China: Save the world?

Hardly ten years ago, we wrote a series of eight columns titled History’s magic moment: Shift from West to Asia. And we emphasized the shift would bring up China as the world’s eventual economic superpower in the 21st century to emulate Britain’s ascendancy in the 19th century, the United States in the 20th century. Our first paragraph read thusly: "Suddenly, Asia. Suddenly, China. Suddenly, a universe turning on its axis. Suddenly a magic moment of history revolving from West to East like a golden bowl emptying its contents…And almost suddenly, 400 years of Western ascendancy over the so-called civilized world coming to an end."

A smattering of my readers believed me. Many more felt I was guilty of hyperbole, of gilding the lily. Some thought I was reading history upside down. Well, truth to tell, I had researched on the subject massively. For months, I piled books on top of the other. In my readings, the historian took the floor, then the economist, then the social scientist, publicists of every category, learned and prominent journalist, scientists, social anthropologists, culture savants led by the inimitable Max Weber who had a tremendous influence on my thinking.

There were learned men who sharply dissented.

They figured China would eventually crack up, that Deng Xiaoping had bitten from the Oriental apple more than he could chew. Chaos and anarchy would return. China would always be China, a smouldering tohubohu of warring and splintered dynasties, the beautiful but broken Ming vase – a symbol of China’s fractured history. After Deng, they said, the maelstrom would follow and there would be a tremendous struggle for power. And blood would splatter again over the massive continent, too widespread to unite, too enormous a population to guide through the narrow and treacherous bridges of political, economic and social progress.

Well?

The cover of the latest issue of Newsweek had this umbrella headline: Will China save the world? I started, as though hit by a thunderbolt. China save the world? Immediately, I thought of the eight-column series I wrote almost a decade ago. Reading through the Newsweek article, I felt vindicated. At the time I wrote, China hadn’t yet shown the sinews it is displaying today, a China fast burgeoning into the world’s skylines as its universal factory. Partly in awe, partly in fear, the American economic guru Peter Drucker exclaimed: "Economically, Genghis Khan has arrived!"

Speed, that was it. Newsweek wrote:

"China now moves so fast that outside perceptions of it tend to lag increasingly far behind. Since the crash of 2000, economists have been agonizing over the rare simultaneous slump in the ‘three engines’ of the world economy – Germany, Japan and the United States – and asking where the demand that drives growth will come from. Until recently, no one had ever seen China as an engine for an answer – even though it has continued to boom through recent shocks, is already by some key measures the world’s second largest economy."

What Newsweek probably overlooked was that the Chinese leadership from 1979 on ignored everything else. They ignored military rearmament, ignored the breastworks of national security, ignored hostile nations like the Soviet Union threatening a "surgical strike", to concentrate on nothing else but the economy. They also ignored stacatto US threats, particularly a theatre nuclear shield in Taiwan to dilute China’s missilery and destroy it enroute to Taiwan during a expected outbreak of war.

The Chinese people were driven almost ferociously to work, work, work – produce, produce, produce. That was China’s embedded wisdom – and resurgent dream. It had to be great again, worthy of the world’s respect again. And the only way this could be achieved was through an economic program that could soar to the heights in 30 years – what it took the US and West 200 to 250 years to achieve.

The Soviet Union on the other hand blundered. It concentrated on military technology, ignored the economy. Moscow poured billions into the manufacture of nuclear weapons and an ultra-modern blue-water navy replete with nuclear submarines. Result: Indeed the USSR became a military superpower holding America to a stalemate. In the end, however, the economy collapsed. And in its wake the once impregnable Berlin Wall crumbled into oblivion.

But back to Newsweek:

"In Purchasing Power Parity terms, China accounts for about 10 percent of the world GDP, which puts it behind the United States in No. 2 spot. Using PPP analysis and projected growth of 6 to 9 percent for the next two decades, Lehman (Brothers) figures that the People’s Republic already contributes more to global growth than Japan and could surpass Europe as early as 2008…" Lehman Brothers is one of the most prestigious American firms specializing on economic and financial matters.

Earlier, Lehman Brothers analysts had already concluded that "China is already emerging as an important growth pole, not just for the Asia region, but also for the world." Newsweek rushes in to state "China last year surpassed Japan and will soon pass the United States as the region’s top customer, driven by a growing middle class that numbers more than 200 million…Its share of the world economy is growing fast because the other engines are sputtering. China became the largest consumer of mobile phones in 2001 and the second largest buyer of personal computers by the end of 2003."

Everything about China today is mind-boggling.

Newsweek concludes: "When Beijing lets the renmimbi float freely – and the issue is when, not if – it is expected to rise by perhaps 50 percent against the dollar, giving a huge boost to the import-buying power of 1.3 billion Chinese. No, China is still not widely recognized as an economic engine, but it could prove to be the fourth engine that saved the world." This takes your breath away. Coolie China has not yet fallen from the lips of memory.

All this could be derided as media imagination going berserk if written by Beijing propagandists or even long-time sympathizers of China. But it so happens Newsweek is no fellow-traveler. In the past, many Newsweek articles on China were even acerbic, hypodermic needles shot through with dark fluids. Time magazine, founded by Henry Luce, was even more biased and critical.

And so was this columnist, who during his student days in Paris in the 60s, often came upon the expression "le peril jaune" (the yellow peril). The ant horde of history was always a symbol of China. And the picture drawn even among some academic circles was that, because of increasing hunger, the Chinese ant horde would overflow their borders by the tens of millions, to devour the rice of neighboring countries. That was the only way they could survive. Frequent famines in the long and recent past killed village heaps of starving Chinese.

This abysmal ignorance of China , which I shared at the time, was what drove me at a late age to study China, its history, its peoples, its society, its culture. I bought heaps of books to catch up. My conscience bothered me. My education was strictly American and Western. I was weaned as a schoolkid on George Washington and his cherry tree, on Honest Abe, on Uncle Tom’s Cabin, on American Christmas carols and nursery rhymes. And, would you believe, I adored Shirley Temple and after her Deanna Durbin. And, of course, Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland,

Ten years ago. Eight columns. It only seemed like yesterday.

I ended the series this wise:

"The time will come when the US Seventh Fleet in the Pacific will lift anchor and head back home. Our Mutual Defense Treaty with Washington will go up in smoke. Then we shall really be all alone. We are Asia’s only nation that sprang from the womb of Catholic Spain, that was swept into the current of an America that groped for an imperial hold in Asia and preached democracy.

"It is an Asia that beckons, a huge continent whose collective voice, dynamism and labor are destined to sound all over the universes in the 21st century like a cultural foghorn in full cry. It is an Asia that we must join because we have no choice, and no other direction or destiny. Gone will be our 450-year rendezvous with the West, yes gone with the wind that will transport most of the jewels of 21st century civilization to the Orient. It is a journey we have never undertaken as a nation since the 16th century when we emerged as the Philippine Islands. And this we must prepare for like a traveler saddling his mount for a long, difficult but dazzling journey.

"It is a journey back to our roots in Asia."