Sunday 14 February 2010


THE YEAR OF THE TIGER: THE CHINESE CENTURY
Today, China celebrates its New Year. But how much do we really know about the economic powerhouse in the east - and what lies in store for the rest of the world? Rupert Cornwell, Clifford Coonan, Hamish McRae and Greg Walton hunt down the answers

Rupert Cornwell, Clifford Coonan, Hamish McRae and Greg Walton

The Independent, February 14, 2010

The pace and extent of China's ascent among nations has been remarkable. Barely 20 years ago, it went virtually unnoticed. Today it is an economic superpower - if not (at least yet) a cultural and military one.

By every measure it is a rising power. It is now the world's second- biggest economy behind the United States, and some experts predict it will overtake the US within two decades. It has overtaken Germany to become the world's largest exporter. It holds the largest foreign-currency reserves on earth, more than $2 trillion (£1.3 trillion). Barring a collision between China's authoritarian politics and its economic liberalisation - the paradox of "Confucian capitalism" - this momentum will surely continue.

Despite its progress, China certainly has great potential weaknesses: a poor rural population and ethnic tensions, to name but two. It is also the world's greatest polluter. But its public infrastructure programme dwarfs anything in the West. In that sense especially, its centralised and authoritarian system is a source of strength, enabling decisions to be taken and vital projects to be launched without the delays that often hold up such investment elsewhere.

The West's economic travails have, if anything, made China yet more confident and assertive, and more dismissive of criticism from abroad - be it of its human rights record or its manipulation of the yuan's exchange rate. The fact is that money, not gunboats, gives huge muscle to a diplomacy whose goals are mercantilist rather than ideological. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, it seemed a foregone conclusion that the 21st, like the 20th, would be an "American Century". Now, for the first time in almost a millennium, a Chinese century is on the cards.

(...) [artículo aquí]

No comments: