Martin Jacques:了解中国崛起

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http://dotsub.com/view/0a303ba7-596c-4cdf-9a75-3e207221f067
Martin Jacques:了解中国崛起
世界正在 以快速惊人的速度改变着。 如果你看这上面的图表， 你会看到在2025年， 高盛投资公司的这些预测 表明中国经济规模 会和美国经济几乎相当。 如果看 2050年的图表， 预测表明中国经济规模 会是美国经济的两倍， 印度的经济规模会和 美国的经济几乎持平。 我们这儿应该记住 这些预测是在 西方经济危机之前制定的。
几周前， 我查看法国巴黎银行的 最近预测， 中国在什么时候 会超越美国经济， 成为第一大经济体。 高盛投资公司预测2027年。 危机过后的预测 是2020年。 这也不过只有10年。 中国将在两个基本方面 会改变世界。 首先， 中国是一个幅员广大的发展中国家 它有13亿人口， 在过去30年间 它以每年10%左右的经济增长率发展。
在未来10年间， 它会有世界上最大的经济体。 在世界现代史中，以前从来都是发达国家 还没有一个发展中的国家 变成了世界上 最大的经济体。 第二， 在现代史中第一次 在世界上， 我认为中国会变成大国， 它有别于西方国家 而它是从非常，非常不同的文明根源发展起的大国。
现在我知道西方国家有一个普遍的假设 随着国家的现代化， 它们也会西方化。 这是个幻想。 这是对于现代化 仅仅是竞争，市场和技术的一种产品的假设。 中国的现代化不仅仅是这样的，也是由 历史和文化共同作用下形成的。 中国不同于西方国家， 它也不会变成和西方国家一样。 它会在非常基础的方面表现得 非常不同。 现在这的大问题明显是， 我们该怎样认识中国？ 我们该怎样了解中国？ 在西方我们现在的问题大体上 是传统的方法 我们用西方的术语，用西方的观点来了解 真正的中国。 我们不能这样。 现在我想给大家 3个基础理由 来试着了解中国 只是起个头。
首先是这个， 中国事实上不是一个民族国家。 在过去的几百年，中国自称是一个 民族国家。 但对中国很了解的人 知道中国比这历史要悠久得多。 中国是 在公元前221年也就在战国时期的末期从秦朝一统江山起， 现代中国就诞生了。 你可以看到现代中国的边界线。 随之其后的汉朝， 还在2000年前。 你可以看出中国已经占据 我们现在所知的华东地区的大部分， 绝大多数的中国人当时在那儿居住 现在还生活在那儿。
现在对于这儿非同寻常的 是，应给予中国应有的认识， 也应给予中国人 成为他们自身中国人的定位， 这不是从过去几百年， 也不是从民族国家开始形成这种认识， 这跟西方发展也不一样， 如果你喜欢，而这一阶段 可以说是文明国家的阶段。 我想到这儿，举例， 传统习惯像对祖先的崇拜， 非常有特色的国家概念， 诸如此类的，非常有特色的家庭观念， 社交关系如关系， 儒家价值观等等。 所有这些事都来自于 文明国家的阶段。 换言之，中国不像世界上的西方国家和多数国家， 它由它自身文明所形成， 它是作为一个文明国家 而不是一个民族国家而存在的。 还有另一件事要加进来，这就是： 当然我们知道中国是幅员辽阔，人口众多， 在人口统计和地理上都是首屈一指， 它有13亿人口。 我们常常没关注的 事实是 中国也是极其多样化 和非常多元化的， 在许多方面甚至权力是非常分散化的。 尽管我们认为不能仅从北京中央政府来管理这庞大规模的国家， 这会是个问题。 但这从来都不是个问题。
所以这才是中国，一个文明国家， 而不是一个民族国家。 那这意味着什么呢？ 那么我想这有很多种深刻的含义。 我会给你2个简短介绍。 第一个是 中国人最主要的政治价值观 是统一， 用来维护 中华文明。 大家知道，2000年前，欧洲: 灭亡，神圣罗马帝国[罗马帝国]的分裂。 从那时到现在，它不断地分裂。 在同一时间段，中国 却有着完全相反的方向， 非常艰难地维系着这种强大的统一文明， 把文明国家统一在一起。
