The world is changing with really remarkable speed. If you look at the chart at the top here, you'll see that in 2025, these Goldman Sachs projections suggest that the Chinese economy will be almost the same size as the American economy. And if you look at the chart for 2050, it's projected that the Chinese economy will be twice the size of the American economy, and the Indian economy will be almost the same size as the American economy. And we should bear in mind here that these projections were drawn up before the Western financial crisis.
Svet se spreminja, z neverjetno hitrostjo. Če si ogledate tale graf tu, boste videli, da do leta 2025, Goldman Sachs, napoveduje, da bo kitajsko gospodarstvo skoraj tako veliko kot ameriško. In, če si pogledate graf, za leto 2050, napovedujejo, da bo kitajsko gospodarstvo, takrat dvakrat večje od ameriškega, medtem, ko bo indijsko gospodarstvo enako veliko, kot ameriško. Ne smemo pa pozabiti, da so bile te napovedi narejene, pred gospodarsko krizo na Zahodu.
A couple of weeks ago, I was looking at the latest projection by BNP Paribas for when China will have a larger economy than the United States. Goldman Sachs projected 2027. The post-crisis projection is 2020. That's just a decade away. China is going to change the world in two fundamental respects. First of all, it's a huge developing country with a population of 1.3 billion people, which has been growing for over 30 years at around 10 percent a year.
Pred nekaj tedni, sem si ogledoval zadnje napovedi, banke BNP Paribas, kjer so napovedali, kdaj bo kitajsko gospodarstvo, večje od ameriškega. Goldman Sachs je napovedal leto 2027. Ponovna ocena po krizi, je leto 2020. To je samo desetletje stran. Kitajska bo spremenila svet, v dveh odločilnih pogledih. Kot prvo, to je ogromna razvijajoča se država, z 1,3 miljarde prebivalcev, ki se s povprečno 10% rastjo, razvija že zadnjih 30 let.
And within a decade, it will have the largest economy in the world. Never before in the modern era has the largest economy in the world been that of a developing country, rather than a developed country. Secondly, for the first time in the modern era, the dominant country in the world -- which I think is what China will become -- will be not from the West and from very, very different civilizational roots.
In v enem desetletju, bo to postalo največje gospodarstvo na svetu. Nikoli poprej v moderni dobi se še ni zgodilo, da bi bilo največje gospodarstvo na svetu, gospodarstvo države v razvoju, in ne, razvite države. Kot drugo, prvič v moderni dobi, bo prišlo do tega, da dominantna sila, kar bo, po mojem mnenju, kmalu Kitajska, ne bo država na Zahodu, ampak bo to država z zelo drugačnim civilizacijskim ozadjem.
Now, I know it's a widespread assumption in the West that as countries modernize, they also westernize. This is an illusion. It's an assumption that modernity is a product simply of competition, markets and technology. It is not. It is also shaped equally by history and culture. China is not like the West, and it will not become like the West. It will remain in very fundamental respects very different. Now the big question here is obviously, how do we make sense of China? How do we try to understand what China is? And the problem we have in the West at the moment, by and large, is that the conventional approach is that we understand it really in Western terms, using Western ideas. We can't. Now I want to offer you three building blocks for trying to understand what China is like, just as a beginning.
Torej, vem, da je na Zahodu precej razširjeno mišljenje, da se država, ko se razvija, istočasno tudi pozahodnji. To je iluzija. Predvidevanje, da je modernost zgolj produkt konkurence, trga in tehnologije. To ne drži; sočasno je tudi pod vplivi zgodovine in kulture. Kitajska ni takšna kot Zahod, in to niti nikoli ne bo postala. V najbolj osnovnih ozirih, bo ostala drugačna. No, veliko vprašanje tu je, na kakšen način si Kitajsko razlagamo? Kako jo lahko poskusimo razumeti? In problem, ki je na Zahodu zagotovo najbolj prisoten je, da si Kitajsko konvencionalno razlagamo, znotraj predpostavk Zahoda, v okviru Zahodnih idej. Tega ne smemo. Zdaj vam bom pokazal, tri gradbene stolpce, da boste lažje razumeli kakšna je Kitajska -- za začetek.
