Major structural shifts have already started taking place in the world, affecting its weather patterns, causing frightening extremes in global temperatures, its winds and in the rise of its waters. We are seeing structural changes in the world's economies and its financial systems.
The balance of power seem, to be changing. Europe is nearly bankrupt. The Greek crisis is pulling others down as the Euro, once a proud unifying currency, now flounders. There are terrible tensions and unrest sweeping across the Middle East - what many refer to as the Arab Spring that started in February this year. This has convulsed many Mediterranean countries in a quagmire of anger and killing.
The United States is heading towards recession and is deep in debt. Poverty looms ahead for many. There are protests on Wall Street. The share markets slumps and continues to slump. Only China, and to a smaller extent Russia, appear richer and with fewer problems. It seems that the world's richest lists, measuring wealth painstakingly compiled by FORBES magazine annually, now feature Russian Oligarchs and Chinese multibillionaires.
Meanwhile, statistics reveal the RICH are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer. The Middle Class, once the bulwark of the world's economic systems - people like you, my dear readers and I, us all are being increasingly squeezed!
Are the scenarios of 2011 reflecting the changing energies of Period 8? Will China emerge as the world's new superpower? Will China take over the role the United States has assumed all this while? I have been asked this many times. Going around the globe talking about feng shui and about destiny analysis, I am frequently asked If this is going to happen?
WE ARE AFTER ALL IN THE PERIOD OF 8?
Honestly, I do not have a straight answer. As I write this, news has just come in that the great STEVE JOBS has died (see our tribute story on this brilliant man of our times elsewhere in the blog) and my first thought is - Can China produce a man such as Steve Jobs - a man whose brilliance and creativity has single-handedly changed the way we all live, work, play, listen to music do anything at all... such visionary brainpower can only emerge within a system that breeds it. Can China produce a Steve Jobs?
It is hard to say. I struggle to answer. Living in Malaysia, I have a foot in both Western and Chinese cultures. I am very lucky because I live not just amongst fellow Chinese here but also among Indians and Muslims whose cultural backgrounds have influenced and shaped my judgements. I adore the genuine kindness and family closeness of my Malay friends and I try to emulate them - really, I have observed they are incredibly caring of their extended family and I really respect this that I see in them. And I absolutely love the depth of the Indian traditions, their passion in their beliefs and their beautiful Gods and Goddesses.
So I must confess I am not a diehard Chinese patriot - my patriotism is firmly directed towards my own wonderful country where news from around the world flow freely to us so we can form balanced judgements. I am mindful of the increasing might and power of China, for it looms strongly. But I also embrace the sophisticated niceties and super excesses of Western culture.
I was educated under the British Colonial education system and have been forever grateful for this. My primary and secondary education was in the Convent and I was taught by the most wonderful Irish nuns, so underlying the motivation to excel, we were also taught morals and civics.
The Chinese system of educating its young is through rote learning. Children are taught to copy and to memorize. In past decades, China's phenomenal growth was fueled by it becoming the world's manufacturing base. China was and is amazing at copying everything the rest of the world makes.
China can make everything and anything better, stronger, cheaper and faster than anyone else. No one could compete with the phenomenal productivity of China. And it was not just in retail goods they excelled. China was also great at copying every technological advance and breakthrough made by the inventors and designers of the West! In recent years, they had become SO good at copying they could even create artificial milk, fake medicinal herbal roots, manmade eggs, and meat buns (stuffed with cardboard) to name a few!
Creativity was "inspired" by the greed for higher profits, Incidents like these created such big scandals that Chinese made food products and medicines are now viewed with suspicion despite ferocious action taken by the authorities against the unscrupulous business people responsible.
Today, wealthy Chinese nationals look beyond China to accumulate assets. They own foreign companies in Asia, run factories in Africa, build roads in Nepal, exert influence in every emerging nation of the world and even villages in Italy and streets in France have been snapped up by investment-hungry Chinese businessmen. Properties in cities like New York and London, Singapore and Los Angeles are extremely popular too.
Growth in the rest of the world may have slowed, and the global debt crisis casts a long shadow, but China remains the world's major manufacturer and the US's biggest creditor. The Chinese Yuan might even overtake the dollar as the principal trading and reserve currency. Around the world, strings of schools offer Mandarin classes to children as young as three. My grandson Joshy who turned 3 in October started learning mandarin six months ago in his international kindergarten.
Wherever one looks, one sees evidence of China's presence. But is China really influencing the world OR is it that China and its new generation have been seduced by the free-style capitalism of the rest of the world? This ends Part 1 of China Rising Economy. You can continue to read Part 2 at the next post.