Future thrills

The Chinese are in the process of establishing a new leadership group for the country that is in the middle of the world. 7 men are now establishing themselves in the new roles they have been given.

China is growing in many ways, both economically and politically. The challenges are huge and there are all sorts of expectations built into what we think China will do.

The new leadership is

• 习近平 Xi Jinping
• 李克强 Li Keqian
• 张德江 Zhang Dejiang
• 俞正声 Yu Zhengshen
• 刘云山 Liu Yunshan
• 王岐山 Wang Qishan
• 张高丽 Zhang Gaoli

The new leaders are the 5th generation of leaders. They are all well educated, well travelled, well cultured and are obviously stepping forward as part of a well planned process.

Major areas of concern now seems to be economics and finance with China in the process of taking over the role as the biggest economy in the world from the US. Internally corruption has had some attention and is expected to be an area of hard work.

The report “China 2030 - Building a Modern, Harmonious, and Creative High-Income Society” has been made in cooperation between The World Bank and Development Research Center of the State Council, the People’s Republic of China. Here we find indications of the lines of work to be pursued by the new leaders: the importance of adapting to local initiative and interregional competition; integrating with the world; adjusting to new technologies; building world-class infrastructure; and investing heavily in its people.

The challenges of China are many and the new leaders seem well set to do good work. The major challenge seem to be to enriching the nation and improve social welfare, liberalizing the economy, unchecking the state monopolies, balancing exports and internal consumption, modernity as related to technology, blogging, internet.

The relation between China and the US/the West is in a cautious state. The West has traditionally needed enemies to be “normal”. Among the enemies now are Iran, Venezuela, Northern Korea, Zimbabwe. China is cooperating with these countries, and many others. The Chinese role in Africa comprising huge investments is under attack in western media, but that could be part of a public relations campaign.

China is hunting for resources like oil, gas, minerals, metals and there will be future conflicts of interest in this area.

Arctic policy is being downplayed now, and the opinions in China are diverse on this theme.

The South China Sea area is also contested and much needs to be clarified there. The power balance in Asia is shifting as Asia rises, the US has to turn its focus this way now.

Must there be a strategy based on enmity, of high-spotting, of stress and strain or will the West and the Chinese meet the challenges maturely? Maybe not as Australia, China and the US is planning joint military exercises in order to improve security and stability in the Pacific. The rest of nearby nations might be interested too?

The new leadership of mr. Xi seems to want to present themselves as accessible and personable, with reasonable security and formalities.

Attention will be given to Chinese culture and thinking too: Confucianism, Daoism, Legalism, Deng , Mao etc.  Chinese leadership philosophies and practices will be scrutinised, measuring Chinese ideas versus Western ideas.

To name some obvious challenges we have the condition of underdevelopment that is seen in many parts of China, urbanizing, economic entrepreneurship versus state monopolies.

The concept of peaceful rise 和平崛起 has been put forward. China wants to be seen as a nonthreatening global power, a good neighbour fostering stable relations.

The question of Taiwan is still there, and leadership jealousies will also be watched closely.

The people of China will probably go forward as part of ongoing processes, and infusions of new good leadership will most likely be helpful too. The sad memories of Mao’s cultural revolution with tens of millions dead are still lingering, but is now kept tightly subdued. When the government of a country can enact such an upheaval people must beware.

So now we look forward, we are all watching, so you better do well. The US is surely working hard on its security policies that they call their global strategies. The US– China Strategic and Economic Dialogue established in 2009  must surely continue.

Calm sailing everybody, please. Remember that China is different.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 12th, 2012 at 5:47 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.