THE safe landing yesterday of China’s second manned space mission may prove to be the moment when the world changes its perception of the country. From now on, people may stop thinking about China as a still backward economy whose phenomenally fast growth may be currently driving global trade but whose progress in other fields such as science is nothing to make the world sit up and take notice. It is time for the world to start recognizing that China is about to become a sophisticated technological as well as economic giant.
It was remarkable how little international coverage was given to the five-day orbital mission of the Shenzhou VI spacecraft and its two astronauts. In contrast, the mission was followed with bated breath by ordinary Chinese. Its safe completion has produced an extraordinary outflow of pride that China has shown the world what it can do. There seems little doubt that inherent in the low-key global media coverage is the prevalent feeling, particularly in North America and Europe, that China is merely following economic and technological trends and thus aping the achievements of the First World.
Such a view is seriously wrong. The Chinese have always been brilliantly innovative. They invented the compass, paper-making, gunpowder and printing and 600 years ago, a Chinese admiral led the Great Fleet in an exploration of the Pacific and Indian Oceans — almost 100 years before Columbus sailed from Europe to America. Despite the fact that their space program once benefited from technological input from Russia and other countries, (though not the US), there is no denying that this was a Chinese achievement. This is why the success of the Shenzhou VI mission has mattered so much to the man in the street. Now a nation that is already quietly proud of its phenomenal economic achievements has reason to feel good about itself on technological grounds as well. Such well-being will add to the dynamism that is already projecting the country in the direction of superpower status.
This development will, however, be of concern to both Washington and Moscow. The Americans now see that their economic, not to say military, hegemony is shortly to be challenged by an assertive and supremely confident China. For Moscow the story is different. The Russians have dropped virtually every economic opportunity that the Chinese have chosen to seize. Some will argue that this was because they went for political reform first and then fudged and fumbled economic transformation into a confused mass of corruption. The Chinese, by contrast, have maintained political control while unleashing their nation’s commercial genius. The late Deng Xiaoping used Marxist theory to demonstrate that China had not yet passed through the necessary capitalist phase before true Marxism could arise as an historical inevitability. This brilliant political insight has underpinned the remarkable economic and technological advances of recent years and is powering further achievements which the developed world underestimates at its peril.