第二 或许是更一般的例子 香港的例子。 大家是否记得香港 在1997年从英国政府转交给中国政府？ 大家能记得 中国宪法体制是什么吗？ 一国两制。 我会打赌 在西方没有人会信这一套。 “装饰门面。 当中国政府接手香港， 这不可能。” 13年来， 香港现在的政治和司法体制 和1997年一样，但和中国大陆的有所不同。 我们都错了，为什么我们理解错了呢？ 我们错是因为我们理所当然地 以民族国家角度思考。 想想1990年德国统一。 发生什么了？ 基本上东德被西德吞噬。 一个国家，一个体制。 这是民族国家的心态。 但是你不能用此来管理一个像中国这样的， 一个文明国家， 它建立在一种文明，一个体制上。 这行不通。 的确中国 在香港问题上的回应 也是在台湾问题上的回应， 它是一个很自然的回应： 一种文明，多种体制。
让我来说另一个基础理由 来试着了解中国 这或许是一个让人不舒服的理由。 中国与其他大多数国家对 民族的概念 有非常，非常不同的理解。 大家知道， 13亿中国人， 超过90%的中国人 认为他们属于同一个民族， 汉族。 目前这与 世界上其它人口众多的国家截然相反。 印度，美国， 印度尼西亚，巴西， 他们都是多民族的。 中国人没有感到过多民族。 中国仅是 在边界线上有多种少数民族的人。 那问题是，为什么？ 好吧，我认为实质上，原因 得再次追溯到这文明国家。 至少在2000年的历史长河中， 征服，占领， 合并，同化等的历史 随着时间的推移导致了 汉民族这概念的形成过程 当然，这概念也孕育了 增强了汉文化认同感 也使其变得非常强大，具有深远意义。
现在这历史经验的巨大优势 呈现出来，没有汉民族， 中国永远不可能连为一体。 汉民族文化认同一直 把这个国家粘合在一起。 它的巨大的劣势 是汉民族对文化差异 有很少的认知概念。 他们真正相信 他们自身汉族文化的优越性， 他们不尊重 那些不同民族的差异性。 因此在这里举例他们对待 回族和藏族的态度。
还是让我给出第三个基础理由， 中国式的国家。 现在在中国 国家和社会间的关系 非常不同于西方的那种关系。 在西方我们 绝大多数人似乎认为--至少在最近 国家的权威和合法性 是民主的一个功能。 有关这问题 是中国这个国家 对中国人民享有更多合法性 和更多权威性 这 比起 任何西方国家，它都是事实。 这个的原因 是因为 我认为有两个理由。 中国很明显与民主无关， 因为依我们来看，中国完全称不上是民主。 这个理由是， 首先，因为在中国，国家 是一个非常特别有所指的， 它享有一个非常特别的意义 作为中华文明的代表， 体现 和捍卫者， 也是代表中国国家的代表，化身和捍卫者。 这也接近中国有种 精神象征的作用。
第二个理由是因为， 反之在欧洲， 北美洲， 国家的权力不断受到挑战。 我指在欧洲历史传统， 历史上反对教堂， 反对其它各种贵族阶级， 反对商人等等 有1000年历史， 中国国家的权力 从来没被挑战过。 它没有真正的对手可抗衡。 所以大家可以看到 在中国已经建立的权力的方式 与我们西方历史的经验 非常不同。 顺便提一下，结果 是中国人看待国家有非常不同的视角。 鉴于我们倾向于把国家看作是一个入侵者， 一个陌生人， 当然是一个组织 它的权力需要被限制 或被界定和约束， 中国人可一点都不这样看待国家。 中国人视国家 作为一个亲密的朋友，也不止是作为一个密友， 作为家庭里的一员， 事实上也不止是家里一员， 而是一家之长， 家庭里的家长。 这是从中国视角来看待国家， 和我们的截然不同。 根植于中国社会的案例 与我们在西方的社会例证 是完全不同的。
我给大家的建议是我们的确要了解 在中国背景下 这是一种新的范例， 它与 我们过去曾想过的范例是不同的。 要知道中国人相信市场和国有。 我指，亚当·斯密 在18世纪晚期已经著书，说过， “中国市场比起欧洲的任何一个市场， 它都是比较大的和较为发达的 较为复杂的。” 除了毛泽东时代， 中国市场大体是如上的例证。 但这也是 在一个极强大和无处不在的国家做后盾。 国家就是中国的一切。 我指，它引领着公司， 他们中的许多公司还是国企所有。 私有企业，不管它们有多大，像Lenovo联想， 在很多方面也依赖于国家的资助。 国家设置了经济目标 等等。 当然，国家的权威也穿插在许多其他方面 比如我们所述熟悉的 独生子女政策。
