Letter to FEER: China:decline or not high enough yet?

Letter to FEER: China:decline or not high enough yet?

今天读远东经济评论(2005.9), 有一篇文章标题是:2005:The Year that China Declined?。作者是远东经济评论以前的游击编辑Bruce Gilley。文章很恰当地指出了中国现在在国际上所面临的问题：缺乏价值上的制高点。

如何让中国产品畅销世界可能很难，但是比起如何让中国在价值上占据制高点，市场的问题就不算太难了。

不过，我并不认为Bruce所说的中国开始衰落。因为中国可能根本还没有真正崛起，或者叫复兴更合适。首先，中国现在经济上的繁荣是来平衡的，所以中国在经济上繁荣也还需要很长时间；其次，中国存在太多的社会问题，不满足一个领导性大国（leader great power）所需要的条件。

所以，我给FEER写了个邮件，看看有没有希望登出来。



Decline or not high enough yet?



Dear Editor

The piece by Bruce Gilley is above all the most attractive one, for me, of the September issue, although Jonathan Anderson had a very hot topic about China.

The author uses the concept of software and hardware of power to construct the analysis. This reminds me another concept of softpower, which is first said by Joseph S. Nye. But what Nye want to do with the concept of softpower, as I understand from his book, is to teach United State’s leaders how to maintain a great power’s leadership with softpower, rather than explaining how the rise or fall of great powers will caused by the weakness of softpower.

So I don’t see that there is concrete relevance between software (or softpower) and the growing up of a great power. In the process of the emerging of the United Kingdom and the United States as great powers, others recognize their military and economic power more than softpower. Japan was forced to open its door by US’s gunboat rather by the attractiveness of American’s any softpower. Cheap products are China’s gunboat today.

The real question, as I see, is how far has China gone on its way to great power? Or how far China needs to go on this way?

The shopping of overseas companies, the bid of Unocal, are so different from Japan’s buying of Rockefeller that there is no relevance here. The stuff Chinese companies are now buying is mainly for internal use, fuels to keep its economy going, rather an economic or market invasion like Japanese companies did. Even Lenovo’s buying of IBM’s computer division is more because IBM is happy to throw the departments away.

As there are too many internal problems, which the Author named clearly, China is still in the stage to building internal stabilities, even after 20-year reform and opening, and has not yet reach the time to act as a real great power as the UK and US did before. But the idea of the potential of China as great power has long been recognized by US’s leaders even when China was in its civil war in the early 20 century. The high economic growth rate only reflects part of that potential

So the question facing today’s China leaders then is after achieving economic prosperity, in certain degree, can China achieve political and culture prosperity stably? China’s experts are aware well of this. It’s exactly like what Gilley writes, the only heady optimists these day s are found in the west. If China’s leader, like Hu and its successors, can manage China through the next decades stably, at that time then we will see the potential of China’s great power really released.



Jianfei Zhao

Melbourne, Australia

Unit 2, 26 Emo Rd, Malvern East, Melbourne, Vic, 3145 Australia

0432488691