Ethical thinking and penchant for dialectical styles of reasoning require polarisation. Chinese necessarily adopt extreme positions in the expectation that they will be moderated by some suitable other adopting some opposing position which they together will attempt to balance. There will be norms of balance, of course, such as for example a man's opinion is worth more than his wife's, a leader's opinion is worth more than his subordinates, and certain historical figures will hold a higher value than you, and so on. But in the absence of some relatively respected interlocutor, Chinese run the risk of whizzing off into quite absurd requirement and hysterical insistence. At least some of China's recklessness in foreign policy is down to no one attempting at a national level to enter into that kind of relationship with them. No other nation chooses to play the right role.
And so we are doomed.