeches to China’s past cultural traditions, the book presents plenty of food for thought about the relevance of the socialist path China has chosen to follow as well as the need for Chinese people not to forget where they have come from, not to worship everything modern and/or foreign and, above all, not to denigrate all of the Chinese traditions that have been passed down from generation to generation.
