Rational middle ground needed

Editor's Note: Financial crises, economic uncertainties, splintering social groups and interests, and changing mass culture - what a world we're living in. This makes it all the more important for China to be guided toward a "rational middle ground" rather than toward increasing polarization, a leading political theorist Xiao Gongqin told China Daily's Zhang Zhouxiang.

The 68-year-old professor with the Shanghai Normal University was famous in the 1980s as one of China's champions of the so-called neo-authoritarian approach in managing the nation's changes. Recently he has been in the news again with his call for a rational middle ground between the left and the right, at a time when he sees growing risks from a war of ideals and values.

In general the left promotes "equality" and the public good, while the right advocates "liberty" and "personal rights". When those conflicting ideals grow into mutually exclusive extremes, as they did during China's "cultural revolution" (1966-76), society will be paralyzed by impractical goals, and disasters will happen, Xiao said.