独立报：2008: The year a new superpower is born
By Cahal Milmo Published: 01 January 2008Herecomes the world's newest superpower. The rest of the world is gloomilycontemplating economic slowdown and even recession. Not in Beijing.China is set to make 2008 the year it asserts its status as a globalcolossus by flexing frightening economic muscle on internationalmarkets, enjoying unprecedented levels of domestic consumption andshowcasing itself to a watching world with a glittering £20bn OlympicGames.
Theworld's most populous nation will mark the next 12 months with acoming-of-age party that will confirm its transformation in threedecades from one of the poorest countries of the 20th century into theglobe's third-largest economy, its hungriest (and most polluting)consumer and the engine room of economic growth.
Once regarded at best as a sporting also-ran, China is widely tippedto top the medals table in the Beijing Olympics in August, an event inwhich the country's leadership is investing huge importance andprestige.
It will be a celebration viewed with consternation by many, asChina's authoritarian regime shows little sign of relaxing its grip onpower and continues to expand its influence overseas from the oilfields and metal mines of Africa to the City of London. Appropriately,2008 marks the Year of the Rat, an animal considered in Chinesefolklore to be a harbinger and protector of material prosperity.
Britain will feel the full power of the new superpower's confidence.This month, for the first time, China's state-controlled banks willbegin spending some of its $1.33trn (£670bn) in foreign currencyreserves on London's financial markets. Beijing has ruled that Britainshould become only the second destination after Hong Kong to be allowedto receive investors' money via so-called "sovereign funds" – the hugestate-controlled surpluses built up by cash-rich economies from Qatarto South Korea. Throw in the biggest round of Chinese art exhibitionsever to tour these islands and the oriental bias to 2008 becomes evenmore pronounced.
The UK has made it clear that Beijing's investment, which couldreach as much as £45bn, is welcome and it follows the recentacquisition by Chinese banks of stakes in such blue chip stocks asBarclays and the US private equity firm Blackstone, at a cost of $3bn.The talk in the finance houses is that the label "Made in China" willsoon be replaced by one reading "Owned by China". Takeover speculationhas provoked concern in some quarters at the wisdom of selling largeassets to organs of a democratically unaccountable state where thefinancial sector remains underdeveloped.
China's trade surplus with the rest of the world will widen from£130bn in 2007 to £145bn this year as it tries to tame its burgeoningeconomy amid pressure from Washington and Brussels to narrow the tradegap and raise its currency's value.
Stephen Perry, chairman of the 48 Group Club, a Sino-Britishbusiness network, said: "China has become an international player muchmore quickly than it would have wanted to do, in part to meet its needfor natural resources. But I don't think China has any intention oftaking on American power. The West is important to China in this stageof its development as it seeks inward investment. But that is beginningto be much less important and it is looking more to the development ofa strong Asia, in which it is one of the strongest players because ofits enormous consumer base."
But while some may question Beijing's political motives, there is nodoubt that China has arrived as serious power-broker. Last year, itsurpassed America as the greatest driver of global economic demand. Itis also widely predicted to overtake Germany as the world's thirdlargest economy this year.
While nearly all of its success since Premier Deng Xiaoping beganChina's economic transformation in 1978 has been driven by producinggoods for the outside world, the country has a burgeoning urbanmiddle-class whose insatiable appetite for consumer durables is hopedto put the economy on a more stable footing. One London-based luxurymarkets analyst said: "The Chinese are waking up to quality brands in away that is quite exciting. There is a real sense that what the Westonce kept to itself is now available to them, or at least the urban fewwho can afford it."
The arrival of conspicuous consumption and entry of Shanghai'ssovereign funds into foreign investment markets, with London soonexpected to be followed by the US, is symptomatic of a Chinaincreasingly willing to assert itself as a political and culturalinfluence, according to experts.
From global warming to Darfur and North Korea, the views of Beijingand its willingness to act have become prerequisites to any solution tothe world's most pressing problems.
