China Digital Times

Stories tagged with: China’s rise (246)

• After The Olympics: The World in 2009

  

  The Economist released its annual predictions and insights for “The World in 2009″. Here is what the say about China’s new agenda:

  

  In the coming year, here is what The Economist foresees:

  - Policymakers will “strive to prevent economic growth from slowing too fast while curbing inflation” in accordance with the current stock market decline

  - The 20 year anniversary of the Tiananmen Square uprising will bring new demands for political change, both internally and externally. Internally, the official 30 year commemorations of China’s “reform and opening” policy, and externally by hints at new reforms for the state media.

  - With the conclusion of the Olympics, politics may loosen on the public as well. With the burden of feeling “constrained by a need to demonstrate a unity or purpose” alleviated, “the result could be a year of greater social turbulence.”

  - China’s relations with Taiwan will continue along its current path with “Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou continu[ing] the efforts he has been making since his inauguration in May 2008 to defuse tensions with the mainland.”

  - Relations with Tibet will be particularly restless. As the 50th anniversary of the March 10th uprising comes closer, The Economist predicts another outbreak between China and the West.

  - January 1st will mark a new law taking effect that requires industries to cut water consumptions and use more “clean energy” to promote a more “pro-green” image, but it will be “will be very reluctant to pledge any specific targets for cuts in carbon emissions” at the November 2009 meeting in Copenhagen.

  - China, with the help of Russia, may also send a probe to Mars in the later half of 2009.

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  • November 20, 2008 8:55 PM

• China Leader Set To Sign Peru Trade Deal

  

  The Financial Times reports that China is signing a new trade deal with Peru. President Hu Jintao arrives in Lima today for the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation forum; he will be greeted by around twelve ministers and almost 600 business leaders. The chair of APEC’s advisory council, Juan Raffo says that China will soon overcome the US as its largest trading partner.

  Peruvian finance minister, Luis Valdivieso, explained to the Financial Times the important of diversifying its markets. “We are very concerned about the recession that is going on in the US [and] Europe and the slowdown in Japan. So for us, China becomes an important partner,” he said. “The US will remain an important partner because we are also starting to implement a free-trade agreement with them. I think what is important is that we diversify.”

  China now has 300 billion people that are comparable to citizens in the US and that figure is expected to grow. As Juan F. Raffo, the chair of the APEC business advisory board said, “Their 1.3bn citizens, minus the elderly, are sooner or later going to jump the fence and consume at developed-world levels.”

  China’s other investments in Peru include a $2.2 billion investment in the Toromocho copper mine.

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  • November 18, 2008 9:22 PM

• Murdoch: China, India Will Reshape the World

  

  In his native country Australia, media mogul Rupert Murdoch recently delivered a speech about the future of India and China and their importance in remaking the global order. From AP:

  He said China and India are great countries whose people are only recently emerging from long histories of being “incarcerated by communism or caste.” The rise of their economies is creating a new middle class that would be three billion strong within 30 years and that is setting a new benchmark for global competitiveness.

  “The world has never seen this kind of advance before,” Murdoch said. “These are people who have known deprivation. These are people who are intent on developing their skills, improving their lives and showing the world what they can do.”

  Murdoch, whose New York-based conglomerate includes Twentieth Century Fox, Fox News Channel, Dow Jones & Co. as well as newspaper stables in Australia and Britain and the online networking site MySpace, described the global financial crisis as one of many challenges facing Australia.He said China and India are great countries whose people are only recently emerging from long histories of being “incarcerated by communism or caste.” The rise of their economies is creating a new middle class that would be three billion strong within 30 years and that is setting a new benchmark for global competitiveness.

  Read more of CDT’s coverage of Murdoch.

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  • November 2, 2008 9:59 PM

• Crisis Marks Out A New Geopolitical Order

  

  Philip Stephens reports in The Financial Times:

  Owning up to the geopolitical implications will be as painful for the rich nations as paying the domestic price for the profligacy. The erosion of the west’s moral authority that began with the Iraq war has been greatly accelerated. The west’s debtors cannot any longer expect their creditors to listen to their lectures. Here lies the broader lesson. The shift eastwards in global economic power has become a commonplace of political discourse. Almost everyone in the west now speaks with awe of the pace of China’s rise, of India’s emergence as a geopolitical player, of the growing roles in international relations of Brazil and South Africa.

