From the “Reflections of a Zen Buddhist: Epigram from the Ming Dynasty”, we learn that if a man, with a jar of wine beside him, takes the heavens as a tent and the earth as a mat, he is in harmony with life-giving forces.
Dynastic inebriatedness was ineluctably linked with governmental high-handedness in old China. In modern China, through errors and mistakes, the state has advanced, in all fields. The success story of the People’s Republic of China, has its root in the phlegmatic culture of socialist intellectualism. Having broken with the philatelic, bourgeois, revolution of the Dr, Sun Yat Sen and the claustrophobic philistinism of the Cultural Revolution, modern China has pitched its political development on mountain top.
China, is increasingly becoming an open society. A new political system, which
accommodates eight other political formations, is being nurtured. China‘s technological advancement is breath-taking. The new push is towards innovativeness.
Revolutionary romanticism has receded and has been replaced by the realities of a globalising world.
Like a phoenix, China is soaring. A bi-polar world has emerged. Chinese diplomacy is having a profound effect on world politics. Its relationships are based on mutual respect, mutual trust and mutual benefit.
China is determined to successfully host the Olympic games in 2008. It will organise
a World Expo in 2010. Its forays into space are proceeding well. China’s economic relations with the EU, ASEAN, Russia and the United States of America, all point to generous prospects towards a GINSENG future. Some world leaders are no longer” infatuated with materialist and technological concept of progress, with the linear imagery”, which had caused states to “lose the more fundamental cyclical understanding of recurrence that is associated with sustaining life on our planet”( Richard Falk). Some states seem to have over-assessed the gains from nuclear energy as a cheap source of electricity and atomisation. They did not fully consider the aftermath of their temporary gains from nuclear energy. So, like gluttons, they now have nuclear fish bones stuck in their throats, which they cannot swallow and cannot vomit out.
Richard Falk wrote that ” this nightmare is better reflected in modern-day America, where the entire society is dependent on high technology. Its leaders have believed that as long as America remains militarist and capitalist, all will be well. Falk feared that underneath this escapism, is a loss of mastery, which is causing an American slide towards historical oblivion, a circumstance, difficult for any proud people to acknowledge.(UNU/PGT/CD 11) Regional Essays (25-8-86).
Alexander Solzhenitsyn had expressed similar pessimism in 1976, during his lecture at Harvard University, entitled, “The Decline of the West”. This decline has been accelerated as a result of the re-emergence of a bi-polar world in which China, Russia, India, Venezuela, Iran and the ASEAN states have become more assertive in international diplomacy.
The new dynamics dictate that participation in contemporary international relations call for states to promote social, economic and cultural ties, rather than precluding themselves from this progressive movement through war-mongering, strident posturing, belligerency and hard attitudes. Also, policies geared towards the pursuit of antiquated rivalries and narrow interests, can no longer succeed.
Fundamental changes in states that have rejected imposition of systems of government based on permissive democracy, cannot be achieved, through pressure and goading with long political whip-lashes. I have argued elsewhere that the “micro-wave option” is more persuasive.
In 1884-5, European states met in Berlin and divided Africa, into spheres of influence. This is a euphemism for saying that the Europeans brutally colonized African states.
In 2006, China invited over 48 African leaders to Beijing and has shown sincerity in multilateral economic and diplomatic relations, with the continent.
In 2007, the EU invited African leaders to Lisbon, where African states demanded the elimination of inequality in the international division of labour and access to European markets. The United States is seeking more closeness with Nigeria and the region around the Gulf of Guinea.
This belated Euro-American foray into Africa, is the fault of the Euro-American press, which has insisted that it would never report anything positive about Africa. The rodents of imperialism, had provided wrong information about the continent, which made it difficult for Euro-Americans to decide on business activities in Africa, until the Chinese gained tentacles in every African city. It was then that Euro-American governments started blaming China saying that China is not criticizing human rights violations in a continent, in which Europeans violated the people’s rights to self-determination, in every conceivable way.
