Wang Gungwu, 94, keeps interrogating world affairs

At 94, Professor Wang Gungwu's default mode is still that of an indefatigable lecturer.

- Clement Yong

He needs little prodding. The first question — "Were you the one who selected the lectures included in your book?" — is enough for him to launch into an account of China's turbulent 20th century, lasting 40 minutes without so much as a sip of water.

As with the best historians, he marshals decades and centuries of facts, and shapes them in just the way he needs them.

By the 23rd minute — when he apologises for his spiel — his thesis is as good as mathematically proven: As the world rushes headlong into war, distinguishing the meanings of the words "culture" and "civilisation" has never been more imperative.

At his office at the National University of Singapore East Asian Institute, where he was director from 1996 to 2019, he says: "Very often, people use them interchangeably. But I discovered over the years that that's not very helpful. Of course, they all draw from a way of life, but they have different emphases."

Culture should be viewed in the national context, while civilisation — comprising writing, learning and other traditions — represents the best of human achievement and is borderless.

"It helps the world to understand how we can deal with one another as nation states and, at the same time, appreciate and admire civilisations in the way I would enjoy Shakespeare. I can enjoy the poetry of Li Bai and ceramics without identifying with the nation state called People's Republic of China. You can draw from different civilisations to make one national culture."

He addresses these and others in his new book published by World Scientific. Roads To Chinese Modernity: Civilisation And National Culture is a compilation of his lectures delivered in the past 15 years on China and being Chinese, with the latest given in 2023 at an Association for Asian Studies meeting in Seoul, South Korea.