ABSTRACT
A comprehensive coverage of the roots of contemporary Chinese business thinking would take a thousand scholars a thousand days. Here, we seek merely to open the door into a room, one that is full of furniture that the occupants of the room themselves have, for much of the time, long ceased to notice. The ‘room’, i.e. the Chinese mind, is dimly lit. When the Westerner enters it, some pieces seem the same as at home; some are strange, some are old, inherited from ancestors long dead, and some are new. Some may not be noticed in the half light and blundered into, perhaps causing damage.