  Yet the rich nations have yet to face up properly to the implications. They can imagine sharing power, but they assume the bargain will be struck on their terms: that the emerging nations will be absorbed – at a pace, mind you, of the west’s choosing – into familiar international forums and institutions.

  When American and European diplomats talk about the rising powers becoming responsible stakeholders in the global system, what they really mean is that China, India and the rest must not be allowed to challenge existing standards and norms.

  This is the frame of mind that sees the Benelux countries still holding a bigger share than China of the votes at the IMF; and the Group of Seven leading industrialised nations presuming this weekend that it remains the right forum to redesign the global financial system.

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  • October 26, 2008 9:01 PM

• Jiang Haiyan: Did the Olympics Bring About the Cancellation of Aid Awarded to China?

  

  In this piece from Caijing Magazine, Jiang Haiyan channels the voice of Vice-Secretary of China Development Research Foundation, Tang Min, to explain what the discontinuation of foreign aid means to China.

  Min says it’s unsurprising that countries such as England and Germany are talking about discontinuing aid to China. Although the discontinuation comes up following the Beijing Olympics and the successful Shenzhou-7 space mission, it is not a reaction to these events themselves, but a logical ramification of China’s sustained economic growth. Min also points out that the amount of foreign aid China receives is miniscule in comparison to the government’s total expenditure.

  Min posits that China has reached a new stage in its development, obviating the need for financial aid. Instead, China needs less tangible aid in the form of cooperation, experience, and good ideas from the international community. This article concludes with Min’s summary, “In total, the positive aspects are greater than the negatives.”

  Min is right; the prestige and pride China gains from financial independence clearly outweigh the strings-attached pittances it receives in aid.

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  • October 17, 2008 5:14 PM

• CDT Bookshelf: Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics: Entrepreneurship and the State

  

  The Cambridge University Press offers a summary of Yasheng Huang’s new book, Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics: Entrepreneurship and the State.
  

  Huang, a Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), argues that China’s exceptional growth is more controlled by the state now than in the 1980s.

  “This book presents a story of two Chinas – an entrepreneurial rural China and a state-controlled urban China. In the 1980s, rural China gained the upper hand, and the result was rapid as well as broad-based growth. In the 1990s, urban China triumphed. In the 1990s, the Chinese state reversed many of its productive rural experiments, with long-lasting damage to the economy and society. A weak financial sector, income disparity, rising illiteracy, productivity slowdowns, and reduced personal income growth are the product of the capitalism with Chinese characteristics of the 1990s and beyond. While GDP grew quickly in both decades, the welfare implications of growth differed substantially. The book uses the emerging Indian miracle to debunk the widespread notion that democracy is automatically anti-growth. The single biggest obstacle to sustainable growth and financial stability in China today is its poor political governance. As the country marks its 30th anniversary of reforms in 2008, China faces some of its toughest economic challenges and substantial vulnerabilities that require fundamental institutional reforms.”

  The Economist also writes a longer summary of the Yasheng’s main arguments, stating:

  “Original research on China is rare, largely because statistics, though plentiful, are notoriously unreliable. Mr Huang has gone far beyond the superficial data on gross domestic product (GDP) and foreign direct investment that satisfy most researchers. Instead, he has unearthed thousands of long-forgotten pages of memoranda and policy documents issued by bank chairmen, businessmen and state officials. In the process he has discovered two Chinas: one, from not so long ago, vibrant, entrepreneurial and rural; the other, today’s China, urban and controlled by the state.”

  William Kirby, a Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, writes the following review published online in the Cambridge University Press:

  “Yasheng Huang is an insightful scholar of China’s political economy. In this important book, he shows how China’s rural economy took off in the 1980s, led by ‘township and village enterprises’ that were essentially private, only to be ignored in the 1990s by state-led development that focused on urban regions such as Shanghai. The ‘Shanghai miracle,’ he argues – and as any businessman who has worked there knows – was not the simple triumph of capitalism, but of a stronger and more intrusive (and effective) state. If one wants to understand the policy origins of China’s growing divide between rich and poor, urban and rural, one need look no further than this book.”

  An 10 page excerpt from the book can be found at Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics.

  

  Book Cover

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  • October 9, 2008 5:32 PM

• 2008 Lowy Poll: Australians Wary Over China’s Rise

  

  The Interpreter, a weblog of the Lowy Institute for International Policy, reports that a recent 2008 Lowy Poll received mixed reviews on how Australians interpret China’s growth.

