China, China everywhere

BOSTON — Twenty years from now, will you be reading this column in Mandarin?

It sure felt like it this week as China dominated the global news cycle on just about every front — from economics, politics, culture and the Kingdom of Dwarves (more on that later).

Let’s start, as stories about China should, with the economics.

• Beijing said Thursday that its gross domestic product grew at a blistering rate of 8.9 percent in the latest quarter, suggesting that last November’s $586 billion stimulus package is kicking in. That surge also puts China back on track, the government says, for hitting its annual growth target of 8 percent — the minimum rate it needs to absorb workers coming from the hinterlands and into its labor force.
• But there’s more. Industrial production (up 12.4 percent) and retail sales (up 15.1 percent) were also strong in the quarter. That’s good news on two fronts. First, it suggests China’s export engine is firing back into high gear, something it desperately needs right now. More importantly, Beijing has been engineering a long-term structural change to its economy, from one reliant on the ups and downs of exports to a more stable consumer-driven approach to growth. A sharp jump in consumer spending is a step closer to that worthy goal.

The news must have pleased U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who this week urged Chinese to spend more to help correct imbalances in the global economy — namely the U.S. trade deficit with China and an undervalued Chinese currency, both constant sources of political friction.

But China also gave Washington headaches this week after it took steps to impose new tariffs on nylon imports from the U.S. The nylon spat follows a string of simmering trade disputes over tires, auto parts and chicken.

Beyond trade and economics, the dragon is also sharpening its claws in global politics.

• In one of the least noticed, yet scariest developments this week, China and India ratcheted up a war of words over disputed land in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims as its own and over which the two countries went to war in 1962. But the two BRICs are also at odds over Beijing’s cooperation with Pakistan in Kashmir, and an Indian invitation to the Dalai Lama to visit the disputed territory. While each of these issues is important and complex, the rising tension reflects something deeper. "The structural problem is leadership," Shen Kingli of China’s South Asia Research Institute told the Christian Science Monitor this week. "The question is who leads in Asia?"
• Beijing, too, is playing an increasingly important leadership role over the future of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. With its seat on the United Nations Security Council as leverage, Beijing has been reluctant to go along with Obama Administration hopes to impose sanctions on Iran. That’s not surprising when you consider that two of the companies that could end up on the target list for sanctions — China National Offshore Oil Company and Sinopec — are Chinese.
• Beijing also seems headed for a larger role in Afghanistan. As reported this week by National Public Radio, the U.S. has been seeking help from China, the largest commercial investor in Afghanistan and a country that shares a 46-mile border with it. The U.S. would like Beijing to develop this mountainous and remote Wakhan Corridor as an alternate logistics route for troops and supplies flowing into Afghanistan. The topic is expected to come up next month, when President Obama makes his first trip to Beijing.

And let’s not forget culture, where China seems to be everywhere too. 

• First, Brussels is playing host to a major festival about China. As Paul Ames reported, Chinese artists, musicians, writers, filmmakers, acrobats, puppet masters, marital artists and even tea makers are flooding Brussels. Over the next four months more than 50 exhibitions and 400 concerts, plays and events will showcase Chinese creativity, from the beginnings of civilization to the raw experimentation of today’s thriving art scene.
• This follows China’s starring role at the Frankfurt Book Fair earlier this month, which as Cameron Abade reported, turned into a raging debate over China’s poor human rights record.
• And on the lowbrow culture front, there are the dwarves. We learned this week from Kathleen E. McLaughlin about The Kingdom of Dwarves — a theme park in Kunming that features singing and dancing "little people," who must all be under  4′ 3" tall.

So why is China dominating the news from Wall Street to Washington to Wakhan?

It starts, of course, with economic power. China’s handling of the global economic crisis has given it renewed credibility across Asia and throughout the world. Sure, thousands of Chinese factories closed last year, and as a result some 20 million migrant workers lost their jobs. But the government acted swiftly, rapid growth has returned, and with it, so too has the swagger of Beijing’s leaders.

That economic power, naturally, leads to greater political influence. As the most important buyer (along with Japan) of U.S. Treasuries, Washington’s ability to finance its dizzying spending is in large part dependent upon Beijing’s continued willingness to purchase, and hold, them.

But China’s rising influence also matters in Moscow, Tehran, Tokyo, Brussels, Brasilia, Caracas and across Africa and the Middle East, where Beijing is investing like mad to procure the natural resources it needs to fuel growth.

Hence the flood of China news from all corners of the world. Global media, after all, is a mirror on these economic, political and cultural realities. So in the weeks, months and years ahead expect China news to be the rule, rather than the exception.

And if you’ll pardon me going all History Channel on you, this 1803 quote attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte has become something of a cliche in 2009, but it still rings true:

"Let China sleep, for when the dragon awakes she will shake the world."

As we’ve seen this week, she’s awake. And while this new world will surely be bumpy and full of surprises — for China as much as anywhere else — we will all need to live in it without shaking.