Coming to terms with the reality of China
By The Editors - Thursday, July 16, 2009 - 19 Comments
China’s ruling classes are not interested in Western values. They see theirs as superior.
Almost a year ago, Maclean’s published an essay by controversial former Canadian diplomat and entrepreneur Maurice Strong in which he passionately defended his adopted home, China, from those who would criticize its authoritarian regime. He lauded the government’s move toward a “socialist market economy” and said that Western engagement and understanding would inevitably lead to more openness and respect for human rights in the Middle Kingdom. “The Chinese will be much more influenced by our example than by the uninformed and hypocritical content of so much of our criticism,” Strong wrote. And in so doing, he summarized the prevailing sentiments among much of Canada’s political and business class: more support for China will inevitably make them more like us.
This week, Martin Jacques, a journalist, academic and author of the new book When China Rules the World, provides some sober (and sobering) second thought. In recent years, it has become accepted as a given that China’s rapid economic growth will allow it to eventually eclipse the United States as the world’s pre-eminent financial power. But Jacques says this shift in influence will certainly go far beyond commercial heft. It will bring profound and, in many respects, unwelcome changes to Western culture. The ruling classes in China are not interested in adopting foreign values like racial equality, human rights and political openness. Rather, they are dismissive—and in some cases outright hostile—to many of the political and cultural touchstones that we take for granted. They view the world as a hierarchy, with China at the top and the rest of the world representing various degrees of inferiority. Continue…
-
When China rules the world
By Charlie Gillis - Monday, July 13, 2009 at 3:30 PM - 60 Comments
The dire consequences of the coming shift in global power
As an academic and journalist working throughout East Asia, Martin Jacques has had a front row seat for the past decade on China’s economic and political emergence. The British author’s latest book is titled When China Rules the World.Q: We in the West spend a great deal of time discussing China’s rise. But we seem to resist the next logical step, which is to consider how things will change around the world when China becomes the world’s pre-eminent economic power. Why is that?
A: I think that the world has been so used to American hegemony, and you had a recent period of American history under Bush which actually postulated exactly the opposite scenario—that we were in fact on the eve of a new American century. So we’re just not versed in the profoundly different thinking China’s pre-eminence will require. More than that, we have failed to understand that we’re not just talking about economic change. The impact of China’s rise is going to be at least as great politically and culturally as it will be in economic terms.
Q: So paint me a picture, in broad strokes. If, as some forecast, China’s GDP surpasses that of the U.S. in the next 20 years, how will China behave on the world stage?
A: Initially, I don’t expect it to behave hugely differently. Even in 2050, when it’s projected that the Chinese economy will be twice as large as that of the United States, China will still be, in terms of GDP per head, a lot poorer than the United States. But history’s very important in the behaviour of nations, and China comes from profoundly different civilizational coordinates than the West; it has a different history from the top dogs than we’re used to over the last 200 years. I think that the West is going to feel extremely disoriented by the world that is in the process of now being made. We’ve so long assumed that the furniture is our furniture, the language is our language, the sports played are our sports, the values are our values, the skin colour is our skin colour. My son’s 10, and his generation is going to grow up in a very, very different kind of world. Continue…
