Gloria Davies quotes William Blake in the acknowledgments to her book: ‘true friendship is argument.’ When choosing that quote, I wonder if she had the Chinese concept of zhengyou in mind. That is the word Kevin Rudd chose for friendship when he spoke to the students at Peking University in April this year. Zhengyou is not just about friendship, for which there is another Chinese word (youyi); it defines a true friend as one who dares to disagree.
This is not just a reviewer’s device to draw our first Mandarin-speaking prime minister into the discussion. Rather, it is because of Rudd’s background and his mode of thinking when it comes to China that I must recommend this book. He is likely to read it. Regrettably, many others will find the task of doing so daunting, if not impossible, because it is couched in the impenetrable language of postmodernism.
Worrying About China: The language of Chinese critical inquiry by Gloria Davies
Harvard University Press, $39.95 hb, 313 pp
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