Opening Remarks to Sino-US Colloquium (VI): A New Type of Major-country Relations and The Roles of Media
Opening Remarks
“Knock, Knock, Knock”
The World Trying to Understand China
Dr. Patrick C P Ho
Deputy Chairman and Secretary General
China Energy Fund Committee
Distinguished Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen
Good morning! I am Patrick HO, the Deputy Chairman and Secretary General of China Energy Fund Committee. At the outset, I wish to extend a warm welcome and express my sincere gratitude to those of you who have traveled, from far and wide, to participate in our discussion here in DC.
In my previous capacity as the Secretary for Home Affairs of the Hong Kong Government, I have come to learn that mutual trust and respect are the prerequisites to any conflict resolution. Mutual trust and respect come from a better understanding of each other’s history, culture and social norms, which is why CEFC, apart from addressing energy issues, takes an intense interest in promoting dialogues. We have organized several Sino-US Colloquiums which brought together senior officials, academic and business elites from China and the United States to conduct in-depth discussions across the range of issues and interests common to both countries such as energy, politics, security and culture. And this time, is media.
We chose media because we believe media plays a pivotal role to communicate, to bridge nations and peoples, and to facilitate mutual understanding and trust. With deeper understanding of each other’s core values, cultural traditions as well as historical backgrounds, undue apprehension and anxiety could be allayed. Political mutual trust could only be made possible when misinterpretation, miscalculation and misjudgment stemming from suspicion, erroneous assumption, and misreading of intention were eliminated. And finally, a new type of major-country relations featuring non-confrontation, non-conflict, mutual respect and win-win cooperation will be made possible.
But I, for one, will not underestimate the difficulty of achieving that. As you know, China and the United States behold different values, run on different social and political systems, come from different historical culture, are in different developmental stages, and harbor different strategic consideration. Indeed the divergence between the two countries is so great that it is totally unimaginable that we could ever be friends.
Perhaps mutual understanding is the most difficult task in international relations. Just a few weeks ago when we first announced this conference to the public, I was asked by several American friends: Does China really have freedom of the press? Is China’s one-party governance sustainable? Is China a responsible stakeholder? Is China's extraordinary rise threatening the world? Those questions are just reflecting the cognitive differences between the two countries. In fact, the distance between the East and the West is so great that it might take hundreds of years, and sometimes involving even arms and conflicts, for the West to understand what constitutes “China”.
Exchanges between Chinese and Western Cultures and Chinese Core Values
American media like to talk about the rise of China. Indeed, in the last 5,000 years, the Chinese has recorded at least four periods of prosperity, four rises. The first in the Zhou Dynasty (BC 1042-996) in which the Chinese feudal system of administration was introduced. The second in the Han Dynasty (BC 180-141) when Emperors governed with non-interference, farming, peaceful development , and were not only able to repel the invasions of the Mongols from the north, but were able to dispatch envoys to forge the first contacts with the West, and opened up the Silk Road for trade. The third was in the Tang Dynasty (AD 627-649) when China’s GDP was about one third of the worlds, and students came from Japan and neighboring countries to study in China. The fourth rise of China occurred in the Ming Dynasty (AD 1403-1435) when Admiral Zheng He and his powerful fleets were sent to sail from the South China Sea to the Indian Ocean, to Africa and, arguably, even to America, some 71 years before Columbus. Just think about it, did China’s rises in the past ever threaten the world?
The Chinese people are a peace loving people. Whereas Julius Caesar said “I came, I saw, I conquered”, the Chinese said “I came, I saw, I made friends, and I went home”. Not one battle was fought, not one colony seized, and nobody was enslaved.
Then, in the 14th century, the Renaissance delivered Europe from the darkness of the middle Ages. The Industrial Revolution, together with the advancement of seamanship, empowered the West to stretch its influence around the globe with colonization, and starting in the 15th century, the West “knocked” on the ancient door of China.
The First “Knock”
The first-ever attempt by the West to understand and open up China began in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, during which Matteo Ricci, a Jesuit priest, visited China. Not only did he come to preach Christianity, but also spread the Western knowledge of mathematics, medicine and astronomy, enriching hugely China’s knowledge in science and philosophical thinking. At the same time, Western priests admired the Chinese culture and values. Ricci once sighed that the ideals of The Republic of Plato defining justice and order of the city-state, had already been realized in China.
Joachim Bouvet, a French priest and Sinologist, arrived in Peking in 1688 as a royal mathematician, taking over as Emperor Kangxi’s teacher of western studies. He made a thorough study of the Chinese Classics and concluded that a certain period in the Chinese history does not belong to the Chinese only, but to all of mankind.
This was the first attempt by the Western civilization to come into contact with China mediated through religion, philosophies and sciences. In the late Kangxi era, however, mandarins were still enthralled in their own cultural refinement and did not feel challenged at all. Following a lengthy dispute over religious protocol between China and the Vatican, the door for cultural exchange was callously closed, leading to a state of mutual isolation.
The Second “Knock”
In the 18th century, Britain’s Industrial Revolution, America’s War of Independence and France’s Great Revolution dramatically changed the face of Western civilization. Western countries, aiming to enrich themselves with natural resources through their military supremacy, forcibly expanded colonialism to the East.
