[Biweekly Symposium] No.348, Can China open new frontier?
Author:Unirule
Time：2007-11-09 14:12:57 Clicks:
Topic: Can China open new frontier? Lecturer:Dr. Ted H. Chu Discussants:Prof. Sheng Hong, Prof. Wang Yan, Prof. Zhang Xiangping
At the 348th Unirule bi-weekly symposium, Dr. Ted H. Chu from CoBe Institute, USA, delivered a speech entitled“Can China open new frontier?” Dr. Chu argued that China should focus on how to place itself on the frontier of development instead of just becoming another mighty nation. That is because power does not guarantee a nation’s place on the frontier of development. Power serves oneself, while the frontier pioneer contributes to the whole. Power threatens the others, while frontier pleases the heavens. Take the Mongolian empire for example; it was the largest country ever existed on earth. But it left roughly no heritage to mankind. While another mighty power, the Roman Empire used its power to establish the Western civilization.
Then Dr. Chu turned to the two biggest economies on the world today: America and Japan.Facing external challenges, every time America rose through self-transformation, still standing at the frontier of global development. In the meantime Japan turned to be another Switzerland,--rich, stable, comfortable, with some excellent food, tourist sites, technologies, and brands, but not much potential. So what is missing in Japan today? Not lack of creativity. From robots to electronics to comic books, Japan has cutting edge technology and pop culture. Nor does it lack social harmony, education, external communication, overseas market or raw material supply. Indeed, Japan lacks uplifting spirit! Japan never had a deep spiritual reservoir. The drive force behind its post-war miracle economy was an urgent sense of self-survival Japan was a country that has lost political and military independence and is utterly dependent on the outside world for natural resources. Now it has become a spent force. The lesson for China is that, although at first we can repeat the economic growth path by learning. But in the end, the unable to break new ground will lead to recession like what Japan experienced in the 1990’s. As Confucius said that man without long-term vision always suffers from short-term worries, China has many practical issues that urgently need our attention. But Dr. Chu was optimistic that through learning and experimenting these problems are solvable. But if one asks whether the 21st century belongs to Asia, Dr. Chu thought the problem was: China still doesn’t know what it is missing. The reason for the West’s rise in last 500 years was not just science and political institutional building, but also a self-transcending spirit. So, whether China can step up to the frontier depends on how high its spiritual vision can be.