The first is this: that China is not really a nation-state. Okay, it's called itself a nation-state for the last hundred years, but everyone who knows anything about China knows it's a lot older than this. This was what China looked like with the victory of the Qin Dynasty in 221 B.C. at the end of the warring-state period -- the birth of modern China. And you can see it against the boundaries of modern China. Or immediately afterward, the Han Dynasty, still 2,000 years ago. And you can see already it occupies most of what we now know as Eastern China, which is where the vast majority of Chinese lived then and live now.
Kot prvo, Kitajska v bistvu ni nacionalna država. No, tako se je sicer večkrat poimenovala, v zadnjih stotih letih. Vendar vsak, ki ima vsaj nekaj pojma o Kitajski, ve, da je precej starejša kot toliko. Takole je izgledalo kitajsko ozemlje v času prevlade dinastije Qin, 221 pr.n.št, ob koncu obdobja vojskujočih držav -- to je rojstvo moderne Kitajske. In lahko jo primerjate z mejami današnje Kitajske. Ali pa, takoj za tem, dinastijo Han, še vedno 2.000 let nazaj. In lahko vidite, da že takrat zaseda, večino ozemlja, ki ga poznamo pod imenom vzhodna Kitajska, kjer je že takrat, tako kot tudi danes, živela večina Kitajcev.
Now what is extraordinary about this is, what gives China its sense of being China, what gives the Chinese the sense of what it is to be Chinese, comes not from the last hundred years, not from the nation-state period, which is what happened in the West, but from the period, if you like, of the civilization-state. I'm thinking here, for example, of customs like ancestral worship, of a very distinctive notion of the state, likewise, a very distinctive notion of the family, social relationships like guanxi, Confucian values and so on. These are all things that come from the period of the civilization-state. In other words, China, unlike the Western states and most countries in the world, is shaped by its sense of civilization, its existence as a civilization-state, rather than as a nation-state. And there's one other thing to add to this, and that is this: Of course we know China's big, huge, demographically and geographically, with a population of 1.3 billion people. What we often aren't really aware of is the fact that China is extremely diverse and very pluralistic, and in many ways very decentralized. You can't run a place on this scale simply from Beijing, even though we think this to be the case. It's never been the case.
No, kar je najbolj zanimivo, je to kaj Kitajsko naredi Kitajsko, in kaj da Kitajcem občutek, zavedanje, da so Kitajci, in to ni prišlo v zadnjih stotih letih, ne v obdobju nacionalne države, kot se je to zgodilo na Zahodu, ampak v obdobju, lahko bi rekli, civilizacijske države. Tu imam v mislih, na primer, obred čaščenja prednikov, ki daje svojevrstno predstavo o državi, podobno, dajo posebno predstavo o družini, družbena razmerja kot so guanxi, konfucijanske vrednote itd. To vse so stvari, ki prihajajo iz obdobje civilizacijske države. Povedano drugače, Kitajsko, za razliko od Zahodnih in večine držav na svetu, je izoblikovala ideja o civilizaciji, ko je obstajala kot civilizacijska država in ne nacionalna država. Potrebno pa je omeniti še nekaj drugega in to je: Seveda, vsi vemo, da je Kitajska velika, ogromna, v demografskem in geografskem smislu, z 1,3 milijardami prebivalcev. Pogostokrat pa se ne zavedamo, dejstva, da je Kitajska izjemno raznolika in pluralistična ter v mnogih pogledih izjemno decentralizirana. Tako ogromen prostor preprosto ne morete obvladovati samo iz Pekinga, čeprav si ponavadi to tako predstavljamo. Vendar to nikoli ni držalo.
So this is China, a civilization-state, rather than a nation-state. And what does it mean? Well, I think it has all sorts of profound implications. I'll give you two quick ones. The first is that the most important political value for the Chinese is unity, is the maintenance of Chinese civilization. You know, 2,000 years ago, Europe: breakdown -- the fragmentation of the Holy Roman Empire. It divided, and it's remained divided ever since. China, over the same time period, went in exactly the opposite direction, very painfully holding this huge civilization, civilization-state, together.
