中文
By Josef Gregory Mahoney
Lead: Western coverage of China's "two sessions" often mistakes translation for understanding. The two are not the same thing.
While most of the materials produced by China's "two sessions" — including the premier's annual government work report and answers from the foreign minister's press conference — are fairly straightforward, foreigners still face several challenges in understanding what China is trying to communicate. Most can be addressed with adequate translation, but the potential for misunderstanding remains significant.
Aside from translation, these challenges fall under what academics call "hermeneutics" — variously described as either the "art" or "science" of interpretation. The field focuses on two separate but related problems: how to understand those coming from different cultural and linguistic perspectives, and how to understand ideas from older, especially ancient, times when worldviews diverged even more sharply. These concerns are especially relevant today. Some Western media, scholars and political figures seem almost willfully determined to misunderstand contemporary China. And understanding contemporary China necessarily involves understanding China's past, including its ancient past.
Among Western hermeneutics theorists, there are generally two approaches at work. Some, most famously Paul Ricoeur, believe methods can be devised to create a science of understanding that operates from an outside-in approach. Others, most famously Hans-Georg Gadamer, reject the possibility that any method can reliably yield a truthful interpretation. Gadamer leans toward an art of understanding that seeks a "fusion of horizons," dismissing the outside-in approach as a metaphysical delusion. In fact, both sides offer critical insights into the problem of interpretation. Whether those insights solve the problem, however, remains a matter of debate.
In the Chinese philosophical tradition, there is no term strictly equivalent to the Western concept of hermeneutics. But a profound tradition of interpretation that is functionally similar does exist. Chinese academic circles generally hold that traditional "xungu" (训诂学), together with the philosophical thought surrounding the interpretation of classics, forms the foundation for dialogue with Western hermeneutics. Both xungu and hermeneutics are devoted to "linguistic conversion" — bridging ancient and modern language, connecting the subject with linguistic others and with the classics. Both are similarly dedicated to solving the problem of understanding and interpretation.
Members of a delegation of diplomatic envoys, agency representatives and journalists from Latin American and Caribbean countries visit an ancient town in Xiangyang, central China's Hubei Province, April 22, 2024. [Photo by Du Zixuan/Xinhua]
There is, however, a fundamental difference between the two approaches. From classical to modern times, Western hermeneutics has long been shaped by a tension between subjectivity and objectivity, authorial intent and reader understanding. Ancient Chinese interpretive principles take a different view. Mencius's concept of "yiyi nizhi" (以意逆志) — using one's own mind to meet and grasp the author's intent — emphasizes subject-object integration rather than the pursuit of absolute objectivity. Chinese philosophy also stresses the immanence of the "Dao" (Way) and the role of personal experience. Understanding a classic often relies on the reader's capacity for "post-experiencing" to grasp the inner spirit of the sages, not merely logical analysis.
A further complication, as I have argued elsewhere, is Western thought's tendency to project a binary, either/or view of the world and to normalize zero-sum outcomes. Chinese traditional thought, by contrast, emphasizes "he" (和) — meaning both "and" and "harmony." This difference goes to the heart of why so many in the West fail to understand China. Too often, they resort to culturally and linguistically preconditioned frameworks that run contrary to Chinese conceptions of the inescapable coexistence of differences.
This is not to suggest that Chinese leaders like President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Qiang or Foreign Minister Wang Yi are ancient Chinese sages, or that there is an unbridgeable historical chasm between them and the present day. Nevertheless, it is certainly the case that they belong to a civilization with an extraordinarily long and relatively unique history, and all of them frequently return to the deep well of traditional Chinese wisdom to explain the Chinese system and how it understands the world.
Of course, they are entirely engaged in the present and in the vanguard of modern developments. Furthermore, from a purely linguistic perspective, traditional Chinese is the classical example of a paratactic language. The need for clearer, more precise communication in modern Chinese society has developed a much richer set of conjunctions and grammatical structures to make logical relationships explicit, thereby moving along the spectrum toward hypotaxis and becoming more analytical in sentence structure, thus drawing closer to the hypotactic languages of the Indo-European family. However, Modern Chinese has not become a hypotactic language like German or English. It has simply incorporated more hypotactic tools. The underlying "logic" of the language still often leans toward parataxis.
The opening meeting of the fourth session of the 14th National People's Congress (NPC) is held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 5, 2026. [Photo by Wang Jianhua/Xinhua]
Thus, on the one hand, we might dismiss straightaway pejorative misrepresentations of China's "two sessions" — for example, the BBC's general tendency to refer to the National People's Congress as a "rubber-stamp legislature" — as being at the very least ignorant of whole-process people's democracy, or merely ideologically malign. On the other hand, we have to consider very carefully whether foreigners are adequately prepared to understand the fundamental differences at the heart of a Chinese political system. President Xi has accurately described it as a product of Chinese Marxism — itself a product of the "two integrations" (两个结合). In China, Marxism was first integrated with traditional Chinese ways of thinking — for example, the primacy of "and" over "or" in traditional yin-yang thought. It is further enriched by returning to Chinese wisdom when faced with new problems, such as emphasizing the first principle of Laozi and promoting harmony between people and nature as a response to the challenges of the Anthropocene.
Furthermore, we can point directly to Wang Yi's press conference, where two of his most important points were made via traditional Chinese idioms. These idioms are not difficult to translate directly into English, but they do illustrate a very different way of understanding the world, major-country relations and major country responsibilities. One is a quote from Han Feizi's "On Preserving Han": "Weapons are instruments of misfortune; their use must be carefully considered" (兵者,凶器也,不可不审用). The other, "Without practicing benevolence and righteousness, the balance of power in offense and defense changes" (仁义不施,而攻守之势异也), is a classic statement by Jia Yi, a political theorist of the Western Han dynasty, in his "On the Faults of Qin." In short, failing to practice benevolence and righteousness leads to destruction, a point many Chinese regard as a "historical law."
Of course, we can understand in context that the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran, which Wang described as unnecessary and mutually destructive, and the tendency of both countries to aggress illegally against others, are harbingers of their own declines. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that many in Washington or Tel Aviv would subscribe to such a view — quite the opposite — and all the more so because they tend to see the world through the lens of opposition. Thus encumbered, whether one seeks the outside-in approach or a fusion of horizons, both remain out of reach.
Josef Gregory Mahoney is a professor of politics and international relations and director of the Center for Ecological Civilization at East China Normal University in Shanghai. He is also a senior research fellow with the Institute for the Development of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics at Southeast University in Nanjing.
