As China rises, so its relationship with the rest of the world becomes ever-closer. At the same time, it also grows more complex. There are bound to be setbacks as well as advances. Overall, however, one must conclude that 2014 has been a very good year as far as China’s global rise is concerned. More and more countries around the world want to build a closer economic relationship with China, which increasingly they see as crucial to their own future prosperity. China is pioneering a new paradigm in international relations in which military concerns are no longer paramount – as has been the case in the post-1945 American world order – and, in their place, economic relations, based on trade, investment and loans, are assuming primacy.
China
The reforms that count tend to conform to the western model, writes Martin Jacques
In the west there is an underlying assumption that the Achilles heel of China is its political system. Since the country lacks western-style democracy, its system of governance is unsustainable. Ultimately, China will be obliged to adopt our kind of political system.
Yet China’s governance system has been remarkably successful for more than three decades. It has presided over the greatest economic transformation in modern history.
Hong Kong’s chief executive says he is willing to hold talks with the demonstrators who have camped out for days now in the city’s financial center. This came as a response to a request from the protesters.
Students are demanding more freedom on choosing the candidates for Hong Kong’s next leadership election in 2017. They also want the Chief Executive, CY Leung, to resign. Leung has said he will not resign. Beijing has called the protests illegal and has supported the Hong Kong leadership. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the protest was illegitimate when he met with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. Yi also urged protesters to withdraw.
Martin Jacques, a senior fellow at Cambridge University and author of “When China Rules the World: the End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order”, joins CCTV America to discuss the latest developments in the demonstrations.
“For 155 years, the British ruled Hong Kong but they never gave universal suffrage. So, Hong Kong under the British was never a democracy. It became an issue only during the handover of Hong Kong from the British to China. For the British it was not important to give universal suffrage when they ruled it,” Jacques said.
Protesters cry democracy but most are driven by dislocation and resentment at mainlanders’ success.
The upheaval sweeping Hong Kong is more complicated than on the surface it might appear. Protests have erupted over direct elections to be held in three years’ time; democracy activists claim that China’s plans will allow it to screen out the candidates it doesn’t want.
It should be remembered, however, that for 155 years until its handover to China in 1997, Hong Kong was a British colony, forcibly taken from China at the end of the first opium war. All its 28 subsequent governors were appointed by the British government. Although Hong Kong came, over time, to enjoy the rule of law and the right to protest, under the British it never enjoyed even a semblance of democracy. It was ruled from 6,000 miles away in London. The idea of any kind of democracy was first introduced by the Chinese government. In 1990 the latter adopted the Basic Law, which included the commitment that in 2017 the territory’s chief executive would be elected by universal suffrage; it also spelt out that the nomination of candidates would be a matter for a nominating committee.
Gaiko is the leading publication in Japan on foreign policy issues
Gaiko is the leading publication in Japan on foreign policy issues
In April this year the World Bank’s International Comparison Program projected that during the course of 2014 China’s GDP (measured by ppp) would exceed that of the United States. Although widely anticipated to happen in the next several years, hardly anyone expected it to be this year. But, it should be noted, the West has consistently underestimated the speed of China’s rise. As a result, it has been, and remains, consistently behind the curve of China’s rise, with the consequence that it constantly underestimates the extent to which the world has changed because of China’s transformation.
Of course, economic power does not translate immediately and directly into political power. On the contrary, if we look at the rise of previous hegemons, notably the UK in the nineteenth century and the US in the twentieth century, there has always been a significant time lag between their emergence as great economic powers and their subsequent arrival as major hegemonic powers enjoying broader political, cultural and military as well as economic influence. That said, however, economic power was the fundamental pre-condition for, and prelude to, their emergence as global hegemons. The same will be true of China.
Alas, we remain far too ignorant about the country, too often resorting to cliché
The visit of the Chinese prime minister, Li Keqiang, to London last week is the latest illustration of a huge shift that is taking place in Sino-British relations. On taking office, the Coalition government talked about the importance of emerging markets such as China but did little. Then David Cameron met the Dalai Lama in 2012 and the Chinese put us in the deep freeze for 18 months. But, to its great credit, once normal relations were resumed, the Government lost no time in seeking to place the relationship on a different footing. In Beijing last December, Cameron spoke of Britain and China becoming “great partners”.
中国是很多发展中国家最大的贸易伙伴，也是发展中国家的转型推动器。很多发展中国家都将中国视为学习的榜样和未来的目标
中国梦概念面世时，中国的发展正处于一个新的历史时刻。这是两个时期的分水岭，从这一刻开始，中国的经历将与过去大不相同。
改革开放的发展战略，使中国以新的姿态站在国际舞台上。中国贫困人口大幅减少，人民生活水平不断提高，经济总量占美国经济总量的比例大幅跃升至50%以上。此时的中国相对于许多发达国家来说仍然不够富裕，但是绝对不能用“弱小”来形容了。中国现在有能力憧憬并实现新的梦想，国际社会也对中国抱有同样的期待。
There is understandable concern that the recent food contamination scandals in China, starting with the Fonterra melamine dairy product crisis in 2008 and book-ended by the fresh concerns over botulism this August, could have a corrosive effect on the trading relationship between China and New Zealand.
The relationship matters a great deal to New Zealand. China is now by some margin the country’s second largest trading partner, having rapidly overtaken the United States and long outdistanced Europe. And we are only at the beginning of what will in time become New Zealand’s most important economic relationship.
New Zealand is right to be concerned. China has for long taken a tough line with countries deemed to have offended it.
A classic example is Norway. Norway and China were on the verge of signing a bilateral trade agreement in 2010 when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the imprisoned dissident writer Liu Xiabo. In response, China broke off trade negotiations and they have been in cold storage ever since, with signs of a thaw becoming evident only this year.