The Spark of China's Future

[Liang Jieming]

The Spark of China's Future

- Opportunity or Threat?

For the first time in the last 200 years, a Chinese child can again

aspire to achieve his or her dreams. Even the sky is no longer the

limit in the China of tomorrow.

The economic revival and technological progress of modern China

is poise to overtake many of the traditional powerhouses which

have, over the last couple of centuries, dominated and led the

world in progress and living standards.

It is an exciting time to be a Chinese in China. With a rapidly

improving standard of living and a broad country-wide vision to be

on par with the technologically advanced "developed" countries of

the First World, the Chinese are now living in an era when

anything and everything is possible.

With 1/5 the population of the world, the resources of the third

largest country in the world, coupled with the traditional hardiness,

willingness and inventive drive of the Chinese people to succeed,

the world is poised to see a gradual shift in economic and social

power towards the Chinese sphere of influence. The economies

of East Asia, Southeast Asia and that of Australasia are doomed

to play a secondary support role, squeezed not only by the

Chinese behemoth but also by that of the expanding Indian

economy to the west. They will see a slow but sure erosion of

their previous world positions as global or top regional centres,

displaced by the increasingly dynamic cities and markets of the

Middle Kingdom.

Because of the potential that is China today, the children of China

will see opportunities open before them. The future is wide open.

They are the Engineers, the Doctors, the Scientists, the Artists,

the Entreprenuers and the Explorers of the future. With the

vastness of the country, the strength of the population, and the

depth of their culture, they are unbounded by the traditional limits

of other countries, like for example the limited land resource of

the Japanese, the constant lack of manpower of brain-drained

Canada or the lack of cultural cohesion of many of the countries

in today's world still firmly in the grips of racial, cultural and

religious strife. With the opening of space to Chinese manned

flights in 2003, a mere 43 years since Yuri A. Gagarin of the

USSR first launched into space, they can now look skyward and

even aspire to reach the stars.

There is much still to be developed. Much of the current economic

growth that we are now beginning to see in China mirrors that of the

early United States. Like the wild west of old North America, much

of China and its surrounding regions are still untapped. This drive

to open the western and northern frontiers within and without China

proper, will spur a long period of almost constant and continous

growth. Chinese companies, like their American counterparts a

century ago, will begin to globalize, anchored by a strong and

vibrant domestic market, to venture forth and offer their goods and

their services to the world. In return, the increasing affluence of

the Chinese economy will see a growing hunger for imports of both

raw materials as well as domestic goods, driving a new global

economic boom, not unlike the Japanese economic dominance of

Asia in the second half of the 20th century or the current American

cultural and economic dominance of today's world.

The increasing wealth of the general population of China will also

see an outward pressure flow of migrants in search of newer and

brighter opportunities, a new Chinese diaspora not of poor illiterate

labourers struggling to feed their families, but one of the highly

educated and relatively well to do middle class. They will seek

out the frontiers in search of better lives and better opportunities

for trade, not unlike the British, Portuguese, German, Dutch,

Spanish, French and the later day American pioneers of previous

centuries.

Much of this however, would lead to strained relationships. This

outflow would result in a slow increase in the Chinese populations

in the host countries surrounding China, northward into Siberian

Russia, westward into the Central Asian republics, southward into

the small countries of Southeast Asia as well as into the vast

empty spaces of Australia. Coupled to this gradual increase in

numbers will come a growing political strength as well as an

increased cultural sinification of local populations. This influx can

already be seen happening in Singapore, a country culturally akin

to China with its large Chinese majority, and hence a very logical

first step in any outward movement.

As China begins to flex it's new found economic and political

muscles. Its direct consequences will be opposed and resisted

where cultural heritage and identities as well as current political

demographics come under threat. Many governments already

recognise this growing threat and understand that its manifestation

is something they will eventually have to face, an inevitable result

of the simple fact that China's multitudes can no longer be

bounded.

Just like in today's pervasive "Americanization" eminating from

Hollywood and from consumer products like Coca-cola, Microsoft,

Macdonalds, Levi's Jeans and other such projections of American

culture, whether a similar "Sinification" of world culture will be

violently opposed or subconsciously accepted is an issue that no

one can yet answer. The problem is one of engagement and the

need for accomodation. China's new found strength, not of

military force but of economic and political clout, will cause a

slow but subtle change in perception of what we know of and how

we now see China and the Chinese.

Backed by a strong sense of identity and culture, the Chinese of

today know that nothing is beyond their reach so long as they are

willing to work hard in pursuit of their dreams. Maybe one day a

new term, "The Chinese Dream", will be coined, much in the same

light as "The American Dream", where anyone and everyone can

be what they want to be, riding on the promise that is China.

How this vision is translated to the rest of the world however, is

less clear. But what is clear is that many less endowed countries

surrounding China can only wait and watch, half in awe and half in

trepidation as their economies and their global positions of today,

are gradually eroded and slowly subsumed by the colossus that is

China. Their children will look towards China, and feeling that little

bit of envy for the Chinese of China who can now see the glowing

brightness of the spark that has been lit, the unbounded

possibilities that is China.

Jieming

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DragonSeedLegacy

[liuzhou]

What is this?

This reads like a particularly over the top editorial in People's Daily. Naive, simplistic and clichéd.

Not one mention of the many great problems China has to overcome. The intrangency of the Party system still strangling the country, the blatant corruption at every level, the growing civil unrest as state owned industries close down leaving milions unemployed or remain open but don't pay their workers, the masses of itinerant workers being ripped off by employers who don't pay them, the peasants compulsorily stripped of and uncompensated for their land to build more and more unneeded 'industrial zones', the great and growing threat of Aids and other diseases, the unresolved issues with border minorities, the great and growing disparity between rich and poor...

While China obviously will play a stronger role in world affairs in the future, this sort of rosy nonsense is of no help to anyone.

[roddy]

I'll do the first paragraph. At least it's short one.

For the first time in the last 200 years, a Chinese child can again

aspire to achieve his or her dreams. Even the sky is no longer the

limit in the China of tomorrow.

Aspire, yes. That's easy. Achieving is actually going to depend on decent health care and nutrition (how much of rural China is covered by accessible health care? Baby milk, anyone?), education (literacy rates? access to quality higher education?), job opportunities, social stability and equality - a whole load of things I wouldn't want to promise to any random child born in China today, or indeed at any point in the next dozen years.

I don't believe things in China are as bad as they are often painted, and they are improving. However, writing like this makes me assume the author has either never been near China, or at best taken a very pleasant guided tour of the centres of Beijing and Shanghai. Even the People's Daily has a better grip on reality.

Next . . . ?

Roddy

[Liang Jieming]

Naturally there are problems and road bumps along the way. What goes without saying is that this can only happen provided they don't screw things up along the way. But what has happened is that the first tentative steps have been taken in the right direction. Which country has been trouble free in it's development stage? But dream they must. Aspire and set their sights on a loftier target then mere survival they must. Every great journey begins with a single step. Too many people cannot see beyond the day to day to realise that one must never lose sight of the destination, even while they are taking each careful step. You can knock me all you like but simplistic or not, what the Chinese of China now have is hope, hope for the future and a better place for their children.

Liang Jieming

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DragonSeedLegacy

[Pantalimon]

Its not going to be as one way traffic as your post seems to hint at. China will have to open up to expand and thats a two way process.

[Ian_Lee]

For the first time in the last 200 years, a Chinese child can again

aspire to achieve his or her dreams.

I guess a male Chinese child should also worry if he is able to find a spouse besides achieving his dream.

And for a female Chinese child, she should thank God first that she was not aborted in the fetus stage.