  The study found that 52 percent of Australians felt relations with China were improving, and 62 percent indicated that China’s growth has benefited Australians. Another 86 percent said they thought China would become the dominant power in Asia; however, 59 percent said they were “either somewhat uncomfortable or very uncomfortable about this.”

  A similar question, asked in the Asia Soft Power Survey 2008, conducted by the Chicago Council of Global Affairs found that the United States, Japan and South Korea also felt “somewhat or very uncomfortable with the idea of China one day becoming the leader in Asia” with 71 percent, 89 percent, and 77 percent reporting respectively.

  The survey also found that trust in China decreased from 60 percent in 2006 to 47 percent in 2008.

  

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  • September 30, 2008 11:02 PM

• Niall Ferguson: The End of ‘Chimerica’

  

  Niall Ferguson writes in the Stand Point Magazine:

  Shortly before the anniversary of the great Western credit crunch, I paid a visit to its antithesis: the great Eastern savings splurge. Nowhere better embodies the breakneck economic expansion of China than the city of Chongqing. Far up the River Yangtze, it is the fastest growing city in the world today. I had seen some spectacular feats of construction in previous visits to China, but this put even Shanghai and Shenzhen into the shade. There was something truly awe-inspiring about the countless tower blocks under construction, the innumerable cranes perched on the city’s hills, the gleaming new highways, the brand-new enterprise zones, the ubiquitous smog. I felt I was witnessing an industrial revolution several orders of magnitude larger than the Industrial Revolution that once filled the cities of the West – of the British Isles and North America – with similar noxious fumes.

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  • September 21, 2008 8:59 AM

• China’s New Clout

  

  Geoffrey York of the Globe and Mail writes about China’s growing influence in his blog, “The Middle Kingdom”:

  …[China] is not just an economic superpower. It is also rapidly becoming a diplomatic superpower, wielding its power around the world in quiet but important ways. We need to watch China and understand China because the Chinese government is fast gaining influence over the direction of the world community.

  One of the best examples is China’s influence at the United Nations. Not long ago, China preferred to stay in the background at the UN, keeping a low profile and trying to avoid conflicts. Today this has changed dramatically. China is one of the most powerful countries in the UN decision-making process.

  The latest evidence comes from a new study by the European Council on Foreign Relations, released this week.

  On crucial issues such as Myanmar, Darfur and Zimbabwe, the report finds that Chinese diplomats at the UN are becoming more powerful and winning more support from many other countries.

  Read also related commentary on the EU’s waning influence from Richard Gowan and Franziska Brantner, “Europe Needs a New Human Rights Strategy” at the Financial Times. For more information on the study of European influence at the UN by the European Council on Foreign Relations, read Ian Traynor’s article “Haemorrhaging of Western Influence at UN Wrecks Attempts to Push Human Rights Agenda” from The Guardian:

  The west’s efforts to use the United Nations to promote its values and shape the global agenda are failing, according to a detailed study published yesterday.

  A sea change in the balance of power in favour of China, India, Russia and other emerging states is wrecking European and US efforts to entrench human rights, liberties and multilateralism. Western policies in crisis regions as diverse as Georgia, Zimbabwe, Burma or the Balkans are suffering serial defeats in what the study identifies as a protracted trend.

  For a different perspective of China’s influence on the global stage, see ABC News Australia, Gemma Howell’s interview with Simon Winchester, “Embrace Rise of China, Winchester Urges West.”

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  • September 19, 2008 11:44 AM

• After the Games, China Looks High-Tech

  

  A recent post in China Journal reports on findings by the Nielsen company. The data, collected through an online survey, reflect changing impressions of China.

  According to an online survey conducted by the Nielsen Co. of viewers in 16 countries after the closing ceremony, seven in ten said Beijing appeared more modern and high-tech than they had expected. Technology was one of the self-proclaimed pillars of Beijing’s Games, and organizers put it on display during the opening ceremony, which featured a giant digital scroll.

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  • September 5, 2008 2:55 PM

• Tony Blair: We Can Help China Embrace the Future

  

  Mr. Blair, former prime minister of Great Britain, is teaching a course on faith and globalization at the Yale Schools of Management and Divinity. From The Wall Street Journal:

  Power and influence is shifting to the East. In time will come India, too. Some see all this as a threat. I see it as an enormous opportunity. But we have to exercise a lot of imagination and eliminate any vestiges of historic arrogance.

  The volunteer force that staged the Games was interested, friendly and helpful. The whole feel of the city was a world away from the China I remember on my first visit 20 years ago. And the people are proud, really and honestly proud, of their country and its progress.

