Rise of China:a Return to the Natural Order of Things | Malcolm Turnbull | TEDxYouth@TheScotsCollege

so without further ado I'd like to introduce our first speaker for tonight mr. Malcolm Turnbull look the big story the big geopolitical story that we are experiencing at the moment is the rise of Asia in particular the rise of China the it is an extraordinary phenomenon we have never seen so much economic growth occur so quickly consider this 30 years ago China was barely open to the world at all since then its economy has grown 18 times an annual average of 10% India's GDP which used to jog along under what the Indians themselves called the anemic Hindu rate of growth has also taken off it's a probably about a generation behind China in terms of economic growth overall but it's its economy has grown in that period six times an average annual rate of 6% China is now the world's second largest economy it will overtake the United States and 2016 according to the IMF and at some time in the 2020s its defense spending will overtake the United States in absolute terms so there's a gigantic change in the nature and the center of gravity of the world's economy in 1990 which is not that long ago probably seems like an eon ago to the students if it to the older ones among us it doesn't seem very long ago at all North America and Europe produced about half of all global GDP by 2030 their share will decline to a quarter in contrast emerging Asia which is Asia excluding Japan that's because Asia industrialized Japan I should say industrialized earlier than any of the other Asian nations emerging Asia produced only 14% of world GDP in 1990 but by 2030 its share is projected to triple to 44% by then a third of the world's output will come from China and India now the pace and the scale of this shift is utterly unprecedented there's never been a country as big as China that has grown so fast but it's important to remember that from a Chinese or indeed an Indian perspective this rapid growth in wealth and power is not so much a rise we shouldn't really use that term allure we all do but a return a return to the natural order of things because for most of the past 2,000 years China and India if we treat each as a single economic region and of course India has only been an Indian nation since 1947 but China and India were the two largest economies in the world accounting for about half of the world's economic output so from antiquity until the middle of the 19th century and of course then they became subject to firstly colonization conquest and extraordinary violence and that particularly in the case of China and went through a period of a hundred and fifty years of very very bitter humiliation but their current climb up the GDP rankings restores them to where history or population or both predicts they should be now however changes in the relative economic position of large and powerful nations are seldom easy or trouble-free Americans in particular are still struggling to come to grips with the rise of China in particular which represents to the minds of many Americans a unique challenge to the United States the post GFC recession in the United States where recovery has been sluggish at best has made relative economic perform say hot issue Americans are not coping well with the reality the China is growing faster and catching up fast in GDP terms now of course per capita incomes and China will remain much lower than those in the United States for a long time yet but this there is an anxiety that you see in the United States the Americans have long had a very deep sense of their own exceptionalism and in that sense they've got quite a lot in common with China and since birth they've been assured that they will always be the strongest richest and cleverest nation on earth now however they increasingly feel that the core of their economy is being hollowed out their pessimism does have a basis 42,000 factories closed in the u.s. between 2001 and 2010 five and a half million manufacturing jobs gone Tom Friedman The New York Times columnist in his latest book called that used to be us gives eloquent testimony to the growing sense of an addict inadequacy Americans feel as they compare their country to China its title was inspired by a speech President Obama made in November 2010 where he said and I quote it makes no sense for China to have better rail systems than us and Singapore having better airports than us and we just learned that china now has the fastest supercomputer on earth that used to be us now of course from a Chinese point of view it makes perfect sense to have better rail systems and the Americans most of which most of their rail systems of course are in very poor repair and from a Singaporean point of view it makes perfect sense for them to have the best airport in the world if that is in fact the case so you can see there's a gigantic sense a huge sense of inadequacy growing particularly in the West particularly in the United States by reason of the success of China and other of course emerging Asian economies and you see it even you see it here from our own point of view Sidda this in 1995 shanghai opened the first part of its Metro it had a few stations and a few kilometers of track wasn't big very big deal to begin with as you'd expect it now has over 420 kilometers of track and carries well over 6 million people a day and hundreds of stations and ask yourself this how much mass transit was built how much how many kilometers of subway of urban rail was built in throughout all of Australia since 1995 and I regret to tell you it was in this city it wasn't even 20 kilometers worth pathetic contribution so there is a there is a sense everywhere in the West that we are falling behind now at the same time as all of this is happening this is this enormous change a return to the natural order of things from a Chinese perspective information technology and communications are making more sectors and jobs trade exposed many service jobs in the US and Australia for example are becoming globally contestable not just call centres but financial and legal analysts programmers designers architects so everything is becoming more trade exposed there used to be a time when economists would cite retail as a sector that was because sort of almost the Definity of non trade exposed sector but and store owners used to compete with other retailers in the locality now so if you think of a you know a fashion shop a dress shop in in Oxford Street the proprietor would have thought that she was competing with other shops in the area perhaps with some store a department store and David Jones certainly with the shops up in Westfield at Bondi Junction now she is competing with the entire world so the retail sector has become thoroughly trade exposed in many categories not in all categories these trends of globalization and technology our economic forces that are far bigger excuse me than any one country even countries as large and powerful as China or the United States yet the shifts they are causing in economic