Martin Jacques: The West has a lot to learn from China

[Applause] I'd liked add hasten to add it wasn't 15 seconds it was 30 things as it was 15 minutes and it didn't happen in China it happened in Malaysia and my wife-to-be was not Chinese but of Indian descent India Malaysia so apart from a few inaccuracies it was accurate now I want to clarify first of all what this motion is about or what it's not about is probably the best way of putting it this is not a proposal that liberal western-style democracy will always be inappropriate for China I don't know what the situation is going to be like in 25 years or 50 years I don't even know what the situation is likely to be in the West in that period what we're discussing is something much more specific likewise we're not suggesting awesome certainly I'm not suggesting and the motion is not suggesting that what happens in China and the arrangements that are appropriate for China in this period should be transplanted into our own societies I would not argue that for a moment in fact on the contrary I would say that the reason Western democracies have grown up in the West has been because of the history and the culture of our societies and we need to pay due respect I would suggest to China and the differences of its history and culture in the same way what this motion is about is a country which is a developing country which in the middle of the 20th century was extremely poor which had suffered 200 years during a 200 year period of more or less and I mean this literally economic stagnation its GDP at the end of this period was more or less the same as it was in the first part of the 19th century and it had been invaded and partially colonized by many countries including our own in 1949 China was a mess and a basket case and the task that confronted China was with this vast country could they transform it and they made quite a few false moves and false starts so when dong shopping came to power in 1978 he identified the two crucial tasks tasks of China the first was an overwhelming focus on the need for economic growth and secondly intimately tied to that was the need for a huge reduction in poverty in a poverty-stricken country at that time in 1978 the Chinese economy was one twentieth of the size of the American economy and since that move from the end of the 70s in the direction of economic reform we have seen the most remarkable economic transformation in human history a population of 1.3 billion people one-fifth of humanity its economy growing at 10% a year to the point where today the Chinese economy is half the size of the American economy and there's a general view now that the Chinese economy will overtake the American economy in size around about 2018 this is truly remarkable and I want to correct you Anson because it's just not true that the British experience or the American experience of industrialization in any way compares with the Chinese achievement the British Industrial Revolution between 1780 and 1830 which was the key period or you can push it to 1840 the growth rate was around about on average one and a half percent a year one and a half percent a year and that was a popular of what 2030 million at that time probably more like 20 million at that time or take America you mention America well the period between the end of the Civil War the mid 1860s to 1914 the American growth rate never exceeded on average something like 3.5% and that of course again was a much smaller population so that is why I suggest that this is the most remarkable economic transformation there has ever been and it has been presided over by the Chinese government and it has lifted I mean let's remember this as well if you look at the reduction in global poverty over the last thirty years China is over well is responsible for the overwhelming bulk of that reduction in poverty if you take China out of the equation actually the global performance has been very disappointing now I challenge the view that this does not the Chinese government does not enjoy the support of overwhelming mass of Chinese people I don't know you know if you look at for example the Pew Global Attitudes surveys the support for the Chinese government is exploring impressive if you look at Tony seichas work from the Harvard Kennedy School in terms of the levels of satisfaction amongst the Chinese in terms of government you know the ratings are extremely high indeed and is it so surprising if your living standards are growing as they have been now for a while at roughly the same pace of economic growth ten percent a year then you know it's quite likely that your popular population is going to be rather pleased with with government and I challenge the idea also that you know the political of course there are many things that are different from what we're used to which we would certainly object to but the idea that the sort of political atmosphere the political environment is fros is a mistake I mean the idea that every you know you said dissent is crushed excuse me I mean there are about a hundred and fifty thousand mass incidents every year in China in which people which mainly consists of farmers objecting to what they regard to be the illicit seizure of their land by local government flogging it off to to to property developers and these actions are well you know they're reported in lots of places and they take place and it's not true that they're all suppressed and sometimes