此外，中国是一个非常古老的传统国家， 有一个非常古老传统的治国纲领。 如果你想搞明白这样的例子， 长城就是其中一个。 但这有另一个，这是（京杭）大运河， 它起初是 在公元前5世纪被建造的 在公元7世纪时 它最终竣工。 它有1114英里， 链接北京 到杭州和上海。 在中国， 非凡的国家大型基础建设的历史 由来已久， 我假定这也帮助我们来了解我们今天所看到的， 例如三峡大坝的工程 和许多中国其它的 国家工程 业绩。 所以这3个组成部分 让我们了解中国的不同-- 文明国家， 民族的概念 和国家的属性 以及它和社会的关系。
总地说来，我们还一直坚持 认为我们仅从西方经验的视角 就能理解中国 通过西方人视角 使用西方理念来看透中国。 如果你想知道 我们为什么对中国有错误的认识 我们对在中国发生的事情的预言为什么也是不正确的 这上所述就是原因。 不幸的是我认为， 我得说我认为 对中国的态度 是西方人的一种心态做崇。 这是傲慢的心态。 就傲慢的心态而言 我们认为我们是最好的， 因此我们有普世的评判标准。 其次，这是无知的。 我们拒绝真正承认 问题的不同面。 大家知道，美国历史学家保罗·柯文(Paul Cohen)的书里（《在中国发现历史——中国中心观在美国的兴起》） 有一段非常有意思的话。 保罗·柯文讲到 西方认为它自身文化 好比是所有文化里最具有国际化的 文化。 但事实不是。 在许多方面， 它是最狭隘的， 因为200年来， 西方一直主宰世界 它不必 去了解其他文化， 其他文明。 因为，到头来， 必要时可动武， 彰显其自身文化。 反之这些其它文化 几乎在世界其它地区的，事实上， 面对西方文化，它们一直处于相对较弱的地位， 从而也一直被迫来了解西方文化， 因为西方文化在这些社会有影响力的原因。 所以，结果是它们 在许多方面比起西方更国际化。
我们来谈谈东亚的问题。 东亚：日本，韩国，中国等等-- 世界上三分之一人口住在那边， 现在是全球最大的经济区域。 现在我会告诉你， 东亚人，东亚的人们， 对西方熟悉得多 比起 西方国家对东亚的认识。 现在我恐怕这个观点到当今还是非常 有关联的。 因为发生的变化。回到开始的图表 高盛投资公司的图表。 当前发生的 是，在历史上非常迅速， 世界不是被老的发达国家， 而是发展中新兴国家 驱动和 重塑着。 我们看到这个 G20二十国集团 它非常迅速地抢占G7七国集团 或者G8八国集团的地位。 这有两个结果。 第一，西方 正快速地失去 它在全球的影响。 一年前就有一个戏剧性的例证证明这个观点 哥本哈根，气候变化会议。 欧洲没有出现在最后讨论谈判桌上。 上次欧洲置之事外是在什么时候？ 我敢打赌约在200年前也发生同样的事。 在未来这还会发生。
第二个含义 是世界将不可避免地 急剧变化，对我们来说很陌生， 因为世界被我们所不熟悉的或者不精通的文化， 经验和历史 所重塑。 最后，我恐怕，拿欧洲来说， 美国是有点不同的 但大体上，我得说欧洲人 是无知的， 没有意识到 世界正在发生的改变。 有人，我有一个在中国的英国朋友， 他说，“旧大陆在梦游似的会被遗忘。” 好吧，恐怕是对的， 恐怕这有点夸张。 但另一问题随之产生 欧洲正在日益与世界脱节 这是一种 对未来感的缺失。 当然，我指欧洲曾自信地 引领未来。 拿19世纪来举例。 唉，但这已经风光不在。
如果你想感知未来，如果你想感触未来， 看看中国，这是古代的孔子。 这是一个火车站 这是你以前从未看到过的。 它看上去不像是火车站。 这是为了高速列车行驶而新建的 广州火车站。 中国已经比起全球其他国家 有更多的铁路网 不久就会超过全球铁路网总和。 举个例子：现在这是个想法， 但这想法不久就会 在北京郊区实现。 这儿会有一辆超级公交， 在公交上层会承载2000人。 它会沿着郊区的路上轨道 行驶， 车辆可以在它下面穿行。 它的时速可达每小时约100英里。 现在这个就是未来交通方式， 因为中国有非常具体问题， 它有别于欧洲 和美国。 中国人口众多，但很少空间。 所以当 中国将会有 越来越多的城市 超过2000万人口时，这会是应对这种情况的解决方案。
