Despite the long distance between the two countries, the Netherlands have profoundly influenced China。

1567 was the first year of Longqing of the Ming Dynasty. The Chinese emperor then issued an imperial edict to designate silver as the currency for people to pay their taxes in this year.  Since then, a great deal of silver was transported through the Philippines to china from America. Spain occupied Cebu port and named it after Philip II.

In 1620，the Spanish encountered a strong opponent，the Dutch, in the Pacific area.  The Netherlands occupied Taiwan, and blocked the way the Spain transported silver to china, which led to the huge inflation crisis of the Ming Dynasty.  Twenty years later, the Ming Dynasty collapsed and was replaced by Qing Dynasty.

In the book "Who Made the History of Past 500 Years: China and the World since 1500", I described this in detail.  This book was a best seller in China.  It was said that most of the leaders in China had read it.

Though in my new books I didn't mention the impact the Netherlands had on modern China, but I want to emphasize here that the Netherlands had influenced modern China almost more than any other country in the world.

The first book written by Mao Zedong on philosophy was actually his notes while reading the book“ A system of Ethics” when he was twenty-four years old.  The book was written by Friedrich Paulsen and was a popular version of the creative book "The Ethics" written by Baruch de Spinoza.

When the twenty-two-year old Mao Zedong studied in the provincial library in Changsha, he had read this book written by Spinoza.  As a poor student, Mao Zedong had the same kind of life that Spinoza had lived.  He could only afford two rice cakes

to fill his belly.

Both of Marx and Mao Zedong were revolters.  They were people who violated the traditional value.  Because both of them defied the order established by God.  In my mind, the first country which publicly struggled against “the order established by God” represented by the the Catholic Church was the Netherlands.  The original theory of rebellion and revolution in modern times is just the book "The Ethics" written by Spinoza.

The Netherlands had contributed the philosophy of revolution to the modern world.  May be that’s why one corner of their national flag is red.

In my opinion, there was no philosophy that was so revolutionary like the “The Ethics” of Spinoza before the time of Marx and Mao Zedong.

Spinoza said: Order and disorder means nothing to the universe and nature.  But people incline to regard the world that they can understand and the world from which they can benefit as ordered, and regard the world they couldn't understand and fit and the world from which they couldn't benefit as disordered.  We can put it like this: People inclined to regard a new world as disordered.  So revolution and rebellion is often interpreted as turmoil and illegality.

Spinoza said in "The Ethics", "People regard the world they could understand and imagine as ordered. They said that God created a perfect world.  So in their mind, God has imagination too.  It seems they want to express that God created a perfect world in which everything was in perfect order for people to use their imagination.  But they didn't realize that the things beyond our imagination in this large world is infinite, and our imagination is not so powerful.  Moreover, there are so many things which could disturb our imagination."

The philosophy of Spinoza is for the brave people.  The Dutch are brave, because they dare directly face the world that ordinary people think as disordered, just as they bravely confront the violent storms and big waves of the ocean.

In 1972, when Mao Zedong was talking with Nixon, He used a pun to express that he took the laws into his own hands.  When the interpreter interpreted it as "A lonely monk walked with an umbrella in a rainy day"，Mao corrected him, "In Buddhism, it was said that 'Thousand laws are invalid', because order and disorder means nothing to the universe."  It was said by Spinoza. The pantheism he said had the same meaning with this."

Mao added, "Sun Wukong create a tremendous uproar in the heavenly palace.  Now we are trying to overthrown the devil and liberate the imps around him."

In 1972, Mao Zedong didn't argued with Nixon over ideologies, But talked merely about philosophy according to Nixon's requirements. Because philosophy is a language leading to tolerance in terms of ideologies.  In my opinion, tolerance is the Netherlands' greatest contribution to the world.

By the way，with this in the mind, my two books about Marx and Mao Zedong were finally able to publish in the Netherlands.

I also want to emphasize here that the philosophies of Spinoza and Mao Zedong are different from other philosophies in the world.  Philosophy is a kind of language about mind and spirit since Plato.  But from their standpoint, mind and spirit is only a part of the body, and it is the softest and most fragile, sensitive and variable part of the body.