  No sensible Chinese person — including the country’s leadership — doubts there remain issues of human rights and political and religious freedom to be resolved. But neither do the sensible people — including the most Western-orientated Chinese — doubt the huge change, for the better, there has been. China is on a journey. It is moving forward quickly. But it knows perfectly well the journey is not complete. Observers should illuminate the distance to go, by all means, but recognize the distance traveled..

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  • August 28, 2008 7:14 PM

• A Biblical Seven Years

  

  New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman writes:

  As I sat in my seat at the Bird’s Nest, watching thousands of Chinese dancers, drummers, singers and acrobats on stilts perform their magic at the closing ceremony, I couldn’t help but reflect on how China and America have spent the last seven years: China has been preparing for the Olympics; we’ve been preparing for Al Qaeda. They’ve been building better stadiums, subways, airports, roads and parks. And we’ve been building better metal detectors, armored Humvees and pilotless drones.

  The difference is starting to show. Just compare arriving at La Guardia’s dumpy terminal in New York City and driving through the crumbling infrastructure into Manhattan with arriving at Shanghai’s sleek airport and taking the 220-mile-per-hour magnetic levitation train, which uses electromagnetic propulsion instead of steel wheels and tracks, to get to town in a blink.

  Then ask yourself: Who is living in the third world country?

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  • August 27, 2008 11:50 AM

• Video: “What Does China Think?” - Mark Leonard

  

  From UC Berkeley’s “Conversations With History”:

  Mark Leonard, Executive Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations

  Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Mark Leonard, Executive Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, for a discussion of the ideas that are influencing the domestic and foreign policy debates in China. Through a careful examination of what Chinese intellectuals have to say on topics such as democracy, economy, and international relations, Leonard finds distinctive Chinese worldviews. The West must understand the contours of these debates to effectively address China’s rise because they offer important insights into how China will use its enormous power to shape world order in the twenty-first century.

  Show on map

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  • August 23, 2008 10:13 PM

• The Chinese Dream Has Replaced America’s

  

  Martin Fletcher writes in the Times:

  In the magnificent new stadiums of their capital, in front of their fanatical compatriots, China’s Olympians have walloped their American counterparts this past fortnight, capturing 16 more gold medals and ending the global supremacy that US athletes have enjoyed since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

  It is an outcome that will only deepen the United States’ present funk, with pundits sure to compare China’s inexorable rise with America’s decline, asking when the lines will cross.

  The answer is not for a long time - if ever. By almost any measure the US remains in a different league. Its gross domestic product was $13.8trillion last year, dwarfing China’s $3.2 trillion. GDP per capita was $46,000 to China’s $5,300. Of the world’s 30 largest companies, 11 are American and 3 Chinese, according to Fortune magazine.

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  • August 22, 2008 9:34 PM

• Vishakha N. Desai: China’s Dilemma: Balancing the Individual and the Collectivity

  

  Vishakha N. Desai, president of the Asia Society, writes in Lebanon’s Daily Star (via Project Syndicate):

  On August 8, 2008, the world watched with awe the amazing spectacle of the Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing. We saw the electronic unrolling of Chinese scrolls replete with great historic symbols and were mesmerized by dancers creating “harmony,” using their bodies as ink brushes; 2008 martial arts students performed millennia-old moves with mechanical precision, while the flying celestials and the galloping torchbearer created a sense of heavenly abode on earth.

  There was another time when China dazzled the world at its doorstep: the Tang dynasty (618-907), often thought of as China’s golden age, when it was truly the “middle kingdom” at the center of the universe. Its capital, Chang An (modern day Xian) was a world-class city; visitors came from all over the world and were dazzled by its wealth, beauty, and power. Its emperors used silver from Persia, glass from Europe, precious stones from Central Asia, and gold implements from India. Open, confident, and cosmopolitan, China connected with the world with ease, adopting new ideas, and projecting its own indigenous creations. It’s no wonder that Chinese scholars sometimes refer to today’s China era as the new Tang Dynasty.

  Indeed, when China was awarded the Olympic Games in 2001, the country’s official news agency, Xinhua called it a “milestone in China’s rising international status and a historical event in the great renaissance of the Chinese nation.” For seven years, Chinese officials and artists worked tirelessly to make this dream of a “renaissance” a glittering reality, and they exceeded all expectations. But how should we understand the broader implications of the opening ceremony, both for China and the outside world?

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  • August 22, 2008 5:38 PM