When China Rules the World (68 page)

In short, China will act as an alternative model to the West, embodying a very different kind of political tradition - a post-colonial, developing country, a Communist regime, a highly sophisticated statecraft, and an authoritarian Confucian rather than democratic polity.

The dominance of the West for the last two centuries has served to couch the debate about values overwhelmingly in terms of those that are civilized, a synonym for Western values, against those that are backward or reactionary, which has meant more or less all others, not least those of the Muslim world. In reality, values and cultures are far more complex and nuanced than this suggests. During the Cold War, the conflict over values was fought in highly ideological terms between capitalism and socialism. In the era of contested modernity, which will shape this century and well beyond, the debate over values will be rooted in culture rather than ideology, since the underlying values of a society are primarily the outcome of distinctive histories and cultures. Although on the surface these values may appear very different, in fact, there are often striking similarities. As John Gray has pointed out, there is nothing uniquely Western about tolerance, for example: ‘The Ottomans practised religious toleration at a time when we did not, as did the medieval Moorish kingdom in Spain and the Buddhist kingdom of Asoka in India. Toleration could thus be described as a universal value. It’s not peculiarly liberal, and it’s not even peculiarly modern.’
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Nonetheless, there is often conflict and tension between the various values that different peoples hold dear. In a world of multiple and often competing values, it will be important to find a way of enabling and allowing such conflicting values to coexist. This will be a precondition, in fact, for a globalized world of contested modernity to live in a relatively peaceful and harmonious way. It will pose the greatest challenge of all to the West because the latter has become accustomed to thinking of its own values as the norm and regarding itself as justified in imposing these on other countries and insisting that they be accepted by the international community.

There are two senses in which China will be a major protagonist in the debate about values. First, China has strongly resisted Western arguments that have sought to impugn its international reputation in terms of human rights, notably its lack of democracy and the relative absence of free speech. China largely succeeded in resisting American efforts in the nineties to condemn it in these terms, mainly because it managed to mobilize the support of many developing countries. In opposition, China and its supporters argued that what should take priority were not political rights in the domestic context but economic and social rights in the international context. The argument was essentially over the differing priorities, interests and experiences of the developed countries on the one hand and the developing countries on the other. By the end of the nineties, that argument began to fade into the background as China’s growing influence began to shift the balance of power and the nature of the debate. Indeed, in the first decade of this century, it was the United States rather than China that found itself on the defensive in the debate over values because of its conduct in Iraq and its behaviour at Guantánamo.

The second sense in which China will be a protagonist is less immediately politically charged but in the longer run rather more important. As we have seen, the Chinese political order has a strong ethical component rooted in the Confucian tradition.
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In Chinese culture a powerful distinction is made between right and wrong, as reflected, for example, in the emphasis placed in children’s education at home and at school on their correct moral behaviour. Confucianism is essentially a set of precepts that prescribe appropriate forms of behaviour and in that sense, though secular rather than spiritual, is not dissimilar from major religious texts like the Bible and the Koran. These Confucian teachings underpinned the conduct of the state and the nature of Chinese statecraft during the dynastic period and are presently experiencing something of a revival. The continuing influence of Confucian culture is reflected in the highly moralistic tone that the Chinese government frequently adopts in its attitudes and pronouncements.
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The profound differences in the values of China (and other Confucian-based societies like Japan and Korea) in contrast to those of Western societies - including a community-based collectivism rather than individualism, a far more family-orientated and family-rooted culture, and much less attachment to the rule of law and the use of law to resolve conflict - will remain pervasive and, with China’s growing influence, acquire a global significance.

One of the consequences of the Chinese being so numerous is that there are twice as many people in the world who speak Mandarin as their first or second language as English, with the great majority of them living in China. With the rise of China, however, growing numbers of people around the world are beginning to acquire Chinese as a second language. Since 2006 this process has been actively promoted by the Chinese government with the establishment of Confucius Institutes in many different countries, often linked to local universities. In 2007 there were 156 such institutes in 55 countries, with the aim of 200 by the end of that year.
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Coming under the auspices of the Ministry of Education, the object of the Confucius Institutes (which are broadly modelled along the lines of the British Council, Alliance Française and the Goethe Institut) is primarily the teaching of the Chinese language, including the training of Chinese teachers, together with the promotion of Chinese culture. It is estimated that 30 million people worldwide are now learning Chinese and that 2,500 universities in 100 countries run Chinese courses. The spread of Mandarin is most striking in East Asia. It is making rapid strides in Hong Kong, where Cantonese is the first language, and amongst overseas Chinese communities in South-East Asia. In South Korea there are 160,000 students studying Mandarin, an increase of 66 per cent within the past five years. In South Korea and Thailand all elementary and middle schools now offer Mandarin, and the Thai government hopes that one-third of high school students will be proficient in Mandarin by 2011.
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One of the biggest obstacles is the paucity of Mandarin teachers, so the Chinese Ministry of Education has begun dispatching groups of language teachers, partially funded by the ministry, for one-and two-year stints in Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia, Kenya, Argentina and many other countries.
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The attraction of Mandarin in East Asia, of course, is obvious: as China becomes the centre of the East Asian economy, the most important market for exports of countries within the region and also their major source of inward investment, the ability to speak Mandarin will be of growing importance for trade, diplomacy and cultural exchange.

