More than 1.3 billion Chinese people are celebrating the New Year this week. We’ll discuss that more in China in the Year of the Rabbit, but a friend sent me this TED video last week that is one of the best discussions on China I’ve seen in recent memory.
Martin Jacques, author of When China Rules the World, spoke at a TED Conference back in October 2010. Jacques began his speech by saying, “the world is changing at a really remarkable speed.”
Jacques says China is going to change the world in two fundamental respects. First, never before in the modern era has the largest economy in the world been that of a developing country. Second, for the first time in the modern era, the dominant country in the world will not be from the West.
Jacques’ speech is a breath of fresh air because of his deep understanding, not just of Chinese culture, but what drives the country’s politics, its business and its people. While much of the U.S. media coverage of China is embedded with fear, Jacques explains that we must better understand the differences between our two cultures in order to really understand what drives China.
The speech is also riddled with lots of interesting little facts but I’m not going to give those away, you’ll have to watch the video.
