About 2,565 years ago a wise and aristocratic Kong Qiu came to the world, 551 years before a certain Jesus of Nazareth. The main reason why we all live in the year 2014 of our Lord Christ is because Jesus declared himself the son of the Jewish God, and the king of Jews on top of that, which got him nailed to a cross by the Romans and the Jews. To get back at them, he resurrected. The rest is advanced political sciences.

Confucius never claimed to be the son of God. Instead, he got himself an education and a real job. Since he was an academic, historians would compare him to Plato. Either way, Confucius probably is to East Asia what Jesus Christ and Plato are to the West: the spiritual and the ideological master source.

So, when Chinese President Xi Jinping attended the international seminar to mark the 2,565th birth anniversary of Confucius this week at the Great Hall of the People, we China watchers stayed up all night wondering: What does it all mean?