ABSTRACT
In the first chapter, I explain how I have tried to avoid a Western-biased and a Sino-biased approach to the analysis of historical processes, by privileging the understanding of long-term change, based upon the discovery of several epistemological commonalities between a choice of Chinese and Western authors. First, François Jullien, Fernand Braudel and Wang Hui stress the importance of discovering the silent transformations that develop in the ‘long time’, thus overcoming the temptation to describe societal development through events that are superficial manifestations of what is important, i.e. what is happening slowly and silently beneath the surface, away from the noise of events, such as those that feature on TV news shows. Second, Fernand Braudel, Cui Zhiyuan and Hu Angang make the difference between market economy and capitalism, thus sustaining that it is possible to develop a socialist market economy. Finally, Max Weber and Hu Angang suggest how to analyse power by showing how power, though being based upon a constellation of different resources (material and immaterial), must be considered as a unitary or comprehensive phenomenon that cannot be deconstructed into several types.
