Thanks to Frog in a Well, I had the pleasure of discovering Yu Ying-shih’s acceptance speech for the "Nobel prize for historians."  In it, he emphasizes the recognition of universal humanity in ancient Chinese thought:

If history is any guide, then there seems to be a great deal of
overlapping consensus in basic values between Chinese culture and
Western culture. After all, recognition of common humanity and human
dignity is what the Chinese Tao has been about. I am more convinced
than ever that once Chinese culture returns to the main flow of Tao,
the problematique of China-versus-the-West will also come to an end.

     How wonderfully optimistic!  In a time when nationalist discourse drives countries apart, Yu is reminding us that, at heart, the great philosophic traditions share fundamental commonalities:

In the late 19th century, it was also the open-minded Confucians who
enthusiastically embraced values and ideas dominant in the modern West
such as democracy, liberty, equality, rule of law, autonomy of the
individual person and, above all, human rights. When some of them
visited Europe or America for the first time and stayed there long
enough to make first-hand observations, they were all deeply impressed,
first of all, by the ideals and institutions of Western constitutional
democracy. Wang T’ao (1828-1897), who assisted James Legge in his
English translation of Confucian classics, returned to Hong Kong from
England in 1870 praising her political and legal systems to the sky. He
was probably the first Confucian scholar to use the term "democracy" in
Chinese (min-chu). Wang exerted a considerable influence on Confucian
political thinking in the late Ch’ing. At the turn of the century,
there were two rival Confucian schools in China known as the New Text
and Old Text, respectively. Both advocated democracy, though each in
its own way. The former was in favor of constitutional monarchy, while
the latter pushed for republicanism. Perhaps inspired by Wang T’ao, who
compared the British political and judicial systems favorably to
China’s Golden Age as described in Confucian classics, both Confucian
schools began a systematic search for the origins and evolution of
democratic ideas in early Confucian texts. In so doing, it is clear
that they took the compatibility between Chinese culture and Western
culture as two systems of values for granted.

 Notice what he takes away from all of this: not that the West somehow "won" the battle of cultures, but that Chinese could see the potential for compatibility between Western modernization and Chinese tradition.

       I readily admit that this sentiment also authorizes my own personal intellectual quest of late: bringing ancient Chinese thought into modern American life.  My project (so much more limited than Yu’s life work) seems rather less quixotic if deeply learned people like Yu can see certain basic links between China and the West.   All I am really assuming is that the compatibility that he mentions is real and can operate in reverse: that classical Chinese texts have something to say to people today, even people in very different cultural contexts than that of Warring States China.

    Congratulations and Happy New Year Professor Yu!