好吧，那么我会怎样来做结论呢？ 那么，我们应该以怎样态度 来面对这个 呈现在我们面前 飞速发展的 世界？ 我认为关于此事，这会有好的方面也会有坏的方面。 但首先，我想指出 这世界所展现的是一幅积极正面的蓝图。 200年来， 世界基本上 是被人类的一部分人所管辖。 这是以欧洲和北美为代表的。 新兴国家的崛起 像中国和印度 它们占世界人口的百分之三十八 和其他国家如印度尼西亚和巴西等等， 他们代表了在过去200年间最重要的人类活动 民主化 进程。 曾被 忽视，没有发言权的文明和文化， 人们对此不了解，没听说过的文明和文化， 它们将会在这世界上以与众不同地 声音代言它们自身。 作为人道主义者，我们必定要欢迎 这种转型。 我们还得学习 这些文明。
这儿的大船 是在15世纪早期郑和 下西洋时 航行的船， 它穿过中国东海，南海 然后穿行印度洋到达东非。 这前面的小船 是80年后， 克里斯托弗·哥伦布穿行大西洋的船只。 （笑声） 或仔细看看 这幅 ZhuZhou朱周 在1938年创作的绢轴国画。 我认为他们在打高尔夫。 上帝啊，中国人甚至在当时就发明了高尔夫。
欢迎来到未来。谢谢。
（掌声）
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Martin Jacques: Understanding the rise of China
The world is changing with really remarkable speed. If you look at the chart at the top here, you'll see that in 2025, these Goldman Sachs projections suggest that the Chinese economy will be almost the same size as the American economy. And if you look at the chart for 2050, it's projected that the Chinese economy will be twice the size of the American economy, and the Indian economy will be almost the same size as the American economy. And we should bear in mind here that these projections were drawn up before the Western financial crisis.
A couple of weeks ago, I was looking at the latest projection by BNP Paribas for when China will have a larger economy than the United States. Goldman Sachs projected 2027. The post-crisis projection is 2020. That's just a decade away. China is going to change the world in two fundamental respects. First of all, it's a huge developing country with a population of 1.3 billion people, which has been growing for over 30 years at around 10 percent a year.