In 1840, Britain, prompted by the British opium merchants, invaded China and launched the First Opium War. China then, as the main Power in the East, enjoyed about one-third of global GDP, and had military forces of 800,000. The British had just 7,000 men in their expeditionary force. China lost the war. Hardly had the Qing Government negotiated grossly unequal treaties with Britain and the other invaders than the Second Opium War had started in 1860, when China’s GDP was 1.6 times that of Britain. China lost again. Then the disastrous Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1894 when China’s GDP was five times that of Japan. And China lost the war. Finally, China then realized that its GDP represented prosperity and not strength. This lesson was remembered well by Chinese, even today!
Ever since 1840, for more than 100 years, after being brought to its knees at gun point by the West, China was awakened, suddenly realizing that it had to catch up with the Western world, and has since strived successively to strengthen its military, economy and political developments. The Self-Strengthening Movement in 1861 attempted to introduce military reforms but failed. In 1898, the Hundred Days’ Reform, aimed to set up a constitutional monarchy, was crushed by the Royal Court. Sun Yat-sen was successful in overthrowing the Ching dynasty ending Imperialism in China in 1911, but the reformed governing structure that was put in its place did not last long. The May Fourth Movement which took place in 1919 was a cultural revolution in nature with adoption of Western values of democracy and science for strengthening the country. China, taken to task by the West, began to question whether the traditional core values of its ancestors were still applicable to manage the cogent problems of the modern time.
Such a debate leading to the reforms and self-renewal movements that followed throughout the various stages of China’s modernization process in the last century, embraced the ideals of inheriting the past and ushering in the future. Even into the formative stages of the new People’s Republic after 1949, China has been preoccupied with one major task- modernization through a series of process of self-reflection, self-renewal, and self-fortification trying to re-endow the traditional core values with new meanings and applications. Because of the unfavorable international environment and domestic limitations, repeated reforms and movements failed to provide a forlorn and war-torn China with all-round modernization. The traditional cultural core values, however, which had, for many times, been on the verge of being forsaken and denounced, had provided the very necessary cohesive spiritual force to hold and bind the Chinese people together through these periods of trial and tribulation.
The Third “Knock”
The third “knock” on the door of China came in the 1970s.
In the midst of the cold war and international events, in 1972, US President Richard Nixon visited China, offering an olive branch to China to integrate into the global economic system of the era. When Deng Xiaoping came into power, China began walking down the path of development of a socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics. With rapid economic advancement, China moved towards a moderately well-off society.
Over the past 40 years since Nixon’s visit to China, the Chinese people have created one miracle after another as the country basically resolved the problem of feeding its 1.3 billion populations. The wish for a moderately well-off society has begun to be fulfilled.
This was perceived as the third attempt of understanding and opening up China by the West. Unlike the previous two attempts, China was introduced to Western social systems and concepts of market economy and international trade. Nixon’s visit kicked off a string of multifaceted social contact between China and the West. This was of vital importance to China’s modernization as it was conducive to integrating such an ancient giant civilization into the modernized international system.
Since Matteo Ricci and over 200 years ago the West has been seeking a way to understand China. However, although China has opened its door finally, many Western observers including American policy makers still got China wrong.
When Mao Tse Tung announced the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the experts in the Truman and Eisenhower administrations believed it would not last long. Kennedy and Johnson believed that China would align with the Russian permanently. Then Sino-Soviet relations split in 1969. When Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger took office, they think that the Sino-Russian relations were permanently broken. They believe that China will one day changed its political system into an American liberal democracy which assumes that multi-party election is a necessity for market economy.
Now here are the facts. In just 30 years, without adopting the American political system, China went from one of the poorest agricultural countries in the world to its second-largest economy. And now, American media is worrying that Beijing would align with Moscow to compete with Washington.
What accounts for this? After 65 years of the establishment of the PRC, many American still ask a question, “What—does--China--wants?” How to understand China?
Different Past, Common Future
Last year, during the historic meeting held between President Xi Jinping and President Obama at the Annenberg Estate, the two leaders have agreed to build a new type of major-country relations featuring non-confrontation, non-conflict, mutual respect and win-win cooperation.
But this relation can only be possible if built upon a foundation of mutual understanding. That is why we are here today. Because we believe dialogue is the only means through which disputes could be settled and mitigated. We each have a different past, but together, we have a common future.
Ladies and gentlemen, in this information age, we are witnessing one of the most important revolutions that have profoundly reshaped the world. With the development of the media and the internet, No man is an island entire of himself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. With our interests so intertwined, we rise and fall together, friends and enemies alike.
With the theme “A New Type of Major-country Relations and the Roles of Media”, this two day conference provides a good platform for both Chinese and American journalist to exchange views, address challenges and discuss not only the new development of the media industry, but also the roles of media in pursuit of lasting peace and common prosperity for both countries: With the new development of the communication technology, will there be a paradigm shift in news reporting? What are the challenges and opportunities of media convergence? Is cross-cultural communication possible? What kind of new ideas, new strategies and new practice do journalism educator in China and the United States have? To what extent it will change the global news media landscape? How can we understand the role of media in public governance? How media play in the construction of national image? Can media help the world to find a way to a harmonious future?
Ladies and gentlemen, I am all ears.
Thank you!