IANA Linguistics major, but I wrote my term thesis for Buddhist Philosophy on basically this question. The gist of which was that the linguistic differences between Classical Chinese and Latin had a lot to do with some of the major religious difference between Buddhism and Christianity. (It was a Bachelor's level elective, I never studied Classical Chinese as a language, etc. Although I think if I had actually pursued Philosophy, I probably *would* have eventually learned Chinese, because the question fascinated me far beyond the scope of a 20-page term paper.)

Being able to say "I am" and have it be understood as a complete sentence expressing a complete thought would tend to lead a speaker towards an essentialist sort of perspective. The concept of the "soul", the eternal self, is easier to believe because it's easier to speak. The way it was presented to me at the time (aged by about ten years of not reading philosophy) is that there's no way to translate the same thought into Classical Chinese. There aren't words for the concept of pure existence in the same way.

Some reading on the Wikipedia page for "copula" seems to suggest this is kind of an active debate. Modern Chinese *does* have a word for "to be", but there's debate about the evolution of that word.

To be is to do. —Socrates
To do is to be. —Plato
Do-be-do-be-do. —Sinatra