ABSTRACT

Despite the comment that China is ‘overrated as . . . a source of ideas’, culture is not something that Gerry Segal explored in any depth in his article on ‘Does China Matter?’. That article was of course not centrally concerned with either China’s cultural interaction with the rest of the world, or even the politics of that interaction, but was primarily an argument cautioning other governments and government agencies about the need to ensure some perspective in dealing with the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). All the same, to that end Segal’s article stated that ‘China does not . . . matter in terms of global culture.’ Specifically it argued that China has had limited cultural reach not only compared to ‘the dominant West’ but also in comparison to Japan; that during the last 20 years the government of the PRC has spent more effort in resisting and controlling the domestic impact of external cultural influences than in attempting to create any specific external influence of its own; and that China does not play as great a role for Chinese around the world as does India for the Indians.