From Sandton to Shanghai

(The world’s 3rd and 5th tallest buildings are etched in the background of Shanghai’s oldest tea house. Photo: Julian Hewitt)

China is a confident nation. You have to be to call your country the Middle Kingdom. One only needs to look at a Chinese map of the world to see that China and not Europe is placed in the centre. As a Eurocentric country, to South Africans it seems only natural that Europe should be in the middle of the globe. After all, the Greenwich Meridian runs through London and not Beijing.

However, Beijing has its own meridian and if you stand in Tiananmen Square, you stand in the very heart of the Chinese world. Look north and you see the Forbidden City – home to Ming and Qing dynasties and site of the Imperial City during the Mongol Yuan Dynasty. Rather significantly, the newest edition to Beijing’s sacred meridian is the Olympic Stadium.

It was in 1421 that China was last open to the rest of the world. After a fire ravaged the Forbidden City, it was taken as a sign that heaven’s mandate to the emperor was under threat. China, as is custom after long periods of history, closed ranks on the outside world. Foreign envoys were recalled, books burned and China’s advanced navigation programme stopped in its tracks.

It took another 400 years for Western colonial powers to pry an unwilling China from its reclusive shell. But China was not quite ready to face the world. The country was weak and divided. It took an extended struggle by the Communists to win the hearts and minds of the peasants in overcoming China’s Nationalist Party, who then fled to Taiwan. Under the ruthless leadership of helmsman Mao, a long divided China became reunited. As the Chinese say, if the old does not go out, the new cannot come in.

Subsequently, China was been reclaiming its global status. Hong Kong and Macao are back in the Mainland fold. Taiwan’s influence has been whittled down to diplomatic relations with just over 20 of some of the world’s most insignificant nations.

Meanwhile, the country’s economic machine has been powering full steam ahead - smoothing over the chasms of moving from a communist to a market economy with relative ease. China has been like a coiled spring waiting to be sprung. History will recall how Deng Xiaoping launched China’s Special Economic Zones in 1979 that would become the engine behind the south and east coast’s economic revival.

Towards the end of 2001, under the rule of the Central Communist Party, China took a real great leap forward in joining the ranks of the World Trade Organisation. Now the country awaits the Beijing Olympics with trepid anticipation. The world will be invited back to China on a scale not seen for over 500 years.

While the planet is becoming more China centric, in China’s mind the country is merely coming round the full circle. After all, the country was the most technologically advanced nation on earth in the Middle Ages and through its sheer size, China can also claim to have been the world’s largest economy for 1700 of the last 2000 years.

Australia’s opposition leader and head of the Labour Party, Kevin Rudd, made a lasting impression on the world’s second most powerful man. Much to Chinese President, Hu Jintao’s delight, at a recent APEC meeting, Kevin addressed President Hu in fluent Mandarin – the fruits of having served as a diplomat in Beijing for a number of years.

With this in mind, I am earnestly hoping that Comrade Zuma has also picked up some Chinese from his struggle days.