Page 2 of
2 A century with Chinese
characteristics By David Gosset
mankind if liberty were to exist
all over the world under the same forms."
Some external forms of the translation
process can be a surprising accumulation of
heterogeneous pieces. Look at a Sichuan-cuisine
restaurant with Rococo furniture or at a Shanghai
middle-class home where reproductions of European
impressionists co-exist on the same wall with Chinese
calligraphy. The sociologist
observing China's megasociety can interpret these
unusual combinations as parts of a gigantic
assimilation. One can also enjoy completed
translations where the "original" fits perfectly
into the evolving Chinese context; it is often the
case in architecture, in urbanism or in design.
The resilience of Chinese culture cannot
be separated from China's demographic vitality;
they reinforce each other in what constitutes a
virtuous circle. The very fact that China is the
most populous country in the world is highly
significant.
In the global community,
fundamentally optimistic and life-oriented China
will interact with various Western forms of
nihilism; the culture of life and happiness will
quietly prevail.
China and
globalization China absorbs, translates
and regenerates itself vigorously. In 2005,
Chinese people from Singapore to Beijing
celebrated the 600th anniversary of the navigator
Zheng He's (1371-1433) first voyage. These
celebrations of the Ming Dynasty explorer, Asia's
Christopher Columbus, were also indicative of
China's current mindset: Chinese people can also
be extrovert and do not intend to witness
passively, beyond the Great Wall, the
reconfiguration of the world.
Forty one
years after the beginning of the Cultural
Revolution nightmare, 29 years after Deng
Xiaoping's decision to reform and to open the
People's Republic, Chinese people are embarking on
their "age of discovery".
In 2004,
Parisians looked at a red Eiffel Tower in honor of
Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit, which
coincided with the "Year of China in France". The
event "China in London 2006" was the largest
celebration of Chinese culture ever seen in the
British capital. In 2007, Russia welcomed its
"Year of China". French journalist Erik
Izraelewicz wrote a book whose title is When
China Changes the World (Quand la Chine
change le monde, 2005). China is succeeding in
having non-Chinese framing the debate in a way
that is advantageous to it.
Already 30
million non-Chinese are learning Mandarin. Beijing
has opened Confucius Institutes (following the
example of the Alliance Francaise, Goethe
Institute or British Council) both to teach
Chinese and to explain Chinese culture throughout
the world. Chinese is already the second language
on the Internet, with more than 100 million
Chinese netizens. The Office of Chinese Language
Council International (OCLCI) estimates that by
2010 100 million foreigners will learn Mandarin.
In the science-fiction series Firefly, the
characters use English and Chinese.
The
Chinese central government also took the
initiative to bring traditional Chinese medicine
to the world. The first center will be in Bonn,
Germany, and it will be followed by many more in
Europe.
A global audience greets Chinese
artists. Movie director Zhang Yimou (but also
Taiwan's Lee Ang or Hong Kong's Wong Kar Wai ),
composer Tan Dun, cellist Yoyo Ma, creator Cai
Guoqiang and Nobel Prize winner Gao Xingjian are
internationally acclaimed for their talent and
creativity. Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi and Maggie Cheung
have penetrated European or American imagination.
Chinese design is enriching fashion. The idea
behind Shanghai Tang, founded by Hong Kong
businessman David Tang Wing-Cheung, is to "create
the first global Chinese lifestyle brand by
revitalizing Chinese designs". Many more will
follow.
Chinese brands such as Lenovo,
TCL, Haier, Huawei and ZTE are largely recognized
worldwide. In the 2004-05 academic year, China
sent more than 115,000 students abroad (62,000 to
the United States). The World Tourism Organization
predicts that by 2020, 100 million Chinese
tourists will travel the world: the global tourism
industry will have to adapt to Chinese
characteristics.
China's direct investment
overseas is rising rapidly. By the end of 2006,
China made $75 billion direct investment in more
than 160 countries. The 2008 Beijing Summer
Olympics and the 2010 Shanghai World Expo will
reinforce this momentum. Almost exactly 100 years
after of the end of the Qing Dynasty (1911), China
will be once again at the center of Asia, and in a
position to challenge US unilateral domination
over a world system in search of equilibrium.
The Chinese world is not only made up of
the 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four
municipalities, two special administrative regions
(Hong Kong and Macau) of the People's Republic of
China, Taiwan and the highly Sinicized Singapore,
but also includes in its largest extension a
Chinese diaspora active worldwide.
This
diaspora - estimated at 50 million people - is not
just about Chinese restaurants (although food and
cooking are key elements of culture) or Chinatowns
(perfect examples of Chinese cultural resilience
far away from the Yellow River or the Yangtze);
the notion of Chinese diaspora indicates that
China is not only a political entity related to a
territory but, above all, a cultural expression
already having global reach. Those who know
Mandarin and, more importantly, written Chinese,
those who can play by the codes of the Chinese
culture, have, in fact, access to a network whose
main hubs are in the Mainland and at its periphery
but which is certainly not limited by traditional
borders. The "sinosphere" is not only a
transnational domain ideally structured to benefit
from "a flat world" but also an accelerator of
globalization.
Co-architect of the
21st-century new world order? For the West,
adjustment to China's renaissance requires modesty
and intellectual curiosity. Are Westerners ready
to learn from the Chinese civilization as Chinese
people are ready to learn from the West? This is
the precondition of a genuinely cooperative
relationship. Seriously engaging China is to
accept the very possibility of Sinicization.
The West, in a position of scientific and
economic superiority since the industrial
revolution, is used to treating China as a product
of orientalism. For the majority of Westerners,
China is either a museum - hence the surprise of
many foreigners in China: "I was expecting
something else!" - or a classroom: one has to
lecture Chinese people on more advanced standards.
The West has to reflect on these prejudices and to
look at China as a living matrix of a civilization
that is already reshaping our time.
If
China proves to be an integrating factor in a
world plagued by morally unacceptable, exclusive
globalization, if China proves to be a laboratory
where cultures can cross-fertilize in a world
threatened by tensions between civilizations, one
should rejoice to find a co-architect of the
21st-century new world order and to live at the
very beginning of the ershi yi shiji.
David Gosset is director of the
Academia Sinica Europaea, China Europe
International Business School, Shanghai, and
founder of the Euro-China Forum.
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