To je torej Kitajska, civilizacijska država in ne nacionalna država. In kaj to sploh pomeni? Mislim, da ima to celo vrsto pomembnih posledic. Naštel vam bom dve takojšnji. Prva je ta, da je najbolj pomembna politična vrednota za Kitajce, enotnost, torej ohranitev, kitajske civilizacije. Pomislite na Evropo pred 2.000 leti: propadanje in razpad Svetega rimskega cesarstva. Razdelilo se je in ta delitev ostaja še danes. Kitajska, je v istem času, krenila v popolno nasprotno smer, ko je na zelo boleč način, ohranjala koncept civilizacijske države.
The second is maybe more prosaic, which is Hong Kong. Do you remember the handover of Hong Kong by Britain to China in 1997? You may remember what the Chinese constitutional proposition was. One country, two systems. And I'll lay a wager that barely anyone in the West believed them. "Window dressing. When China gets its hands on Hong Kong, that won't be the case." Thirteen years on, the political and legal system in Hong Kong is as different now as it was in 1997. We were wrong. Why were we wrong? We were wrong because we thought, naturally enough, in nation-state ways. Think of German unification, 1990. What happened? Well, basically the East was swallowed by the West. One nation, one system. That is the nation-state mentality. But you can't run a country like China, a civilization-state, on the basis of one civilization, one system. It doesn't work. So actually the response of China to the question of Hong Kong -- as it will be to the question of Taiwan -- was a natural response: one civilization, many systems.
Druga, je morda bolj predvidljiva, v mislih imam Hong Kong. Ali se spominjate, ko so Kitajci leta 1997, ponovno priključili Hong Kong, ki je bil nekaj časa britanski? Morda se spominjate, kaj je bil kitajski ustavni predlog. Ena država, dva sistema. In stavim, da je malokdo na Zahodu takrat verjel, da jim bo uspelo. ”To je le krinka. Ko bo Kitajska ponovno dobila Hong Kong, bo to nekaj povsem drugega". 13 let kasneje, je politični in pravni sistem v Hong Kongu, še vedno tako drugačen od kitajskeg kot l.1997. Motili smo se. Zakaj smo se motili? Zato, ker smo razmišljali, povsem logično, v okviru nacionalne države. Pomislite na združitev Nemčije leta 1990. Kaj se je zgodilo? No, Zahod je enostavno pogoltnil Vzhod. Ena država, en sistem. To je mentaliteta nacionalne države. Ampak, države kot je Kitajska, civilizacijske države, ne morete voditi po principu ena civilizacija, en sistem. To ne gre. In tako je bil odgovor Kitajske, na problem s Hong Kongom -- nekoč bo to tudi problem s Tajvanom -- povsem naraven odziv: ena civilizacija, več sistemov.
Let me offer you another building block to try and understand China -- maybe not sort of a comfortable one. The Chinese have a very, very different conception of race to most other countries. Do you know, of the 1.3 billion Chinese, over 90 percent of them think they belong to the same race, the Han? Now, this is completely different from the world's [other] most populous countries. India, the United States, Indonesia, Brazil -- all of them are multiracial. The Chinese don't feel like that. China is only multiracial really at the margins. So the question is, why? Well the reason, I think, essentially is, again, back to the civilization-state. A history of at least 2,000 years, a history of conquest, occupation, absorption, assimilation and so on, led to the process by which, over time, this notion of the Han emerged -- of course, nurtured by a growing and very powerful sense of cultural identity.
