CHINA’S Great Wall is dazzling enough. Consider the vastness of its land and the number of its people and China is simply stunning.
Include China’s transformation in the past 20 years and the country emerges as a living wonder.
"It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white; what matters is how well it catches mice," Deng Xiaoping declared in 1978 when he emerged as the paramount leader. It was a brief pronouncement which set off drastic changes that lifted 300 million Chinese out of poverty and quadrupled the average per capita income. This massive growth is evident in Shanghai and other coastal cities where farmlands and shacks are now 10-lane expressways and bustling business centers.
This muscular growth will boost military might, political clout and cultural influence. As such, China will undoubtedly become a superpower and dominate regional economies in the next twenty years.
What happens in such a scenario? Can China sustain the world’s fastest economic growth of around 9 percent a year in the past two decades? Will it continue as the world’s largest producer of coal, steel and cement, the second largest consumer of energy and third largest importer of oil?
There are 1.3 billion Chinese and the challenge of educating, feeding, clothing, and sheltering them is staggering as steering its economic development. While many Chinese can indulge in a vacation in New York or Paris (a sign of surplus money), several millions of their countrymen, notably in western China, still wallow in poverty. Pursuing development while keeping a lid on the politics of its millions of people remains one of China’s daunting problems.
Some of the world’s best corporate and political minds gathered in Beijing, early this week to examine these questions. I was present in the Fortune Global Forum and shared the other participants’ awe and optimism about China.
Chinese presence in our country and the region is growing each day. The local market is already swamped with Chinese products. Filipinos were banned from traveling to China not too long ago. Today, our national airline maintains regular flights to Shanghai and Xiamen. Chinese culture is invading our living rooms with six mainland channels on cable TV.
Against this backdrop, how should the Philippines regard China? Email: edgardo_angara@hotmail.com