In contrast Mandarin is little taught in the West, but even here there has been an outbreak of Mandarin-fever, albeit in a much milder form. In a survey of US high schools in 2006, 2,400 said they would consider teaching Mandarin if the resources were available. Chicago, which has set itself the aim of becoming a hub of Chinese learning, had about twenty public schools teaching Mandarin to 3,500 pupils in 2006.
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A survey in 2004, however, revealed that only 203 US high schools and about 160 elementary schools were teaching Mandarin. In total, there are thought to be about 50,000 American school children studying Mandarin at public schools and a similar number in private and specialist schools, with the major constraint being the lack of trained teachers. The UK reveals a similar picture, with just 2,233 entries for GCSE in 2000, and 3,726 in 2004. More private schools are beginning to offer Mandarin as an option, and there are plans under way to do the same in the state system. The number of students at UK colleges and universities taking Mandarin as their main subject doubled between 2002 and 2005, while similar increases have been recorded in other European countries.
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The relative slowness of the Western response speaks, especially in the US and the UK, to their abiding linguistic insularity and their failure to comprehend the wide-ranging implications of China’s rise.

In the era of globalization, and an increasingly globalized media, language is an important component of soft power. The emergence of English as the global lingua franca - the interlocutor language of choice - carries considerable benefits for the United States in a myriad of different ways. It is far too early yet to say what the reach of Mandarin might one day be, but it will in time probably join English as a global lingua franca and perhaps eventually surpass it. The example of the internet is interesting in this context. Bret Fausett, who runs the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) blog, has argued: ‘We’re at the peak of the English language on the internet. As internationalized domain names are introduced over the next few years, allowing users to conduct their entire online experience in their native language, English will decline as the central language of the internet.’
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Predicting the future of a language is fraught with difficulty. As the linguistic authority David Crystal writes: ‘If, in the Middle Ages, you had dared to predict the death of Latin as the language of education, people would have laughed in your face - as they would, in the eighteenth century, if you had suggested that any language other than French could be a future norm of polite society.’
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The rise of English has coincided with, and been a product of, the global dominance of the United States. By the same token, the decline of the United States will adversely affect the position of English: the global use of a language does not exist in some kind of vacuum but is closely aligned with the power of a nation-state.
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The nascent competition between English and Mandarin for the status of global lingua franca, a contest which is likely to endure for this century and perhaps the next as well, is fascinating not least because, as languages and cultural forms, they could hardly be more different: one alphabetic, the other pictographic; one the vehicle for a single spoken language, the other (in its written form) embracing many different ones; English having grown by overseas expansion and conquest, Mandarin by a gradual process of territorial enlargement.

An important way in which the United States has left its mark on the world has been through its universities. It possesses what are generally regarded as the world’s best universities, which attract some of the finest academics and students from around the globe. At the top US universities, researchers can enjoy facilities and resources second to none, while a degree from a university like Harvard, Berkeley or MIT carries more kudos than a degree from anywhere else, with the possible exception of Oxbridge. Great universities, of course, require huge national wealth and resources, be they public or private institutions. It is not surprising, therefore, that hitherto the West has dominated the league tables for the top universities. In the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2007, US universities accounted for six of the top ten and the UK four. In the top twenty there were two Asian universities, with Tokyo University 17th and Hong Kong University 18th. There were six Chinese universities in the top 200, with Beijing University 36th, Tsinghua University 40th, Fudan University 85th, Nanjing University 125th, University of Science and Technology of China 155th, and Shanghai Jiaotong University 163rd.
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There were five Chinese universities in the top 200 in 2004. The Shanghai Jiaotong University’s Academic Ranking of World Universities
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and a similar one published by the China Scientific Review Research Centre confirm that the top Chinese universities are making progress up the global rankings. China is also emerging as a main centre of top-flight business education, according to a
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ranking of Executive MBAs, which shows four of the top twenty programmes are based there (including Hong Kong).
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Growing numbers of foreign students are taking courses at Chinese universities. During the 2003 academic year, 77,628 foreign students were seeking advanced degrees at Chinese universities, of whom around 80 per cent were from other Asian countries. South Korea accounted for by far the largest number, almost half, but others came from Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Nepal and elsewhere.
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In addition, Chinese students study abroad in large numbers, especially in the United States but also in the UK. The number of Chinese studying in the United States has been around 60,000 a year since 2001, while Chinese enrolments in the UK leapt to over 50,000 in 2003-4.
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