Naj vam omenim še en gradbeni stolpec, ki vam bo pojasnil Kitajsko -- ta morda ni tako prijeten. Kitajci imajo zelo različen način, dojemanja rase, drugačen od večine drugih držav. Ali veste, da od 1,3. milijarde Kitajcev, več kot 90%, misli, da pripada isti rasi, to je Han. To je povsem drugačno, kot v drugih gosto naseljenih državah. Indija, ZDA, Indonezija, Brazilija -- vse so izrazito multirasne. Kitajci ne čutijo tega. Kitajska je večrasna, samo ob mejah. Vprašanje pa je, zakaj? Mislim, da je razlog za to, v bistvu, spet potrebno poiskati v pojmu civilizacijske države. V toku zgodovine vsaj 2.000 let, v času osvajanj, okupacij, absorbcije, asimilacije itd, se je sprožil proces, identitete ljudstva Han -- ki je, seveda rasla, ob naraščajoči in prevladujoči kulturni identiteti.
Now the great advantage of this historical experience has been that, without the Han, China could never have held together. The Han identity has been the cement which has held this country together. The great disadvantage of it is that the Han have a very weak conception of cultural difference. They really believe in their own superiority, and they are disrespectful of those who are not. Hence their attitude, for example, to the Uyghurs and to the Tibetans.
Glavna prednost takšne zgodovinske izkušnje je bila, da brez tega ljudstvu Han, Kitajske nikakor ne bi uspelo obdržati skupaj. Han identiteta je delovala kot cement, ki je državo obdržal skupaj. Velika pomanjkljivost pa je, da ima ljudstvo Han zelo šibek koncept, kulturne raznolikosti. Pravzaprav verjamejo predvsem da so superiorno ljudstvo zato so do drugačnih, pogosto nepoštljivi. Pomislite, na primer, na njihov odnos do Ujgurov in Tibetancev.
Or let me give you my third building block, the Chinese state. Now the relationship between the state and society in China is very different from that in the West. Now we in the West overwhelmingly seem to think -- in these days at least -- that the authority and legitimacy of the state is a function of democracy. The problem with this proposition is that the Chinese state enjoys more legitimacy and more authority amongst the Chinese than is true with any Western state. And the reason for this is because -- well, there are two reasons, I think. And it's obviously got nothing to do with democracy, because in our terms the Chinese certainly don't have a democracy. And the reason for this is, firstly, because the state in China is given a very special -- it enjoys a very special significance as the representative, the embodiment and the guardian of Chinese civilization, of the civilization-state. This is as close as China gets to a kind of spiritual role.
Naj vam razložim še tretji gradbeni stolpec, to je kitajska državna uprava. Razmerje, med državno upravo in družbo na Kitajskem, je precej drugačno od tistega kar poznamo na Zahodu. Mi tukaj na Zahodu, pogosto radi mislimo -- predvsem v zadnjem času, da je avtoriteta in legitimnost države, funkcija vsake demokracije. Problem s to predpostavko pa je, da ima kitajska državna uprava, mnogo več legitimnosti, in avtoritete, med Kitajci, kot pa katerakoli država, na Zahodu. Razlog za to, pa najdemo v tem, no, v bistvu, mislim, da sta tu dva razloga. Več kot očitno pa to nima nikakršne veze z demokracijo, ker po naših standardih Kitajska vsekakor ne velja za demokracijo. In razlog za to je, ko prvo, da ima kitajska državna uprava, posebno vlogo -- lasti si prav posebno vlogo, kot predstavnica, utelešenje in varuh, kitajske civilizacije, civilizacijske države. To je na Kitajskem najbližje pojmu, duhovne vloge.
And the second reason is because, whereas in Europe and North America, the state's power is continuously challenged -- I mean in the European tradition, historically against the church, against other sectors of the aristocracy, against merchants and so on -- for 1,000 years, the power of the Chinese state has not been challenged. It's had no serious rivals. So you can see that the way in which power has been constructed in China is very different from our experience in Western history. The result, by the way, is that the Chinese have a very different view of the state. Whereas we tend to view it as an intruder, a stranger, certainly an organ whose powers need to be limited or defined and constrained, the Chinese don't see the state like that at all. The Chinese view the state as an intimate -- not just as an intimate actually, as a member of the family -- not just in fact as a member of the family, but as the head of the family, the patriarch of the family. This is the Chinese view of the state -- very, very different to ours. It's embedded in society in a different kind of way to what is the case in the West.
