DTN News: Illusion Of “21st Century, The Century Of China”

DTN News: Illusion Of “21st Century, The Century Of China” Source: DTN News / Global Times By Zhao Fasheng (NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - March 21, 2010: A louder and louder message has been heard recently, one that claims China will dominate the 21st century. As a Chinese citizen, I really hope the “superpower dream” will come true. But, the reasons presented by the message makers make me feel ill at ease. I remember the message was originally put forward by a scholar who claimed to be a master of Chinese classics. (It's funny that while we are living in a time with no Chinese classics, more masters of it keep showing up.) I read this master's article carefully, hoping to find sound reasons. The master told us that because the past century was the one of Western culture, the 21st century will naturally be China's, because Chinese culture is superior to Western culture. He didn't make it clear how Chinese culture is superior, and I am reluctant to agree with this point. The 21st century needs scientific facts, so it's dangerous to put the future of our country in the hands of a fengshui theory that means “fortune knocks at least once at every man's gate.” In modern Chinese history, the debate about which culture is superior, Western or Chinese, has become a cliché. The invincible Western firepower in the Opium War and the subsequent tragedy that put China in ruins best illustrated this debate. China does have the potential in the future to generate culture that is richer than Western culture, but only after Chinese culture completely digests the essence of the values of Western culture. When we were young, we heard so many times the grandiloquence that we would eventually emancipate the people of capitalistic countries that we even forgot we were starving and determined to fulfill the honorable duty. Not until we opened the door in the 1980s did we find that we were the ones who really needed rescuing. Someone raised an interesting question – what's right with Deng Xiaoping? My answer is that he brought Chinese people's spirit back to normal from the ideological paranoia that the Chinese would emancipate mankind. We finally began another surge of learning from the West since the late 19th century. This is an emancipation of the mind. Bo Yang, a famous Chinese writer, made an important observation that the US and Japan never claimed their dominance in the next century. After the global financial crisis began, the view that China would save the world economy continually appeared in local newspapers. China's GDP accounts for only 6 percent of the world's total, and the per-capita GDP ranks far behind the 100th. How can a country like that save the world? We also have problems in social administration, official management and moral beliefs. China was less affected by the recession because our capital market was not developed enough. The odd thing is that Uncle Sam seems to agree with the opinion of that Chinese classics scholar. For months, people in the West talked about the precautions that the era of the US will end. Actually this is the secret strategy for the US to maintain its superpower status. As long as the alarm that the US is declining keeps ringing in its people's heads, the US will maintain its No. 1 position. So an important task for the US intellectuals is to find the most likely candidate to replace the US and generously crown it with the “next century” award. When high-quality and low-priced Japanese products flooded the US in the 1980s and the GDP of Japan jumped to the world's second place, the US asserted that Japan would be the world's No. 1 and the next century would be Japan's. Japanese people, however, were not so gullible to accept this award. They manifested their awareness of their national crisis by shooting a movie Submersion of Japan. In recent years, the voice of ultra-nationalism gradually grows louder in the Chinese mainland and the message “China will be the world's No. 1” shocks the world. Yet Japan remains serene. Its serenity reminds us of the warning from Lao Tse: “Gravity is the foundation of levity. Serenity masters hastiness.” Who will dominate the 21st century? Maybe only God knows the answer. But one thing is for sure: the 21st century could belong to anyone – except those who are too arrogant to remember a short time ago they have barely survived. The author is a scholar with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. This article was translated by Ren Yaling

*This article is being posted from Toronto, Canada By DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News, contact: dtnnews@ymail.com

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