The Chinese New Year on 7 February will herald the beginning of thelargest-ever festival of China's culture in Britain with an accent oncontemporary artists in fields from video art to neon signs. But otherswarn 2008 has as much potential to be a disaster as a triumph forBeijing's attempts to herald its own arrival on the world stage. TheChinese capital will host 31,000 journalists for the Olympics and anysign of protest or an attempt to quell dissent with violence would becatastrophic.
The drum beat of protectionism is already sounding in America andwill only get louder in a presidential election year, putting pressureon both Republican and Democratic candidates to take a "strong" stanceon China. In the meantime, Beijing will have to grapple with issuesfrom rising inflation to Taiwan, which holds presidential elections inMarch, to its status as the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxideand likely role as the largest consumer of primary energy resources.
Dr Kerry Brown, associate fellow of the Royal Institute ofInternational Affairs, said: "There are good reasons to feel prettyuncomfortable about 2008 for China. The world will be rightly watchingChina in August for the Olympics. But it will only take one truncheonblow to turn it away from a story about sport to one about repression." [size=5]New cultural revolution arrives in Britain on a wave of creativity and confidence[/size]
By Ciar Byrne, Arts & Media Correspondent Published: 01 January 2008
Skyscrapersreach into the air above Shanghai, a symbol of emergent economic might.In Beijing, the "birds nest" stadium is woven into the urban landscape,serving notice of a sporting revolution. Yet China's astonishingdomination of the world stage this year will have a third dimension,and it will be played out in Britain.
Chinese culture steps out of the shadows in 2008, reminding the world of its rich legacy of music, dance and visual arts. However, those expecting throwbacks to the Ming dynasty or totalitarian art will be disappointed. For the UK is about to be flooded by a new wave of creativity unlike anything it has seen before.
The Chinese New Year begins on 7 February, the start of the year of the rat. It will also mark the beginning of China Now, the UK's largest festival of Chinese culture, which will continue up to and after Olympics in August, with more than 800 events nationwide. As part of the festival, the organisers are staging China Art Now, a trail of work by new and established artists which will span the UK.
One of the artists featured is Cao Fei, who works in the virtual online world Second Life, where she has created RMB City, a fictional place named after the Chinese People's Currency (the renminbi or RMB), and a hybrid of communism, socialism and capitalism.
Highlighting a very different aspect of China, a sculpture trail will include works by Sui Jianguo, who has created two giant, bronze-cast Mao suits, which will be exhibited in public gardens across Britain. The head of the sculpture department at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, Jianguo first realised the disappearing cultural significance of the Mao suit when he visited the birthplace of the Chinese revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen in Guangdong province in the summer of 1996.
China Art Now is also expected to feature a huge brontosaurus installation, inspired by Damien Hirst's animals in formaldehyde, by Xu Zhen, known as the maverick of the Chinese art world, to be situated outside London's Hayward Gallery.
And He An, a young artist who explores the contemporary environment of China, is creating four neon signs, which will be displayed on iconic buildings around Britain.
The sound artists Zhong Minjie, Yan Jun and Wang Changcun are creating installations at the Southbank Centre ballroom, bringing sounds from the streets, shops, bars and workplaces of modern China to London. At a number of locations, headphone trails will guide listeners through a Chinese soundscape in their local area. When, for example, they pass a school playground, they will hear sounds from a schoolyard in China.
Sadler's Wells, meanwhile, is staging a season of Chinese dance in May and June 2008. The dancer and choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui has teamed up with the artist Antony Gormley to create a piece inspired by the martial arts of the Buddhist monks from the Shaolin Temple.
Alistair Spalding, the chief executive and artistic director of Sadler's Wells, said: "The more I've worked with the Chinese, the more I realise how different we are as people. They've had this huge event in terms of the Cultural Revolution – a huge weight over the creative process. They're just really coming out of that.
"In some areas of the arts, particularly the visual arts, they've really raced ahead; they've become quite avant-garde. Because it was so repressed, it's come out in quite an extreme way. China is going to be an absolute force."