Drugi razlog pa je, da kot se v Evropi, in Severni Ameriki, zgodi, da državna uprava postane izzvana -- mislim, v evropski tradiciji, so tako izzvali cerkev, in druge sektorje aristokracije, izzvali so trgovce itd, tako v zadnjih 1.000 letih, kitajska državna uprava, ni bila izzvana prav od nikogar. Nikoli ni imela močnih nasprotnikov. Lahko opazite, da je način, kako je Kitajska postala močna, povsem drugačen od tega, ki ga poznamo na Zahodu. Posledično, mimogrede, Kitajci vlogo države dojemajo na drug način kot mi. V državi vidimo predvsem vlogo vsiljivca, tujca, in pa predvsem kot organ, čigar vlogo je potrebno omejiti, definirati in zajeziti; Kitajci vidijo nekaj čisto drugega. Kitajci državo dojemajo, kot bližnjo -- ne samo kot bližnjo, kot članico družine -- pa tudi ne samo kot članico družine, ampak kot glavo družine, kot starosto. Tako Kitajci dojemajo državo -- na povsem drugačen način kot jo mi. Država je pri njih vpletena v družbo na drugačen način, kot pa to velja, za Zahod.
And I would suggest to you that actually what we are dealing with here, in the Chinese context, is a new kind of paradigm, which is different from anything we've had to think about in the past. Know that China believes in the market and the state. I mean, Adam Smith, already writing in the late 18th century, said, "The Chinese market is larger and more developed and more sophisticated than anything in Europe." And, apart from the Mao period, that has remained more or less the case ever since. But this is combined with an extremely strong and ubiquitous state. The state is everywhere in China. I mean, it's leading firms -- many of them are still publicly owned. Private firms, however large they are, like Lenovo, depend in many ways on state patronage. Targets for the economy and so on are set by the state. And the state, of course, its authority flows into lots of other areas -- as we are familiar with -- with something like the one-child policy.
In to s čimer imamo opravka sedaj, v kontekstu Kitajske, je nova predpostavka, ki je zelo drugačna od vsega, kar poznamo iz preteklosti. Vedite, da Kitajska verjame predvsem v trg in državo. Mislim, Adam Smith, ki je že v 18. stoletju dejal: ”Kitajski trg je večji in bolj razvit, in bolj prefinjen, kot karkoli v Evropi”. In, z izjemo Maotovega obdobja, je to držalo skoraj brez presledka od takrat. In to v kombinaciji, z močno in povsod navzočo državo. Država je na Kitajskem prisotna povsod. Mislim, številna najuspešnejša podjetja, so še vedno v državni lasti. Privatna podjetja, ne glede na njihovo velikost, kot Lenovo, pa so v mnogih pogledih odvisni od državnega pokroviteljstva. Gospodarske kvote in druge reči, vse to določi država. In država, seveda, ima avtoriteto tudi na mnogih drugih področjih -- kot vsi dobro vemo -- recimo politika enega otroka.
Moreover, this is a very old state tradition, a very old tradition of statecraft. I mean, if you want an illustration of this, the Great Wall is one. But this is another, this is the Grand Canal, which was constructed in the first instance in the fifth century B.C. and was finally completed in the seventh century A.D. It went for 1,114 miles, linking Beijing with Hangzhou and Shanghai. So there's a long history of extraordinary state infrastructural projects in China, which I suppose helps us to explain what we see today, which is something like the Three Gorges Dam and many other expressions of state competence within China. So there we have three building blocks for trying to understand the difference that is China -- the civilization-state, the notion of race and the nature of the state and its relationship to society.
