The tailored gents marching in perfect step toward the podium have reason enough to smile. Led by Premier Wen Jiabo and Supremo Hu Jintao, China’s gang of nine are entitled to feel pretty satisfied with their nation’s recent economic performance.
Wen’s remarks to the annual National People’s Congress were chosen with care to balance the good news with a warning against national complacency. His talk of destabilizing problems on the horizon, though, could not disguise the self-congratulatory stuff. China is doing very nicely, thank you.
China’s extraordinary statistics tell a decidedly different story from the doom and gloom in Japan and the West. While the G-8 nations fear a double dip recession and voice concerns over happens next once all the massive state funding is removed, China sails regally on.
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What Martin Jacques had outlined in his lecture is of great importance to us Filipinos who are caught in the big geopolitical power game between the US and China
Jacques narrated that even before the Western Financial Crisis Goldman Sachs had already projected that the Chinese economy will soon surpass that of the US and that in 2050 the Chinese economy will be double the size of that of the US.
Citing BNP Paribas projections, Jacques stated that the post-crisis date when China overtakes the US is now 2020. “China is going to change the world in two fundamental respects. First of all, it’s a huge developing country with a population of 1.3 billion people, which has been growing for over 30 years at around 10 percent a year,” Jacques said.
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Author looks ahead to the time when China will dominate the world
Martin Jacques finds himself in the unusual position of being something of a celebrity in China. His book When China Rules The World, which examines the implications of China overtaking the United States as the world’s largest economy, has sold 150,000 copies and has achieved the most success in the country whose rise he foretells.
“Not bad, is it?” he quips. “When I come to China people talk to me about the book; lots of people have read it. It is different from anywhere else I have been to in the West. People say to me: ‘You know you are famous in China.'”
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The Chinese premier’s visit will boost bilateral trade, the bedrock of Sino-Indian relations
To the millions of Chinese children, Premier Wen Jiabao is affectionately known as grandfather Wen, conveying the tremendous success he has achieved in cultivating the image of ‘people’s man’ or the ‘humane face’ of the Chinese government. This sentiment was transmitted to Delhi’s Tagore International School, which was Wen’s stop on the first day of his recent trip to India. A child asked him, “Could I call you Grandfather Wen?” Pat came his reply, “I love to be called that, especially by children.” Perhaps this exchange was scripted, but one indisputable feature of how he came across—whether meeting schoolchildren or addressing business leaders or talking to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh—was his winsome demeanour. Through it, he conveyed the message that he’s a reasonable man, arguably India’s best bet to improve its relations with China.
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To borrow a line from the nuns in that old musical, how do you solve a problem like China?
It isn’t a will o’ the wisp that’ll go away; it isn’t a clown, though it might think the rest of us are. It is a worry for the world and a headache for India.
The Economist, which is now a weekly must-read for trend analysts everywhere, ran a special survey recently on ‘The Dangers of a Rising China’. Several Asia-watchers have written volumes full of anxiety. One by Martin Jacques, titled ‘When China Rules the World’, declares in its subtitle: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order. China’s influence, says Jacques, will extend well beyond the economic sphere. It will have social, cultural and political repercussions.
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The West and China both seem to be making huge efforts to understand each other better. British Prime Minister David Cameron’s visit to China was the latest in a long series of high-level visits by Western leaders. But will such visits lead to greater mutual understanding? My experience of writing an article in The Guardian last month suggests there are still major obstacles to overcome.
The West and China both seem to be making huge efforts to understand each other better. British Prime Minister David Cameron’s visit to China was the latest in a long series of high-level visits by Western leaders. But will such visits lead to greater mutual understanding? My experience of writing an article in The Guardian last month suggests there are still major obstacles to overcome.
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As a matter of political pastime or even serious study, leaders and observers often try to note who blinks first in a confrontation between two major powers
Viewed in this perspective, there is a message in the absence of an instant blink-watch when Japan set free the captured Chinese captain of a fishing boat on September 24. He was not formally charged. This can perhaps be treated as a sign of maturity in the enormously complex relationship between Beijing and Tokyo.
However, the statements by the two sides on this event bristled with the tone and tenor of righteous indignation. At the same time, the discernible political mood behind the scenes, a day or two after the captain’s release, was one of trying to prevent a further escalation of tensions. It was too early, at the time of writing, to foresee with certainty how exactly Japan and China ride out this new storm in their increasingly direct and dynamic engagement within the larger framework of inter-state cooperation in East Asia.
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尖閣諸島の事件をめぐる議論はすごい盛り上がりを見せ、「日比谷焼き討ち事件」のころもかくやと思わせる。私も今回の政府の対応はまずかったと思うが、中国の強硬姿勢がかつてなく激越で、しかも矢継ぎ早だったのは政府も予想外だったのではないか。これは国内問題の「ガス抜き」という面もあろうが、世界に対して「アジアのルールはわれわれが作る」ということを示す意味もあったと思う。本書はイギリスのジャーナリストが書いたもので、タイトルはいささかセンセーショナルだが、内容はまじめなものだ。今回の事件との関連でおもしろいのは、中国が西洋世界の「法の支配」に挑戦しているという話だ。通説では、西洋が近代化によって中国を追い抜いたのは、財産権や契約などのガバナンスがしっかりしていいて市場や株式会社などの人的関係に依存しない組織ができたからで、中国も成熟すれば西洋化すると西洋人は考えているが、著者はこれに異を唱える。
A new dictionary, out from Oxford University Press, incorporates some very earthy Chinese slang expressions and new words, including some that you can’t invoke without having to rinse your mouth out with soap
(Now, you’re dying to know what they are, aren’t you?)
Although these street-talk words (among other more socially acceptable words) only made it to the parallel universe of the Oxford English-Chinese, Chinese-English dictionary — not the more definitive Oxford English Dictionary — it has set off a frisson of etymological excitement among folks in China. Some see it as the beginning of a lexicographic lead-in to a world that will, progressively, speak Chinese — and in countless other ways be ‘Sinified’ by Chinese soft-power influences.
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There is no knowing whether an editorial in the People’s Daily on Friday that for all intents and purposes removed the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) as the principal defender of China against Japanese invasion during World War II was simply out-of-control Chinese nationalism, or a more sinister attempt to blur the lines in the Taiwan Strait
For years now, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda has played down the KMT’s role in the war of resistance and elevated that of the communists to one that defies the historical record, a form of revisionism that, sadly, continues to be swallowed and reproduced by a number of Western academics, one of the latest being Martin Jacques in his influential book When China Rules the World.
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