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SGS Fellows offer policy recommedations in newly published report

For too long, the West has appeared condescending in its attitude towards China, many Fellows agreed in the closing exercise of China in the 21st Century: What Kind of World Power?

Rounding off a week of expert lectures and in-depth group work grappling with China’s rise to a possible global superpower, the 54 faculty and Fellows from across Asia, North America and Europe, representing academia, government, international organizations, think tanks, civil society, and the media, debated proposed recommendations on how China and the world should engage.

The outcome of these recommendations has now been published in a report.

Advising not only China on how best to engage with the rest of the world, the recommendations also included pointers on how best the West and emerging economies – over which China has a growing influence thanks to its investments – should engage with the world’s most populous country and second largest economy.

However, throughout the presentations from the three groups on the last day of the December session, the importance of the language to be used in these policy recommendations was raised time and again.

Use of the word “engagement”, it was suggested, implies that the West feels it has a choice in its decision to interact with China, as well as inferring that the West remains the gatekeeper to international society – a implication that the word “integrate” also held. 

“Dealing with China” could be seen as if the West is reluctant and unenthusiastic to interact with China, despite the Asian nation’s increasing prominence and involvement in many areas of global affairs, especially trade, economy and development.

This better use of language and a greater need for understanding isn’t a purely Western phenomenon; binary perceptions of “the other” – threat versus promise – is present in China as well as the West. 

The desire to be better understood and to better understand the outside world can be seen in China’s growth in foreign language media outlets, Fellows heard from the various members and academics of the media.

China Central Television, one of the nation’s major broadcasters, now has six news channels, broadcasting not only in Chinese across several time zones, but also English, Spanish, French, Russian and Arabic, with a further Portuguese service apparently also in the planning.

In addition to expanding its own reporting network for the better understanding of Chinese people of world events, the various foreign language services also enable the outside world to gain a Chinese perspective of those same world events.

As was highlighted in a panel discussion hosted by Salzburg Global Seminar President and CEO, Stephen Salyer (who himself had 30 years in public radio before joining SGS), the media, especially the internet and social media is having an increasingly important impact in China. 

At over half a billion people, there are currently more people online in China than live in the entire European Union. 

Although there have been some high-profile incidences of censorship of internet access in China, this growing access and use of the internet is opening China up further to the world – and vice versa.

But, as was mentioned in the policy recommendations exercise, improved proficiency in foreign languages, for example Russian, Arabic, Spanish as well as the most commonly learnt foreign language, English – and in turn, a greater learning of Chinese in the rest of the world – would increase this opening, especially in cyberspace.

“How many Chinese speak something other than Chinese? How many non-Chinese speak Chinese?!” asked one Fellow. 

Learning more languages would not only “open China to the world but also open the world to China,” he suggested. Indeed, understanding needs to be expanded on all sides.