To pa je tudi stara tradicija, umetnosti vodenja države. Mislim, dober primer tega, je Veliki kitajski zid. Ampak tu so še drugi, na primer, Veliki prekop, ki so ga začeli graditi, že 500 let pr.n.št, in je bil dokončno zgrajen, v 7. stoletju. Dolg je bil 1.792 kilometrov, povezoval pa je Peking, z mesti Hangzhou in Šanghaj. Tako imamo tudi dolgo zgodovino, megalomanskih infrastrukturnih projektov, na Kitajskem, kar pa nam pomaga razjasniti tudi današnjo situacijo, in projekte kot je jez treh sotesk ter mnoge druge dokaze, državne zmogljivosti, znotraj Kitajske. In tako imamo tri gradbene stolpce, ki nam pomagajo razložiti drugačno Kitajsko -- civilizacijska država, koncept rase in naravnanost državne uprave ter njena vloga v družbi.
And yet we still insist, by and large, in thinking that we can understand China by simply drawing on Western experience, looking at it through Western eyes, using Western concepts. If you want to know why we unerringly seem to get China wrong -- our predictions about what's going to happen to China are incorrect -- this is the reason. Unfortunately, I think, I have to say that I think attitude towards China is that of a kind of little Westerner mentality. It's kind of arrogant. It's arrogant in the sense that we think that we are best, and therefore we have the universal measure. And secondly, it's ignorant. We refuse to really address the issue of difference. You know, there's a very interesting passage in a book by Paul Cohen, the American historian. And Paul Cohen argues that the West thinks of itself as probably the most cosmopolitan of all cultures. But it's not. In many ways, it's the most parochial, because for 200 years, the West has been so dominant in the world that it's not really needed to understand other cultures, other civilizations. Because, at the end of the day, it could, if necessary by force, get its own way. Whereas those cultures -- virtually the rest of the world, in fact, which have been in a far weaker position, vis-a-vis the West -- have been thereby forced to understand the West, because of the West's presence in those societies. And therefore, they are, as a result, more cosmopolitan in many ways than the West.
In vendar v veliki meri še vedno vztrajamo, pri mišljenju, da Kitajsko lahko razumemo, skozi izkušnjo na Zahodu, ko jo gledamo skozi oči Zahodnjaka, ko uporabljamo koncepte Zahoda. Če hočete vedeti, zakaj, brez izjem, Kitajsko napačno interpretiramo -- zakaj so naša predvidevanja o tem kaj se bo zgodilo s Kitajsko napačna, to je glavni razlog za to. Na žalost, mislim, da je tako, da je naš odnos do Kitajske, odsev mišljenja nekega malega Zahodnjaka. Gre za vrsto arogance. Arogance, v tem smislu, da mislimo, da smo najboljši in, da imamo pravico, da postavimo univerzalna merila. Kot drugo, gre tudi za ignoranco. Nočemo se zares soočiti s tem, kaj pomeni drugačnost. Veste, obstaja zelo zanimiv odlomek o tem, v knjigi Paula Cohena, ameriškega zgodovinarja. V njej Paul Cohen razlaga, kako si Zahod domišlja, da je najbolj kozmopolitska kultura, na svetu. Ampak to ni. V mnogih pogledih, je zelo ozkogled, saj je bil zadnjih 200 let, Zahod najbolj dominantna sila na svetu, zato niti ni čutil potrebe, da bi razumel druge kulture, druge civilizacije. Kajti, konec koncev, je, če je bilo potrebno tudi s silo, dosegel kar je hotel. Medtem, ko so druge kulture -- v bistvu cel preostali svet -- ki so bile v primerjavi z Zahodom vedno v slabšem položaju, so bile prisiljene razumeti Zahod, zaradi vloge Zahoda v teh družbah. In zaradi tega so, posledično, te kulture v mnogih pogledih bolj kozmopolitske od Zahoda.
I mean, take the question of East Asia. East Asia: Japan, Korea, China, etc. -- a third of the world's population lives there. Now the largest economic region in the world. And I'll tell you now, that East Asianers, people from East Asia, are far more knowledgeable about the West than the West is about East Asia. Now this point is very germane, I'm afraid, to the present. Because what's happening? Back to that chart at the beginning, the Goldman Sachs chart. What is happening is that, very rapidly in historical terms, the world is being driven and shaped, not by the old developed countries, but by the developing world. We've seen this in terms of the G20 usurping very rapidly the position of the G7, or the G8. And there are two consequences of this. First, the West is rapidly losing its influence in the world. There was a dramatic illustration of this actually a year ago -- Copenhagen, climate change conference. Europe was not at the final negotiating table. When did that last happen? I would wager it was probably about 200 years ago. And that is what is going to happen in the future.
