In this thought-provoking essay, Li Jie, the well-known U.S.-based scholar of contemporary Chinese culture, argues that the power of a nation must be backed by its culture, and that a nation cannot project its power without a cultural foundation. He says that this is the case with China today, because its cultural renaissance, occurring in the Song Dynasty (960-1279 C.E.), has remained stagnant over the past thousand years.

Jie, the author of many books that challenge dominant cultural and historic views, writes that culture—whether it manifests itself in the Dream of a Red Chamber or the works of Shakespeare—is the soul of a nation and the amalgam of aesthetics and logical thinking, and culture cannot flourish if the people are not allowed to develop a system of aesthetics and logical thinking.

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