China's own know they're not pros yet

ARTICLE: China grapples with new world role, By Eric Baculinao, NBC News, March 31, 2009

Unhappy China? Join the club.

Don't need to, because Beijing academic answers the mail brilliantly at bottom of article:

China 'not ready to lead'

But one critic of the book, Hu Xingdou, an economics professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology, called its publication a sign of the "ideological chaos" in China.

"Extreme nationalism is not the answer, and China is not ready to lead," declared Hu, while acknowledging the authors' right to express their opinion.

"As for Chimerica, China cannot possibly exercise leadership shoulder to shoulder with the United States simply because China is not qualified," he said, arguing that China's "soft power" is far from adequate.

"China's value systems - its ideological, political and cultural systems - are not yet part of the global mainstream," he explained.

Hu dismissed China's prosperity as deceptive. "Essentially, we remain as the peasant laborer of the world, relying on cheap labor and cheap products."

He likened the current situation to the 1930's Great Depression when Stalin's Soviet Union seemed to have the upper hand over the ailing Western economies. "I hope China will learn the lesson and not take the road taken by Stalin," he said.

"Only by undertaking political reform and democracy can China qualify to lead the world, and also avert domestic crisis and insure long-term prosperity," he said.

(Thanks: Jeff Jennings)

Comments

[Ping]

"China's value systems - its ideological, political and cultural systems - are not yet part of the global mainstream," he explained....

So true!!

One more important fact: Chinese education system is generating a bunch of very knowledgeable scientist, engineers, and scholar, but not many creative thinkers, inventers. The hard truth to swallow is that Chinese become good followers, not good leaders.

I am not sure if we can draw same conclusion about Japanese. Would you like to comment on it, Tom?

[Tom Barnett]

I think history has made that judgment on Japan in spades, and to me, it's the unwritten bit on China right now.

If China as a society wants to break past that limitation, it won't be the PRC anymore.

Life's a bitch, that way: growth demands costly evolutions. The older generations in China don't get this. But when I brief top grad students in Beijing, like I will at the end of this month, I find they do.