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Kevin Rudd says China to rule the world
PAUL TOOHEY
The Sunday Telegraph
January 15, 2012 12:00AM
PAUL TOOHEY
The Sunday Telegraph
January 15, 2012 12:00AM
KEVIN Rudd has predicted China will overtake the US as the world's biggest economy by decade's end - but says there is nothing to fear in that.
The Foreign Minister addressed the Asia Society in New York yesterday and said whilespite China had problems with poverty and human rights suppression, there was no evidence it would face an Arab Spring or was looking at the collapse of communist rule.
And he told the rest of the world to accept that fact.
Mr Rudd was introduced to the Asia Society by former World Bank president James Wolfensohn who told the crowd: "All Australians are very proud of him".
Mr Rudd said while China was not joining the Asian trend to democracy, it wasn't intruding into other countries.
"There is nothing, repeat nothing, inevitable about some form of Sino-American conflict in the future," Mr Rudd said."Such conflict would undermine all our interests, and in all probability betray our most fundamental values."
Mr Rudd said China's rise to the top of the global economic ladder was almost complete, if not already there.
China owns $2 trillion in foreign assets while the US owes $2 trillion in foreign debt.
"This will be the first time since the rise of the Spanish Empire 500 years ago that a non-Western power will be the dominant global economic power," he said.
"It is therefore a subject worthy of the most serious reflection and analysis, not just in Beijing and Washington, but across Asia, across Europe and across the world."
He said Australia's location meant it had felt the winds of change coming from China before many other nations.
Despite China's active charming of nations in Australia's immediate region, Mr Rudd argued China was not exporting ideology as part of its international relations program.Instead, it was using its influence on the widespread Chinese diaspora to help build the motherland economically.
But nor did China seek to import Western ideology, and would continue to decline to be held to account for this.
Mr Rudd, who speaks Mandarin and has studied China for 35 years, said it was grounded in Chinese philosophy to seek harmony and avoid chaos.
He said China wanted global peace so it could grow its own economy and enjoy a better life - better than the mass deprivations of the past.
"At the same time, China's leadership seeks to lift international prestige as a proud people with arguably the oldest continuing civilisation on Earth," he said.
