by Professor Hugo de Burgh
Empire: How Britain made the Modern World is the most succinct description of how today’s world came to be as it is. It will be a long time before a definitive exposition is written of how viagra generic China came to supplant that role. But a good many people are ready with the first drafts. Last week I listened to Stephen Green, Chairman of HSBC, tell the Vice Chancellors of Britain that the global balance was shifting.  A few days later, at the 48 Group New Year Celebration at the Dorchester, John Prescott, former Deputy Prime Minister, a couple of Ministers and prix ??de vente de viagra the top cheeses of two of our big companies said much the same. Martin Wolf and lesser wiseacres in the FT concur.
They may be in too fast. My Chinese friends, despite being avid watchers of the CCTV series ‘Rise of the Great Powers’ prefer to be modest about China’s ascent. They remind me that there’s a lot of poverty and that the recovery from 40 years of communist destruction is only just started. And there is a bevy of foreign China watchers, chaps like Will Hutton, who say it cannot possibly happen until China sorts out its politics and becomes like Britain, so there! But something big is happening in the world and the economic crisis has just accentuated it. Even if you don’t agree that China is about to displace the USA, then you may sign up to the widely acknowledged fact that the economic drive plus vast population of China poses some big challenges for the Anglophones, who, first under Britain’s leadership, and then the USA’s, have dominated, hard and soft, the world for a very long time.
The aim of this blog is to discuss the impact of these challenges on England. I will contribute some ideas regularly – but I’m also writing to all the smart cookies I know to ask them to write in.
Today I’m contacting two people I’ve just enjoyed discussing Barack Obama with on an inauguration day chat show – Diane Abbott the socialist MP and Peter Oborne the Tory polemicist and investigative journalist. And I’ll ask Stephen Green and viagra kaufen schneller versand the very bright China buffs from Pinsent Masons and Standard Chartered too. When we in the China Media Centre ran the Westminster Hearings on China’s Impact in Parliament last year one of the best speakers was Liu Mingkang, Chairman of the Banking Reform Commission. And so on. These guys have ideas worth hearing, arguments worth tackling. Happy New Year. And I, by the way, am an Ox.
QUESTIONS WE’D LIKE YOU TO ADDRESS IN YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE BLOG:
- What are the challenges that China’s rise poses for this country? [do we need to change how we work, educate or provide social security?]
- What can we learn from China? In what ways can each country’s culture be improved by learning from each other?
- What kinds of cooperation are possible between this country and China?
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