China scholar: Success of West due to Christian foundation

These words were spoken in Beijing in 2002 by a Chinese scholar with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (Source: former Beijing bureau chief of Time Magazine, David Aikman, in his book, Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity is Transforming China and changing the Global Balance of Power.)

“One of the things we were asked to look into was what accounted for the success, in fact, the pre-eminence of the West all over the world. We studied everything we could from the historical, political, economic and cultural perspective. At first, we thought it was because you had more powerful guns than we did. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West has been so powerful. The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don’t have any doubt about this.”