Vzemite, na primer, Vzhodno Azijo. Vzhodna Azija: Japonska, Koreja, Kitajska itd -- tam živi tretjina svetovne populacije, in je zdaj največja gospodarska cona na svetu. In povem vam, državljani držav Vzhodne Azije, vejo veliko več o Zahodu, kot pa ve Zahod o Vzhodni Aziji. To, na žalost, velja še danes. Namreč, kaj se dogaja? Nazaj k grafu na začetku -- grafu Goldman Sachs. Dogaja se to, da se glede na zgodovino, svet zelo hitro spreminja, in oblikuje, ne zaradi razvitih držav, ampak držav v razvoju. Temu smo bili pri priča, pri pojavu G20 -- ki je zelo hitro nadomestil položaj G7, oziroma G8. Zato obstajata dve posledici. Prvič, Zahod, skokovito izgublja, svoj vpliv v svetu. Dramatičnemu prikazu tega smo bili lahko priča leto nazaj -- v Copenhagnu, na konferenci o klimatskih spremembah. Takrat Evropa ni bila glavna za pogojevalsko mizo. Kdaj se je to zgodilo nazadnje? Upam si trditi, da pred več kot 200 leti. In to se bo dogajalo tudi v prihodnosti.
And the second implication is that the world will inevitably, as a consequence, become increasingly unfamiliar to us, because it'll be shaped by cultures and experiences and histories that we are not really familiar with, or conversant with. And at last, I'm afraid -- take Europe; America is slightly different -- but Europeans by and large, I have to say, are ignorant, are unaware about the way the world is changing. Some people -- I've got an English friend in China, and he said, "The continent is sleepwalking into oblivion." Well, maybe that's true, maybe that's an exaggeration. But there's another problem which goes along with this -- that Europe is increasingly out of touch with the world -- and that is a sort of loss of a sense of the future. I mean, Europe once, of course, once commanded the future in its confidence. Take the 19th century, for example. But this, alas, is no longer true.
In drugič, posledično bo svet neizogibno postal, vedno bolj neprepoznaven, oblikovale ga bodo namreč kulture, izkušnje in zgodovina, ki so nam tuje, v katerih nismo domači. In nazadnje, bojim se, da -- poglejte Evropo, Amerika je drug primer -- ampak Evropejci, v večini, moram reči, so ignorantni, ne zavedajo se, da se svet spreminja. Nekateri ljudje -- na Kitajskem živi moj prijatelj Anglež, ki je rekel, ”Stara celina v spanju koraka v pozabo”. Morda to drži, morda je to pretiravanje. Hkrati pa se je pojavil še nov problem -- to, da je Evropa vedno manj v stiku s tem kaj se dogaja po svetu -- in to je neke vrste, izguba občutka o prihodnosti. Mislim, Evropa je nekoč, seveda, narekovala prihodnost, s svojo samozavestjo. Spomnite se, recimo, 19. stoletja. Ampak, zdaj to preprosto ne drži več.
If you want to feel the future, if you want to taste the future, try China -- there's old Confucius. This is a railway station the likes of which you've never seen before. It doesn't even look like a railway station. This is the new [Wuhan] railway station for the high-speed trains. China already has a bigger network than any other country in the world and will soon have more than all the rest of the world put together. Or take this: now this is an idea, but it's an idea to be tried out shortly in a suburb of Beijing. Here you have a megabus, on the upper deck carries about 2,000 people. It travels on rails down a suburban road, and the cars travel underneath it. And it does speeds of up to about 100 miles an hour. Now this is the way things are going to move, because China has a very specific problem, which is different from Europe and different from the United States: China has huge numbers of people and no space. So this is a solution to a situation where China's going to have many, many, many cities over 20 million people.