China has a very strong classical dance tradition and the impresario Victor Hochhauser is bringing the National Ballet of China to Covent Garden for a week of performances including a new production of Swan Lake by Natalia Makarova and Raise The Red Lantern, based on the controversial 1991 film of the same name.
Hochhauser's China Season will also feature Acrobatic Swan Lake, a radical makeover of the ballet by the Guandong Acrobatic Company, which combines classical ballet with pole balancing, rope walking, and jumping through fire hoops.
The Liverpool Biennial, meanwhile, is working with the artist Ai Weiwei, who designed the Beijing Olympic stadium, on a proposal for an ambitious installation, which would consist of a giant spider's web, made of illuminated crystalline strands stretching across the city's Albert Dock.
There will also be a design spectacular, China Design Now, at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Zhang Hongxing, the co-curator of the exhibition summed up what 2008 will mean for his country. "Despite China's economic importance, its contemporary culture remains mysterious and remote in the West." Bringing it to the UK would, he added, present the world with "a more balanced and layered picture of contemporary China". [size=5]Sean O'Grady: Their spending power may save us all from recession[/size]
Published: 01 January 2008
In2008, China will contribute more to world economic growth than theUnited States. Were it not for China, in other words, the world wouldbe staring at a recession right now. Untroubled by the credit crunch,China is still set to grow in the next year by something like 10 percent. At that rate its economy will double again in seven years time,and it will be well on the way to becoming the world's second-largesteconomy, outstripping Germany and Japan. It may take just a decade tocatch up with the US.
Butfor next year at any rate we should be thankful that China willprobably save us from a slump. Even China's vast trade surplus withAmerica – they are now each other's largest trading partners – maybegin to correct itself thanks to the dramatic devaluation of thedollar and a more modest revaluation of the renminbi. That will helpresolve one of the great "global imbalances" in economics and easegeopolitical tensions too, if it muffles populist US calls for moreprotection.
Meanwhile, we can still expect the various Chinese sovereign wealthfunds, with trillions of dollars at their disposal, to carry on takingstrategic stakes in major Western companies such as the one in Barclaysthat was acquired last year.
But are the Chinese using an undervalued currency to deliberatelybuild up enormous trade surpluses that are then used to buy Westernknow-how and technology? Will we see more intellectual property andfactory equipment crated up and sent east, as happened with MG Rover?Expect a controversy about the role and motives of such massive Chineseinvestments to become a renewed source of controversy – especiallywithin the EU.
However, there are signs that the trajectory of China's rise may notbe quite as astronomic as we have come to expect; 2008 could be yearwhen China faces its most serious financial crisis since Deng Xiao Pinginitiated the market reform process 30 years ago. Western China remainslargely agrarian and poor in stark contrast to the modernindustrialised east. Beijing's rhetoric about balance, harmony andrestoration of Confucius into official thinking has done little toresolve the question of such unequal growth. The rural poor areespecially hard-hit by inflation in the price of basic foodstuffs. Justas Chinese growth has bid up the world price of oil so it has with food.
Inflation generally is accelerating as the economy shows signs ofoverheating. Are the Chinese authorities and banks ready to deal withsuch a problem? Most perilously, what happens if the bubble that is theChinese stock market goes pop? The Shanghai market rose a further 161per cent in 2007, and too many Chinese cleaners and cabbies have pouredtheir life savings into what is basically a gamble. The rest of us canonly hope their luck holds.