when there is suppression like in we can actually the authorities are forced to retreat or take the wave of strikes in Guangdong province and inseong the eastern coast in Shanghai in 2000 2010 and 2011 tens and tens of thousands of people on strike and they were not suppressive they were allowed to happen and the result huge wage increases the minimum wage in Beijing was increased during that period by 30 percent Shanghai roughly similar and saw a huge lift in living standard so it's not good enough it to be framed to pay China as this sort of autocracy with a central government which suppresses everything there has been a huge shift in the personal freedoms of the average Chinese since the death of Mao you've only got to go to Shanghai or to Guangzhou or to Chengdu and you can see it on the streets and it's not true that everything is censored actually the censorship in China is much lighter than it used to be much lighter and they access to information sure there are controls on the internet but quite frankly if you want to you can get random so this is a society which is throbbing actually and it's vibrating with debate contrary to the picture that Anson has presented which is a very common picture presented into Western audiences I want you to just say something else you see my concentration in what want to say is really about China as a developing country now let's take a comparative example India in 1950 which has got in many ways a most impressive democracy in 1950 the Chinese economy and the Indian economy were more or less the same size today the Chinese economy is four times the size of the Indian economy why because the economic strategy pursued by the Chinese has been far more successful than the strategy which has have been employed by India and India has a great problem it's got a most impressive democracy which is what we celebrate and an extremely corrupt and inefficient state which cannot deliver in other words in that sense it's opposite to China and the poverty reduction in China is been father anyone who goes to China goes to him you can see this has been far more successful that anything that has been achieved in India now I think also we need a bit of humility about this China is a huge as way we pointed out in a huge country on a scale that one is unimaginable to us in the West so we and with its task has been how to it has been in an industrial revolution essentially economic takeoff as rosto described it the shift from the countryside to industry around the time of juncture of paying it was at not much more than 20% of the population lived in the urban centers today it's 50% now what was the situation politically excuse me in the West in Europe in the United States when we were having our industrial revolutions how many Western countries were democracies at the time of their industrial revolutions shall I tell you how many zero zero in Britain in 1850 finally one-fifth of men have the right to vote that was after the conclusion of the Industrial Revolution and it was not until the 1880s that most men had to vote but not women or take America it was not until 1860 that most white men gained the vote but not blacks really until the 1960s and women in 1920 and if you look at Europe exactly the same pattern their industrial revolutions were accomplished is essentially in France Germany and Italy and so on before they had democracy so when so when we say they should be like us well actually we should speak we should speak with more modesty because we weren't like what we want them to be during this particular historical face I would like to conclude by just saying this first of all I would ask my my country to be more modest and more humble in the face of China's extraordinary achievement and not think our task is to say why the hell can't you be like us but on the contrary I think what we need with the rise of China is a much more humble attitude which recognizes risks and respects their achievement and also is willing to learn from them and what we're going to face I think now is not just feeling that democracy is important but also we need to learn from the Chinese about state competence this is not as subjects that's being discussed in the West but it will be discussed in the West and here we have much to learn for the Chinese thank you very much [Applause] you

Channel: Intelligence Squared

Views: 95,458

Keywords:

Id: lPQoj9t_AW8

Length: 13min 40sec (820 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 09 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/sickof50]

This lecture was done back in November of 2012. Bravo!... notice how he was scolding them?

[u/zhumao]

have seen this awhile ago but always a pleasure to see Mr. Jacques in action again, and it is even more timely after four years of the racist man-child, and covid. finally to add some levity will share a joke about the true meaning and current state of western democracy:

before dying, an American farmer asked his son, "The pigs complain about poor feed, the cows complain about too much work, and the chickens complain that the house is too dirty. What should you do? The son said: "feed the pigs good fodder, cattle do light work, clean the henhouse." The farmer shook his head and said, Don't do anything. Give them a vote and let them choose you or your wife rule them, and let them think they're the ones who call the shots in this house."

[u/candidcamerapeepshow]

Oldie but goodie.