Many in the West have hidden behind the self-delusion of ... believing that, as China develops, it will inevitably and eventually adopt Western values that are billed as universal. These people need to realise that: rich or poor, powerful or weak, China will never become a liberal electoral democracy with market capitalism and the individual as the core unit of its society
Eric Li, Shanghai commentator, Insight page, November 5
I liked Rudyard Kipling's way of expressing it best - 'Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.'
Except that they have met, quite often in fact, and cannot avoid continuing to meet more often yet unless both erect sky high walls to all trade, capital flows, technology and the interchange of ideas.
It inevitably presents a confrontation of ideologies. On the one hand we have market economies with democratic governments and an emphasis on individual initiative as the foundation of enterprise. This, Mr Li calls Globalisation 1.0, and he says it is an increasingly discredited model.
Opposing it is what he calls Globalisation 2.0, in which governments derive their legitimacy from improving the livelihoods of their people. This model, he says, has brought hundreds of millions of people out of poverty while industrialising at an unprecedented speed. The most prominent example of this model is China's and the West had best realise that China's way of getting ahead is as good as its own, if not better.
It is an argument to which our pages have played host repeatedly and I don't buy it. I think it rests on a false portrayal of economic life.