For much of the two decades since the 1990s, when China moved into a high orbit of economic growth, it propounded the theory that its “rise” would be “peaceful” in nature. It was perhaps intended to reassure a wary world, which was watching a notionally Communist country of a billion-plus people move at top speed, that China would not disturb the global order overmuch even if it became the world’s largest economy (which it is on course to be, perhaps as early as the end of this decade).
That reassurance was critical to China’s securing access to international capital, becoming a magnet for Big Business, and more generally ensuring a benign geopolitical and regional climate in the early stages of its development. And particularly after the bloody crackdown on the Tiananmen Square student protests of June 1989 rattled global faith in China’s motives, “peaceful rise” became something of a mantra.
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ONE of the great evangelical hymns starts stirringly: “Blessed assurance”
Too often, that’s what businesspeople have been fed by presenters at conferences: simple answers to complex questions.
China is no exception. In the fairly recent past, business audiences in Australia have evinced remarkable ignorance about China, passively taking in whatever the visiting expert has proclaimed.
But there has been a welcome turning of the tide. It’s no longer enough to say that China satisfies 99 per cent of global concrete gnome demand, or whatever. Every galah in every corner pet shop here knows how important China has become to our economy. Sadly, some conference organisers still churn out speakers who click on one PowerPoint slide after another that makes that point, over and over: bigger, better.
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Martin Jacques, a leading British academic who wrote a best-selling book called When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order believes, as you can probably tell from the title, that China will be the dominant power of this century. Predictions about when China becomes the largest economy in the world range from 2030 onwards to as early as 2018.
Those in the West, he says, have no idea what that will entail for we arrogantly presume that as China gets richer its citizens will become more like us. Jacques says that won’t happen. China has 1000 years of civilisation to draw upon where the state is the paramount force and is seen by the population as an extension of the family – the ultimate patriarch. He says that Chinese citizens won’t become like westerners, with our demands for individual rights and freedoms and our reliance on rules over relationships. Instead China will maintain its uniqueness.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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