And within a decade, it will have th largest economy in the world. Never before in the modern era has the largest economy in the world been that of a developing country, rather than a developed country. Secondly, for the first time in the modern era, the dominant country in the world -- which I think is what China will become -- will be not from the West and from very, very different civilizational roots.
Now I know it's a widespread assumption in the West that, as countries modernize, they also Westernize. This is an illusion. It's an assumption that modernity is a product simply of competition, markets and technology. It is not; it is also shaped equally by history and culture. China is not like the West, and it will not become like the West. It will remain in very fundamental respects very different. Now the big question here is obviously, how do we make sense of China? How do we try to understand what China is? And the problem we have in the West at the moment by-and-large is that the conventional approach is that we understand it really in Western terms, using Western ideas. We can't. Now I want to offer you three building blocks for trying to understand what China is like -- just as a beginning.
The first is this, that China is not really a nation state. Okay, it's called itself a nation state for the last hundred years. But everyone who knows anything about China knows it's a lot older than this. This was what China looked like with the victory of the Qin Dynasty in 221 B.C. at the end of the warring state period -- the birth of modern China. And you can see it against the boundaries of modern China. Or immediately afterward, the Han Dynasty, still 2,000 years ago. And you can see already it occupies most of what we now know as Eastern China, which is where the vast majority of Chinese lived then and live now.
Now what is extraordinary about this is, what gives China it's sense of being China, what gives the Chinese the sense of what it is to be Chinese, comes not from the last hundred years, not from the nation state period, which is what happened in the West, but from the period, if you like, of the civilization state. I'm thinking here, for example, of customs like ancestral worship, of a very distinctive notion of the state, likewise, a very distinctive notion of the family, social relationships like guanxi, Confucian values and so on. These are all things that come from the period of the civilization state. In other words, China, unlike the Western states and most countries in the world, is shaped by its sense of civilization, its existence as a civilization state, rather than as a nation state. And there's one other thing to add to this, and that is this: Of course we know China's big, huge, demographically and geographically, with a population of 1.3 billion people. What we often aren't really aware of is the fact that China is extremely diverse and very pluralistic, and in many ways very decentralized. You can't run a place on this scale simply from Beijing, even though we think this to be the case. It's never been the case.
So this is China, a civilization state, rather than a nation state. And what does it mean? Well I think it has all sorts of profound implications. I'll give you two quick ones. The first is that the most important political value for the Chinese is unity, is the maintenance of Chinese civilization. You know, 2,000 years ago, Europe: breakdown, the fragmentation of the Holy Roman Empire [Roman Empire]. It divided, and it's remained divided ever since. China, over the same time period, went in exactly the opposite direction, very painfully holding this huge civilization, civilization state together.
The second is maybe more prosaic, which is Hong Kong. Do you remember the handover of Hong Kong by Britain to China in 1997? You may remember what the Chinese constitutional proposition was. One country, two systems. And I'll lay a wager that barely anyone in the West believed them. "Window dressing. When China gets it's hands on Hong Kong, that won't be the case." 13 years on, the political and legal system in Hong Kong is as different now as it was in 1997. We were wrong. Why were we wrong? We were wrong because we thought, naturally enough, in nation state ways. Think of German unification, 1990. What happened? Well, basically the East was swallowed by the West. One nation, one system. That is the nation state mentality. But you can't run a country like China, a civilization state, on the basis of one civilization, one system. It doesn't work. So actually the response of China to the question of Hong Kong -- as it will be to the question of Taiwan -- was a natural response: one civilization, many systems.
Let me offer you another building block to try and understand China -- maybe not such a comfortable one. The Chinese have a very, very different conception of race to most other countries. Do you know, of the 1.3 billion Chinese, over 90 percent of them think they belong to the same race, the Han. Now this is completely different from the other world's most populous countries. India, the United States, Indonesia, Brazil -- all of them are multiracial. The Chinese don't feel like that. China is only multiracial really at the margins. So the question is, why? Well the reason, I think, essentially is, again, back to the civilization state. A history of at least 2,000 years, a history of conquest, occupation, absorption, assimilation and so on, led to the process by which, over time, this notion of the Han emerged -- of course, nurtured by a growing and very powerful sense of cultural identity.
