Chinese Leadership Wisdom From The Book Of Change

For centuries, the Book of Change (or the Yijing), has been consulted for sage advice at life's turning points. It differs from simple prognostication, however, in that it demands us to cultivate an understanding of the situation, the world, and most of all, ourselves; indeed, this understanding is essential for leaders of all times. MUN Kin Chok, a marketing scholar by profession, derives a rational approach to organizational leadership from the Book of Change. The yin–yang concept is illustrated according to contexts and characters of man. The sixty-four hexagrams and each of their six possible "nging lines" are analyzed in a clear systematic manner. Skeptical of oracle predictions, the author combs through different divination methods and utilizes them as tools to calculate risks and stimulate ideas.

The sixty-four hexagrams and each of their six possible "changing lines" are analyzed in a clear systematic manner.

There are thousands of books that have been written on business leadership. Many of these have been translated into Chinese and many have been swallowed up by Chinese business people. China has an enormous need to improve the quality of its leadership and current and future leaders are starving for more information to help them get to the top. But what we are also hearing is that while they find these Western works intellectually stimulating, there is always something missing. It is naive for anyone to think that they can just take Western concepts and practices on leadership and make them work in China. They still need work. In fact, it is fair to ask whether these Western practices can actually be applied in China. This book provides the bridge between Western ideas and concepts with the Chinese thoughts and wisdom.

Scholars from China, Singapore and the U.S. use the opportunity of the 16th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party to explore the issue of leadership change in China, and its impact on institution building and foreign policy there.

Winner of the Lionel Gelber Prize National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist An Economist Best Book of the Year | A Financial Times Book of the Year | A Wall Street Journal Book of the Year | A Washington Post Book of the Year | A Bloomberg News Book of the Year | An Esquire China Book of the Year | A Gates Notes Top Read of the Year Perhaps no one in the twentieth century had a greater long-term impact on world history than Deng Xiaoping. And no scholar of contemporary East Asian history and culture is better qualified than Ezra Vogel to disentangle the many contradictions embodied in the life and legacy of China’s boldest strategist. Once described by Mao Zedong as a “needle inside a ball of cotton,” Deng was the pragmatic yet disciplined driving force behind China’s radical transformation in the late twentieth century. He confronted the damage wrought by the Cultural Revolution, dissolved Mao’s cult of personality, and loosened the economic and social policies that had stunted China’s growth. Obsessed with modernization and technology, Deng opened trade relations with the West, which lifted hundreds of millions of his countrymen out of poverty. Yet at the same time he answered to his authoritarian roots, most notably when he ordered the crackdown in June 1989 at Tiananmen Square. Deng’s youthful commitment to the Communist Party was cemented in Paris in the early 1920s, among a group of Chinese student-workers that also included Zhou Enlai. Deng returned home in 1927 to join the Chinese Revolution on the ground floor. In the fifty years of his tumultuous rise to power, he endured accusations, purges, and even exile before becoming China’s preeminent leader from 1978 to 1989 and again in 1992. When he reached the top, Deng saw an opportunity to creatively destroy much of the economic system he had helped build for five decades as a loyal follower of Mao—and he did not hesitate.

Chinese traditional culture cannot be understood without some familiarity with the I Ching, yet it is one of the most difficult of the world's ancient classics. Assembled from fragments with many obscure allusions, it was the subject of ingenious, but often conflicting, interpretations over nearly three thousand years. Teaching the I Ching (Book of Changes) offers a comprehensive study at a time when interest in Asian philosophy and the culture of China is on the rise. Still widely read in China, it has become a countercultural classic in the West. Recent scholarship has radically altered our understanding of this foundational work. Geoffrey Redmond and Tze-Ki Hon present an up-to-date survey of recent studies including reconstruction of the early meanings, excavated manuscripts, the New Culture Movement, and the Cultural Revolution. To facilitate introducing the classic to students, the necessary background is provided for university teachers and students, even non-China specialists. The teaching approaches described will foreground the otherness of the classic, yet engage the interests of twenty-first-century students. Rather than dismissing the text's popular association with divination, they explain why this mode of human thought has persisted for millennia. Thus, Redmond and Hon mediate between the two extreme views of the classic: a source of timeless ancient wisdom on the one hand, and a historical curiosity on the other. Teaching the I Ching (Book of Changes) makes this important classic accessible to a broad readership, thus providing a crucial service for those interested in China, early civilization, and world religion. Now anyone with a serious interest can understand a text that continues to have a decisive influence on Chinese and world culture three thousand years after its original composition.