Inclusive mind is crucial for social progress

'What is it about our clothes that other people seem unable to resist? Is dressing like us about wanting to be like us? Clearly, this is about more than just clothes. It is about embracing an entire popular culture that extends through music and movies, to say nothing of the soft drinks and fast food." This is what Niall Ferguson says in his book, Civilization: The West and the Rest, about how Western values with industrial power behind them have been embraced by the rest of the world over the past more than one century.

While talking about Western values, we Chinese can never deny or ignore that, without learning from the West, China would not have become what it is now - the second-largest economy in the world.

So when Yuan Guiren, minister of education, said on Friday that textbooks disseminating Western values should never be allowed in our classrooms, he should have anticipated how strongly people, intellectuals in particular, would react.