Zhang: Historically, there is a part of the Chinese that wants to change and a part that wants to remain the same. We are in a state of conflict, both as individuals and as a society. In the Qing dynasty we shut ourselves off from the outside world, mainly because we wanted to keep our culture and our civilization. Part of the reason for this was unacceptable: we thought we were superior to the rest of the world. When we finally opened our doors, we found that we were backward compared with Western countries. Now we have opened our doors again and with this openness we are, and will be, more and more influenced by Western countries. We are afraid we will lose our culture, our characteristics. I want to change, because the current situation in China is not so satisfactory, but at the same time I worry that when we eliminate the shortcomings in our culture maybe we will also lose the essential part of our culture, the good part of our culture.

Huang: Even now, when Western influence is considerable and intrusive, I don’t think the Chinese will lose their culture because this represents a very thick accumulation of history. It cannot change easily, even if some of the surface things change. There is a very strong core culture inside every one of us. Even if our way of life changes, that culture will not change. Our long history constantly reappears and recurs. Now we are in a period of loss. I cannot deny that. We are lost because of the underlying conflict between modernity and tradition. But I believe that something new will come out of this: a unique China will remain.

Gao: We have been through worse periods, for example when we were colonized. I am more confident. We are in a new period when we are not being invaded but we are being influenced by the West. But for sure we will not be Westernized, the core culture will still be there.

CONTESTED MODERNITY

The balance of power in the world is changing with remarkable speed. In 1973 it was dominated by a developed world which consisted of the United States, Western Europe and Japan, together with what Angus Maddison describes as ‘Western offshoots’ like Australia: between them, they accounted for 58.7 % of the world’s GDP but only 18.4 % of the world’s population. By 2001, the share of global GDP accounted for by these countries had fallen to 52.0 % while their share of the world’s population had declined to 14.0 %. The most dramatic change was the rising share of global GDP accounted for by Asia, which, excluding Japan, increased from 16.4 % in 1973 to 30.9 % in 2001, while its share of the world’s population rose from 54.6 % in 1973 to 57.4 % in 2001. [412] This picture will change even more dramatically over the next few decades. It is estimated that by 2032 the share of global GDP of the so-called BRICs, namely Brazil, Russia, India and China, will exceed that of the G7, namely the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Japan. And by 2027 it is projected that China will overtake the United States to become the world’s largest economy. [413] To illustrate how increasingly diverse the world is likely to become, it is envisaged that the combined GDP of another eleven developing countries (Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Korea, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Turkey and Vietnam) could reach two-thirds of the level of the G7 by 2050. [414] Meanwhile, the developing world’s share of the global population will steadily rise, though Asia’s will remain relatively constant at just below 60 %, with that of India and China, the two most populous countries in the world, enjoying a combined share of 37.3 % in 2001, [415] projected to fall very slightly. The proportion of the world living in the developed countries, meanwhile, will continue to fall steadily.

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries marked the Age of the West. But this era is now coming to an end. By the middle of this century, when the West will be responsible for a great deal less than half the world’s GDP, the Age of the West will have passed. The rise of China, India, Brazil, Korea, Taiwan and many other developing countries marks a huge shift in the balance of economic power, but it also has much wider implications. Economic prosperity serves to transform the self-confidence and self-image of societies, thereby enabling them to project their political and cultural values more widely. A striking characteristic of the Asian tigers has been the way in which, during the process of modernization, they have steadily shifted from a seemingly insatiable desire for all things Western as the symbol of the modernity they so craved — combined with a rejection of the indigenous, which was seen as synonymous with poverty and backwardness — to a growing affirmation of the indigenous in place of the Western. In the 1970s, for example, few Taiwanese would entertain the idea of traditional Chinese furniture, but by the early nineties this attitude was starting to be superseded by a growing interest in traditional artefacts. Similarly in pop music, for example, Western influences were replaced over the same period by local and regional mando-pop (Chinese-composed pop music sung in Mandarin). [416] In other words, tradition, rather than being rejected, has been progressively rearticulated as part of a new and native modernity. [417] The same general picture applies across the whole of East Asia, including China. In 1980 few knew or cared much about other countries in the region: all eyes were turned to the global mecca, the United States. The lines of communication were overwhelmingly east- west — in terms of information, music, politics, technology, education, film, aspiration and desire. Most East Asians knew far more about what happened in New York, Washington or London than in Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing or Kuala Lumpur. East Asians still remain remarkably intimate with what emanates from the United States — certainly compared with the overwhelming ignorance that Americans display towards East Asia — but the situation has changed markedly. Hung Tze Jan, the Taiwanese publisher quoted earlier, well describes this changed mentality: ‘When I was at high school and university, we focused all our efforts on Western literature and ideas. My son is in his early teens and in contrast to me he has the opportunity to create something new — to read both Chinese and Western literature.’ [418]

In the future, then, instead of there being one dominant Western modernity (itself, of course, a pluralistic phenomenon), there will be many distinct modernities. It is clear that we have already entered this era of multiple modernities: by the middle of the century we will be firmly ensconced in it. Hitherto, we have lived in a Western-made and Western-dominated world, in which the economic, political and cultural traffic has been overwhelmingly one-directional, from the West to others. That is already beginning to change, becoming a two-way, or more precisely a multi-directional process. An interesting illustration of how the old pecking order is steadily being disrupted, even inverted, can be found in the world of cricket. Formerly, cricket was largely dominated by England, together with two former white settler colonies, Australia and New Zealand. But in 2008 India, which already accounted for around 80 per cent of the game’s revenues, established the Indian Premier League and its eight teams, representing various Indian cities and states, proceeded to sign up many of the world’s best cricketers, much to the chagrin of the English cricket authorities, who have always thought of themselves as the centre of the game. The future of cricket now manifestly belongs on the Indian subcontinent, where the character, flavour and evolution of the game will increasingly be determined. [419] If Manchester United and Liverpool enjoy a global fan base in football, then the likes of Punjab and Chennai may well blaze a similar trail in cricket.