[i]The writer is the Independent's Economics Editor[/i] 英媒体新年头版谈中国：巨人崛起中仍面临难题
巨人迅速崛起
2008年，新的超级大国将会到来。当全世界都在为经济衰退黯然伤神时，只有中国处在喜悦之中。中国在国际市场上的地位、前所未有的国内消费能力，以及上百亿美元总投资额的奥运会，都使得它在2008年以一个国际巨人的形象备受瞩目。
接下来的12个月里，人们将见证这个世界最多人口的国家，在一个成熟政党的带领下阔步发展。在过去的30多年里，中国由一个20世纪的贫困国家，一举成为全球第三大经济体，它的消费者拥有超强购买力，经济持续快速增长。
在上一届奥运会，中国成为金牌榜上的榜眼。今年的8月份，作为东道主的中国有望冲击金牌数量第一名。全国上下都对这场体育盛事寄予极高的期望。
英国也感受到这个新晋超级大国的自信。这个月是中国首次在伦敦金融市场投资自己的外汇储备，总额高达6700亿英镑。中国政府规定，英国将成为继香港之后，被允许接受名为“主权基金”投资的地区。
走向“中国拥有”
英国明确表示，欢迎来自中国的投资，这一数字已经达到450亿英镑。2007年7月，中国政府控股的中国国家开发银行计划投资少则30.4亿美元、多则 135亿美元参股英国巴克莱银行。在此前的两个月，中国政府同意将30亿美元的外汇储备投资于黑石集团(BlackstoneGroup)，当时正值这家美国私人资本巨头进行首次公开募股（IPO）前夕。
中国在国际金融市场上被全世界所熟知的“中国制造”标志，很快将被“中国拥有”所代替。然而，外国政府基金从债权人向资产拥有人的转变有可能引发东道国的激烈反应，中国的金融市场也仍旧不发达。
中国的全球贸易顺差将从2007年的1300亿英镑扩大到今年的1450亿，除了控制自己的经济发展，它还受到来自美国和欧盟的压力，要求缩小贸易额差距并让人民币升值。
促进中英经济交流的英国48集团俱乐部主席史蒂芬·佩里表示，“中国迅速成为国际市场的参与者，发展速度大大超乎它自己的设想，其部分原因也是因为它要满足自然资源的需求。但我不认为中国有意要取代美国的地位。在这个发展阶段，中国寻求对内投资，西方国家对中国至关重要。但随后，它们的重要性将减弱，因为中国正在追求一个强大亚洲的发展，它将依靠自己广大的消费者基础，成为重要的成员。”
仍面临难题
毫无疑问，中国在权力舞台上也发挥了弥足轻重的作用。去年，它取代美国成为全球经济需求的主要推动者。它还被预测在今年取代德国成为世界第三大经济体。
邓小平在1978年的经济改革取得巨大成功，中国为全世界生产商品。现在，中国的中产阶级也在萌芽和规模扩大之中，他们持续的消费需求将让经济基础变得更加稳健。一位伦敦的奢侈品市场分析员表示，“中国人逐渐重视对名牌商品的消费，这令人感到激动。曾经属于西方世界的东西，也向他们敞开大门，至少一小部分城市人口可以消费得起。”
对奢侈品的消费和从上海注入外国金融市场的主权基金，都是中国逐渐施加政治和文化影响力的标志。从全球变暖到朝鲜核问题，中国的观点和行动都成为解决世界议题的先决条件。2月7日的中国农历新年，将迎来英国有史以来规模最大的一次中国当代文化艺术节。这次重在展示中国当代艺术的活动，将囊括一系列摄影、霓虹灯等展览。呈现中国当代艺术的“中国美术进行时”活动将在2月晚些时候开幕，巡展城市有格拉斯哥、爱丁堡、纽卡斯尔和利物浦。
但是，美国的保护主义势力正在抬头，在今年的总统大选年里还会更加严重。这使得共和党和民主党候选人都不得不对中国采取“强硬”姿态。同时，中国还将面临作为世界最大二氧化碳排放国以及最大一次性能源消费国的问题。皇家国际事务协会的克里·布朗博士表示：“这些都是我替中国的2008年担忧的原因。全世界都在8月份望着中国，他们关注着中国的奥运。” 城阙辛苦!敬礼~ 绝对是强人！佩服！ Who can stop China from rising rapidly????????
We still have a long way to go!!!;time ;time ;tim ∶118 英文课时间。 中国话题现在已经每天出现在欧美的各大报纸上了，世界对中国的了解会越来越多。
页:
[1]