China might have been the world’s manufacturing powerhouse for the past two decades but it could be in financial services where it is yet to have its most dramatic impact.
The country already has the world’s biggest bank – ICBC (Industrial and Commercial Bank of China) by profit and market capitalization, and its four biggest banks are now among the top 10 biggest globally.
During the recent reporting season, China’s Big Four banks, which apart from ICBC, are Bank of China, China Construction Bank and Agricultural Bank of China, revealed some 4.7 trillion yuan (580 billion euros, $758 billion) of overseas assets.
This is a special 45 minute CCTV television programme broadcast on April 8th of the debate earlier that day at the Boao Forum in Hainan on China’s Reform Agenda. It features Justin Lin, until recently chief economist of the World Bank, Fan Gang, president of China’s National Economic Research Institute, Charlene Barshefsky, former US Trade Representative, and Martin Jacques.
In absolute numbers, China probably has more beautiful women than any other country in the world. But one could never tell that by looking at the squeaky-clean glass display windows in upscale stores in this capital city or in Shanghai, whose architecture has been often compared to London, Paris and Rio.
The classic image of beauty in those stores and elsewhere across China are modeled after the American and European standard of beauty—White, blue-eyed and blond.
That’s remarkable in a country that has long considered itself the center of the universe.
Il y a une dizaine d’années, Martin Jacques traversait Shanghai en taxi avec Gao, une brillante étudiante en sociologie qui devait lui servir d’interprète pour sa rencontre avec le directeur du musée de la ville.
Le taxi peinait à se frayer un chemin dans le trafic et la conversation a fini par digresser sur des sujets moins professionnels, comme l’existence de couples mixtes américano-chinois. L’économiste et historien britannique a cité en exemple un de ces couples avant d’indiquer, en passant, que l’Américain en question avait la peau noire.
La jeune femme a réagi brutalement à la simple évocation de cette mixité raciale. «Elle a exprimé une répulsion physique comme je n’en avais jamais vu auparavant», raconte l’auteur de When China Rules the World – un best-seller mondial prédisant que la croissance effrénée de la Chine nous réserve beaucoup de surprises, pas nécessairement des bonnes. Et que nous avons intérêt à nous y préparer.
Martin Jacques, author of When China Rules the World, said China is expected to face enormous challenges and the world will be more profoundly affected during the next phase ofthe country’s development.
“China is still little more than halfway through the process of modernization, and the country’s economy was too small to have much of an impact outside its own frontiers for most of the first phase,” he said at the 5th World Forum on China Studies in Shanghai.
In the next twenty years, China’s global impact will be more fundamental and extensive, and both the West and China need to be prepared for the changing scenario ahead.
The 5th World Forum on China Studies, themed “China’s Modernization: Road and Prospect,” came to a close at the Shanghai Exhibition Center on the late afternoon of March 24.
Martin Jacques, visiting senior fellow at IDEAS, London School of Economics and Political Science, delivered his keynote speech at the ceremony, entitled “China’s Modernization and its Transformation of the World.” He is renowned for his influential book “When China Rules the World.” He clarified his viewpoint that China will undergo a profound transformation and complete its modernization drive over the next two decades.
China is not only transforming itself but also the world in the process of modernization, which requires the Chinese to have cosmopolitan outlook to embrace global impacts, Martin Jacques said on Sunday.
Martin Jacques, the author of When China Rules the World, and visiting senior fellow at IDEAS of London School of Economics and Political Science, made the remarks during a joint media interview at the 5th World Forum on Chinese Studies.
Martin is confident that China will become the most influential and powerful country in the world, not just economically but politically and culturally, despite it will take a long way to go.
CHINA’S profound engagement with the world will over time engender a “global mentality” in its citizens and make its peaceful rise more acceptable to a sometimes skeptical world, an acclaimed British author and scholar said yesterday.
Martin Jacques, author of the best-seller “When China Rules the World,” attended the Fifth World Forum on China Studies in Shanghai that ended yesterday.
The time since Deng Xiaoping’s reform and opening up policy has been the most open period in Chinese history, said Jacques.