Če hočete občutiti prihodnost, če jo hočete okusiti, poskusite s Kitajsko -- tole je stari mojster Konfucij. Tole je železniška postaja, takšna, kot je še niste videli. In niti ne izgleda kot železniška postaja. To je nova železniška postaja mesta Guangzhou, namenjena hitrim vlakom. Kitajska ima že zdaj večje omrežje, kot katerakoli druga država na svetu, in kmalu bo omrežje večje kot vsa ostala omrežja skupaj. Ali pa: no, to je samo ideja, ampak ideja, ki jo bodo kmalu preizkusili, v predmestju Pekinga. Tu imate megabus, ki na zgornjem krovu prevaža kar 2.000 ljudi. Potuje po tirnicah, po predmestnih cestah, in avtomobili vozijo pod njim. Vozi se lahko s hitrostjo do 100 milj na uro. Tako se bodo odvijale stvari v prihodnosti, ko se bo Kitajska soočala s svojim problemom, drugačnem od tega kar pozna Evropa, ali ZDA. Kitajska ima ogromno ljudi in nič prostora. Zato je to rešitev za situacijo, ko bo Kitajska imela, zelo, zelo veliko mest, z več kot 20 milijoni ljudi.
Okay, so how would I like to finish? Well, what should our attitude be towards this world that we see very rapidly developing before us? I think there will be good things about it and there will be bad things about it. But I want to argue, above all, a big-picture positive for this world. For 200 years, the world was essentially governed by a fragment of the human population. That's what Europe and North America represented. The arrival of countries like China and India -- between them 38 percent of the world's population -- and others like Indonesia and Brazil and so on, represent the most important single act of democratization in the last 200 years. Civilizations and cultures, which had been ignored, which had no voice, which were not listened to, which were not known about, will have a different sort of representation in this world. As humanists, we must welcome, surely, this transformation, and we will have to learn about these civilizations.
Dobro, in kako bi rad zaključil? Kakšen naj bi bil torej naš odnos, do sveta, ki se zdaj, bliskovito razvija, pred našimi očmi? Mislim, da to zajema tako pozitivne, kot pa tudi negativne posledice. Vendar, predvsem bi rad zagovarjal, odnos, kjer bi pozitivno gledali na svet. Zadnjih 200 let, je svet v celoti vodila, frakcija celotne svetovne populacije. To sta predstavljali Evropa in Severna Amerika. Prihod držav, kot sta Kitajska in Indija -- ki predstavljata 38% celotne svetovne populacije -- in drugih držav, kot sta Indonezija, Brazilija ter druge, predstavljajo najpomembnejše dejanje, demokratizacije, v zadnjih 200 letih. Civilizacije in kulture, ki so bile ignorirane, ki so bile brez zagovornikov, ki jih nihče ni slišal, niti ni nihče vedel zanje, bodo v prihodnosti imele, povsem drugačno vlogo v svetu. Kot humanisti, moramo to pozdraviti, to preobrazbo. In morali se bomo poučiti, o teh civilizacijah.
This big ship here was the one sailed in by Zheng He in the early 15th century on his great voyages around the South China Sea, the East China Sea and across the Indian Ocean to East Africa. The little boat in front of it was the one in which, 80 years later, Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic. (Laughter) Or, look carefully at this silk scroll made by ZhuZhou in 1368. I think they're playing golf. Christ, the Chinese even invented golf.
Velika ladja tu, je ladja, ki jo je vodil Zheng He, v začetku 15. stoletja, na svojih velikih potovanjih, v južnokitajskem morju, vzhodnokitajskem morju, in čez Indijski ocean do Vzhodne Afrike. Mala ladja pred njo, je tista, ki jo je, 80 let kasneje, Krištof Kolumb popeljal čez Atlantik. (Smeh) Ali pa, pozorno si poglejte, svileni zavitek, ki ga je naredil Zhu Zhou, leta 1368. Izgleda, kot da igrajo golf. Kristus, Kitajci so izumili celo golf.
Welcome to the future. Thank you.
Dobrodošli v prihodnosti. Hvala.
(Applause)
(Aplavz)