Now the great advantage of this historical experience has been that, without the Han, China could never have held together. The Han identity has been the cement which has held this country together. The great disadvantage of it is that the Han have a very weak conception of cultural difference. They really believe in their own superiority, and they are disrespectful of those who are not. Hence their attitude, for example, to the Uyghurs and to the Tibetans.
Or let me give you my third building block, the Chinese state. Now the relationship between the state and society in China is very different from that in the West. Now we in the West overwhelmingly seem to think -- in these days at least -- that the authority and legitimacy of the state is a function of democracy. The problem with this proposition is that the Chinese state enjoys more legitimacy and more authority amongst the Chinese than is true with any Western state. And the reason for this is because -- well, there are two reasons, I think. And it's obviously got nothing to do with democracy, because in our terms the Chinese certainly don't have a democracy. And the reason for this is, firstly, because the state in China is given a very special -- it enjoys a very special significance as the representative, the embodiment and the guardian of Chinese civilization, of the civilization state. This is as close as China gets to a kind of spiritual role.
And the second reason is because, whereas in Europe and North America, the state's power is continuously challenged -- I mean in the European tradition, historically against the church, against other sectors of the aristocracy, against merchants and so on -- for 1,000 years, the power of the Chinese state has not been challenged. It's had no serious rivals. So you can see that the way in which power has been constructed in China is very different from our experience in Western history. The result, by the way, is that the Chinese have a very different view of the state. Whereas we tend to view it as an intruder, a stranger, certainly an organ whose powers need to be limited or defined and constrained, the Chinese don't see the state like that at all. The Chinese view the state as an intimate -- not just as an intimate actually, as a member of the family -- not just in fact as a member of the family, but as the head of the family, the patriarch of the family. This is the Chinese view of the state -- very, very different to ours. It's embedded in society in a different kind of way to what is the case in the West.
And I would suggest to you that actually what we are dealing with here, in the Chinese context, is a new kind of paradigm, which is different from anything we've had to think about in the past. Know that China believes in the market and the state. I mean, Adam Smith, already writing in the late 18th century said, "The Chinese market is larger and more developed and more sophisticated than anything in Europe." And, apart from the Mao period, that has remained more-or-less the case ever since. But this is combined with an extremely strong and ubiquitous state. The state is everywhere in China. I mean, it's leading firms, many of them are still publicly owned. Private firms, however large they are, like Lenovo, depend in many ways on state patronage. Targets for the economy and so on are set by the state. And the state, of course, its authority flows into lots of other areas -- as we are familiar with -- with something like the the one-child policy.
Moreover, this is a very old state tradition, a very old tradition of statecraft. I mean, if you want an illustration of this, the Great Wall is one. But this is another, this is the Grand Canal, which was constructed in the first instance in the fifth century B.C. and was finally completed in the seventh century A.D. It went for 1,114 miles, linking Beijing with Hangzhou and Shanghai. So there's a long history of extraordinary state infrastructural projects in China, which I suppose helps us to explain what we see today, which is something like the Three Gorges Dam and many other expressions of state competence within China. So there we have three building blocks for trying to to understand the difference that is China -- the civilization state, the notion of race and the nature of the state and its relationship to society.
And yet we still insist, by-and-large, in thinking that we can understand China by simply drawing on Western experience, looking at it through Western eyes, using Western concepts. If you want to know why we unerringly seem to get China wrong -- our predictions about what's going to happen to China are incorrect -- this is the reason. Unfortunately I think, I have to say that I think attitude towards China is that of a kind of little Westerner mentality. It's kind of arrogant. It's arrogant in the sense that we think that we are best, and therefore we have the universal measure. And secondly, it's ignorant. We refuse to really address the issue of difference. You know, there's a very interesting passage in a book by Paul Cohen, the American historian. And Paul Cohen argues that the West thinks of itself as probably the most cosmopolitan of all cultures. But it's not. In many ways, it's the most parochial, because for 200 years, the West has been so dominant in the world that it's not really needed to understand other cultures, other civilizations. Because, at the end of the day, it could, if necessary by force, get its own way. Whereas those cultures -- virtually the rest of the world, in fact -- which have been in a far weaker position, vis-a-vis the West, have been thereby forced to understand the West, because of the West's presence in those societies. And therefore, they are, as a result, more cosmopolitan in many ways than the West.
