USA–China: Complementary Humanisms

On August 12, 2025, the US State Department published its report on human rights practices in China in 2024. Five days later, the State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China published its own report on human rights in the United States in 2024. What emerges from a comparison of these documents?

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We are familiar with the criticisms that Americans level at China:¹ lack of political opposition, a one-party system, lack of competitive elections, lack of civil liberties, restrictions on the internet and press, restrictions on freedom of expression, opaque judiciary, technological surveillance, digital control, oppression of minorities, and repression of independence movements in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong. Less well known, however, are the criticisms that China levels at the US:² the central role of money in politics, violence in public debate, increasing poverty, rising homelessness, food insecurity among families, social polarization, drug-related health crises, gun violence, police brutality, systemic racism, lack of child protection, mistreatment of immigrants, military interventions, unilateral sanctions, and continued use of the Guantánamo prison.

The US consistently criticizes the lack of freedom and the excessive influence of the state. Conversely, China criticizes the lack of social harmony and the absence of government regulation. While the US accuses China of being an authoritarian ideocracy, China accuses the United States of being a predatory plutocracy. These two perspectives have their roots in very different histories. China is based on a millennia-old culture anchored in a stable geographical area and maintains the oldest civilization that has survived to this day—an “old world.” Conversely, American culture emerged only a few centuries ago from the conquest and colonization of a continent to found a “new world.”

Two Humanisms

Westerners tend to believe that only the West has a humanistic culture. They lump Europe and the United States together as the “free world” that alone defends humanistic values. This view is overly simplistic and overlooks two important points: first, European humanism differs from American humanism; and second, humanism is not limited to the Western world. As important thinkers have shown in recent years, it is essential today to broaden our horizons and recognize the diversity of humanistic traditions.³

Chinese humanism began 2,500 years ago. Confucius established human dignity in Ren (仁), meaning kindness and humanity, and Junzi (君子), meaning the noble-hearted person. He thus transformed birthright nobility into a moral nobility of the individual. Buddhists, Taoists, and other thinkers then contributed to this tradition, which emphasizes the social dimension, respect for rites, customs, laws, charity, respect for the elderly, and harmony with the cosmos. Confucius defines Ren as follows: “Those who wish to establish themselves, seek also to establish others; those who wish to enlarge themselves, seek also to enlarge others.”⁴ This tradition cannot conceive of human beings without their connection to other people and to the cosmos. It has survived the centuries and is being cultivated in new forms by contemporary Chinese philosophers, such as Zhao Tingyang, the thinker behind the Tianxia theory; the neoconservative Confucian Gan Yang; and Jiang Shigong, a pro-government legitimist who also draws on Confucius. The philosopher Tu Weiming is certainly the most important representative of Confucian humanism today, which he describes as “spiritual humanism” and which is based on the realization of the true self:

Spiritual humanism underscores dialogue, reconciliation, and harmony. The opposite of harmony is uniformity and sameness, but a precondition for harmony is difference and respect for the other. The emergence of an ecumenical and cosmopolitan consciousness is a precondition for us to envision a truly authentic culture of perpetual peace.⁵

These words, spoken about ten years ago, clearly continue this tradition, in which the key word is “harmony.”

American humanism is much younger. The first humanists of the New World raised their voices four centuries ago with Bartolomé de Las Casas, defender of the indigenous peoples, and later through the liberal republicanism of the Founding Fathers and Thomas Jefferson. Freedom and individuality became the key concepts here. In the nineteenth century, the philosophies of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau clearly show this focus on individual consciousness, which is reflected throughout American humanism. Emerson wrote, “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. . . . Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”⁶ Thoreau formulated his anarchism in radical terms in his “Civil Disobedience”: “The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.”⁷ These words clearly illustrate this emphasis on individual consciousness, but also the dynamics of “confrontation” and “struggle” that it contains.

Europe at a Crossroads

Where the American tradition sees control of consciousness, the Chinese tradition sees harmony, and where the Chinese tradition sees the violence of chaos, the American tradition sees freedom. An antagonism between center and periphery, fusion and fragmentation, harmony and freedom, which can be read as an expression of East-West polarity. But despite these contrasts, when one delves deeper into these two traditions, one senses a kind of confluence, a necessary complementarity, as if these humanisms must ultimately converge.

Europe is wounded on its eastern flank today. Torn between East and West, it seems unable to find a balance. It’s time to pause and refrain from making superficial judgments. If Europe is called upon to find a balance between these two poles, it must not be a passive balance. It cannot fail to understand the diversity of humanisms in depth. This requires an inner anti-colonialism. Europe must give up its claim to be the sole representative of true humanism. It is necessary to find ways to unite freedom and love. Instead of mistrust or confrontation, it should allow itself to be enriched by this diversity of humanisms in order to bring forth its own creativity. A creativity that brings peace.

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Translation Joshua Kelberman
Image Ying and Yang.

1. U.S. Department of State, 2024 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: China (Includes Hong Kong, Macau, and Tibet) (Washington, DC: Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, 2025), accessed October 22, 2025.
2. State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, The Report on Human Rights Violations in the United States in 2024: The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China (Beijing: State Council Information Office, 2025), accessed October 22, 2025.
3. Cf. the works of François Jullien, Martha C. Nussbaum, and Abdennour Bidar.
4. Confucius, The Analects, trans. D. C. Lau (London: Penguin Books, 1979), 6:30.
5. Tu Weiming, “Spiritual Humanism: An Emerging Global Discourse,” YouTube, 1:30:55, December 18, 2015.
6. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (Boston: James Munroe and Company, 1841).
7. Henry David Thoreau, “Resistance to Civil Government,” Æsthetic Papers, ed. Elizabeth Peabody (Boston: The Editor, 1849), 189–211, given as a lecture in 1847; later published as “Civil Disobedience.”