power or the competitiveness of particular industries in the West such as our car industry are often crudely seen as the fault of exporters such as China and other East Asian nations advanced economies cannot blame China or the rest of emerging Asia for our own choices if our roads and Subway's are not in good repair that's our problem if as we learn today and with the Grattan Institute report and our standards of literacy and numeracy have fallen behind the comparable levels of the levels of comparable students and comparable schools in Shanghai and Hong Kong and Seoul then we should be asking ourselves why are we not doing better it's not we shouldn't be resentful a bit about being overtaken by other countries the question is not why we're declining relative to China it is the question is why are we not being as good as we can be when Deng Xiaoping opened China to the world in 1979 he invoked the example of the 15th century Admiral Zheng her who had led great fleets across the Indian Ocean in those days and open and confident China was the world's strongest nation when later Emperor's closed China to the rest of the world Deng Xiaoping reminded the hardliners in 1979 China began a decline that ended with humiliating invasion colonization and exploitation by stronger nations European powers in Japan in particular so given that history it's no surprise that when matza Tong announced his triumph from the top of Chen and men in 1949 his first words were the Chinese people have stood up John Warren man's anchee lillah the Chinese people have stood up you're saying we have the end the hundred and fifty years of humiliation has come to an end now it's no surprise that as China becomes richer it seeks to strengthen its military but we need to be very careful in the West not to automatically assume as I think some people in the United States do that a strong stronger and more militarily capable China is going to be a militarily aggressive or expansionist one China has settled many not all but many of its border disputes and indeed has settled its border with Russia which is remarkable really because there are very there are large sections of the Russian Federation the whole Amal skya province no less and other territories that were basically stolen from China via unequal treaties in the 1850s and 1860s so in the same way that you know the British took the new territories from China and Hong Kong and the Portuguese took Macau so so the Chinese could have held back settling that left those unresolved issues as a Casas bel I for use at a future time when they were even stronger and Russia was even weaker but they didn't but Kissinger makes a very good point which i think is worth remembering and he is a pragmatist about foreign policy famously he points out that unlike the USSR or even the United States China does not seek to persuade other countries to adopt its values let alone its system of government so this is not a Soviet Union that wants to export an ideology or a system of a political system the central role of trade in China's prosperity also argues for its rise to remain peaceful in 2010 China's trade was 55% of its GDP the same as for Britain in the 1870s the pinnacle or the P code would guess of the Pax Britannica so given the importance of a stable economy in the China Chinese regime's legitimacy which of course is based on delivering economic growth I mean if you if you think of the Chinese polity the bargain between the Communist Party and the people is no more than this you let us run the country and will deliver continuing economic growth if China's economic growth stalls then the whole edifice of that regime is under enormous under enormous threat now I don't think there's any like there's no likelihood of the Chinese or prospect I think of the Chinese seeking to declare some Chinese version of the Monroe Doctrine this was the doctrine that President James Monroe declared US President James Monroe of course in 1823 when he said essentially that the Western Hemisphere was the American sphere of influence and the Americans would regard as a threat to the United States any attempt by any European power to assert itself or reinstate its rule in any countries in North or South America that had become independent now China is in a very different position it is surrounded by very very powerful countries very powerful nations India Russia Japan Korea and of course the United States in its projection into the Pacific but we have to be clear-eyed about this and while we would not expect nor would anyone welcome some sort of East Asian Monroe Doctrine nonetheless we have to recognize that the era of the United States being the sole unchallenged superpower projecting in that region is coming to an end inevitably there will be a more of a balance of powers in the East Asian region and it's important very important that all of us in the region the big powers and the smaller powers and the medium powers all of us remember that it is as this as these changes occur it is mightily in our interest to be engaged with China and/or and all of the other powers in the region and to ensure that this transition is a peaceful one cool heads are required on all sides China of course needs to be much more transparent about its goals in the region and it needs to build confidence with its neighbors it's important to bear in mind china has virtually no allies think about it surrounded by all these powerful countries who are its allies North Korea well with allies like that who needs enemies you might say it is it has a very good relationship with Pakistan but again that's that is a really seen through the prism of the contact with the contest between Pakistan and India but it is it's it has created managed to create anxiety with without a long history of overt aggression among all of its neighbors so China has China has a a confidence-building task ahead of us but also we have a task of engagement now I've talked a little longer than I planned so I'll just wrap up on this point you're seeing I think with the broad sweep of history something like a return to situation normal but Australia is very very well positioned in this area there are many risks but we need to be clear-eyed pragmatic and practical in the way we analyze the opportunities and the risks as we hedge against contingencies but above all as we ensure that as this economic boom continues we always have a mind on ensuring that at the end of it we will have something tangible to show for it thank you very much you you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 180,555

Keywords: TEDx, Scots, rise of asia, Sydney, TEDxYouth, china economic growth, ted x, Spycatcher, asian century, Australia, tedx talk, rise of china, malcolm turbull, ted talk, tedx, TEDxYouth@TheScotsCollege, College, NBN, australian liberal party, ted, The, communications minister, tedx talks, environment minister, jose ballesteros, TED, rise of india, ted talks

Id: FothKc-0vG8

Length: 19min 42sec (1182 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 11 2012