I mean, take the question of East Asia. East Asia: Japan, Korea, China, etc. -- a third of the world's population lives there, now the largest economic region in the world. And I'll tell you now, that East Asianers, people from East Asia, are far more knowledgeable about the West than the West is about East Asia. Now this point is very germane, I'm afraid, to the present. Because what's happening? Back to that chart at the beginning -- the Goldman Sachs chart. What is happening is that, very rapidly in historical terms, the world is being driven and shaped, not by the old developed countries, but by the developing world. We've seen this in terms of the G20 -- usurping very rapidly the position of the G7, or the G8. And there are two consequences of this. First, the West is rapidly losing its influence in the world. There was a dramatic illustration of this actually a year ago -- Copenhagen, climate change conference. Europe was not at the final negotiating table. When did that last happen? I would wager it was probably about 200 years ago. And that is what is going to happen in the future.
And the second implication is that the world will inevitably, as a consequence, become increasingly unfamiliar to us, because it'll be shaped by cultures and experiences and histories that we are not really familiar with, or conversant with. And at last, I'm afraid -- take Europe, America is slightly different -- but Europeans by and large, I have to say, are ignorant, are unaware about the way the world is changing. Some people -- I've got an English friend in China, and he said, "The continent is sleepwalking into oblivion." Well, maybe that's true, maybe that's an exaggeration. But there's another problem which goes along with this -- that Europe is increasingly out of touch with the world -- and that is a sort of loss of a sense of the future. I mean, Europe once, of course, once commanded the future in it's confidence. Take the 19th century for example. But this, alas, is no longer true.
If you want to feel the future, if you want to taste the future, try China -- there's old Confucius. This is a railway station the like of which you've never seen before. It doesn't even look like a railway station. This is the new Guangzhou railway station for the high-speed trains. China already has a bigger network than any other country in the world and will soon have more than all the rest of the world put together. Or take this: Now this is an idea, but it's an idea to by tried out shortly in a suburb of Beijing. Here you have a megabus, on the upper deck carries about 2,000 people. It travels on rails down a suburban road, and the cars travel underneath it. And it does speeds of up to about 100 miles an hour. Now this is the way things are going to move, because China has a very specific problem, which is different from Europe and different from the United States. China has huge numbers of people and no space. So this is a solution to a situation where China's going to have many, many, many cities over 20 million people.
Okay, so how would I like to finish? Well, what should our attitude be towards this world that we see very rapidly developing before us? I think there will be good things about it and there will be bad things about it. But I want to argue, above all, a big picture positive for this world. For 200 years, the world was essentially governed by a fragment of the human population. That's what Europe and North America represented. The arrival of countries like China and India -- between them 38 percent of the world's population -- and others like Indonesia and Brazil and so on, represent the most important single act of democratization in the last 200 years. Civilizations and cultures, which had been ignored, which had no voice, which were not listened to, which were not known about, will have a different sort of representation in this world. As humanists, we must welcome, surely, this transformation. And we will have to learn about these civilizations.
This big ship here was the one sailed in by Zheng He in the early 15th century on his great voyages around the South China Sea, the East China Sea and across the Indian Ocean to East Africa. The little boat in front of it was the one in which, 80 years later, Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic. (Laughter) Or, look carefully at this silk scroll made by ZhuZhou in 1368. I think they're playing golf. Christ, the Chinese even invented golf.
Welcome to the future. Thank you.
(Applause)