Dawn Ritch, Columnist
This column has had occasion in the past to remark on the many young Chinese classical musicians making an international living abroad from their art, having been trained in China. Some of them are international names.
There are also more symphony orchestras in China than anywhere else, including Western countries.
This is a sign of the Chinese people's immense cultivation. Yet, English is not their first language, and Western music scores must be more foreign still.
It was the ambition of every British middle class family once long years ago to have a piano in the front room, where it could be seen from the street. Their daughters played light classical music and the gentlemen would stand around them, smoking cigars and singing. It was not a money-making venture. But what the young Chinese are doing today is playing serious classical music and making serious money from it.
Huge numbers of Chinese people, living and working in China themselves, have also joined the class of the very rich and are now among the world's foremost consumers of luxury. When the people of any country have the leisure and means to acquire international art and drive art prices, they have become the inhabitants of a nation of the first rank.
A Far East correspondent for a British newspaper, Michael Sheridan, recently wrote: "Britons whose ancestors lived in the Far East have been urged to 'look in the attic' for forgotten souvenirs as prices of antique Chinese porcelain soar to new records.
Traditional collectors
"Buyers from China's growing class of rich entrepreneurs have joined the ranks of traditional collectors at sales by Christie's and Sotheby's, in Hong Kong, the centre of the booming trade. Competing for rare examples of imperial Chinese porcelain, they have pushed up prices to stratospheric levels.
"Prices are rising because rich Chinese want to buy back their nation's heritage. There are an estimated 170,000 millionaires just in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan, who are now being joined by wealthy mainland Chinese. Sales in Hong Kong have seen Christie's realising £85M and Sotheby's £60M in May and June this year."
To this must be added that contemporary Chinese art is also booming in China as mainland Chinese buy and move to apartments. Compare this with our own island, where the value of Jamaican art has dropped 25 per cent according to the experts.
Every new, energy generating plant built in China adds double the capacity of England, and they are commissioned with regularity. The huge, stainless steel gates on their embassy in Kingston were made in Chinese steel mills. Beijing's air chokes from this rapid rate of industrialisation, and the fumes from the regular cyclical adding of hundreds of thousands of new cars to new roads.
The rise of China started in the 1980s when Deng Xiaoping made the dramatic strategic decision to free up the economy by unleashing the Chinese spirit of hard work and entrepreneurship, while holding the reigns of a centralised political system. Unlike Sukarno's 'guided democracy' in Indonesia, Deng and the Chinese leadership opted for less democratic development and more economic freedom.
Such a strategic decision should not be surprising because the historical culture of the Chinese is heavily materialistic. Money-making is in their blood. True, the ancient Chinese respected intellect more than commerce, and scholars were the most respected class in the society. But the heart of the Chinese people revolves around their Confucian values and the pragmatic approach to life. About 80 per cent of China's foreign exchange reserves are held in liquid U.S. treasury bonds.
The Economist, on October 28, wrote, "By the end of October, China's foreign exchange reserves are likely to top $1 trillion, twice their level two years ago and more than one-fifth of global reserves. This handsome sum would be enough to buy all the gold sitting in central banks' vaults (indeed, twice over) or almost all of London's residential property."
The New York Times carried this front page story on December 9: "With its $1 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, surging military spending and diplomatic initiatives in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Beijing has begun asserting its interests far beyond its borders."
Coincidence
The story was headlined 'China, Shy Giant, Shows Signs of Losing False Modesty'. It appeared the day after my column was submitted to The Gleaner. So it was a complete coincidence that mine was on 'Appalling Chinese Etiquette'.
Last week, I described the horrible kowtowing of the African heads of state to the Chinese president at the African summit, in China. This summit was obviously the crowning glory to the Chinese grand design for Africa.
Aid and investment in Africa by the Chinese is part of a long-term plan to create linkages with their economic power base that they have so carefully crafted to co-exist with their centralized political machinery.
But the Africans were made to look totally ridiculous at the opening ceremony. The details are too painful to recount again. Suffice it to say that the Chinese had the Africans heads of state line up like sheep on the edge of a red carpet in order to be presented to President Hu Jintao.
One billboard in Beijing, purporting to illustrate the glories of Africa, even depicted a tribesman with a bone through his nose - from Papua New Guinea, which is not even in Africa.
The Chinese need to hire some good Western advisers in etiquette. This will be nigh unto impossible, because they trust no one but themselves. This is why they use their own builders and their own designers wherever they go in the world. It appears they will neither be trapped nor deceived again.
But if China is going to shed her false modesty, she need not be so clumsy about it. It is a paradox that a country with so much drive and ancient sophistication should be such a klutz on the world stage. A nation whose foreign exchange reserves are expected to reach US$2 trillion by 2010 ought to be worthy of its productive people.
