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COPYRIGHT 2004 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)
China is the future, or so many people say these days. Personally, I feel that I've heard that one before about other Far-Eastern places (weren't Japan, and then the tiger economies, going to overhaul and dominate the West?). But there's no doubt that great changes are taking place: huge buildings shoot up in weeks, massive fortunes are made. There is no better place, T mused, as I flew into Shanghai a few months ago, to think about globalisation--I the cultural sort, as well as the industrial and the monetary.
China is of course the great example of what happens to you if you don't globalise. Famously, in the 15th century, the Chinese government concluded--quite rightly--that the Middle Kingdom was more advanced in every way than the rest of the world. So the Chinese explorers' fleets were burnt, and the Chinese took no further interest in outsiders for a few hundred years. As a result, China was in no condition to resist when hairy barbarians turned up in the 19th...
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