Lessons for Dragon Riders

Wn order to act more safely, you need to know more. If you want to protect yourself from surprises, you should know your counterpart a little better. As Cicero pointed out, "All wisdom begins with knowledge of the facts." And the fact is, Wolfgang Hirn, author of "The Next Cold War - China vs. the West", leaves no doubt about it: China, not the West, is calling the shots when it comes to conquering markets.

Consistent modernization

Wolfgang Hirn, a reporter for Hamburg's manager magazin for more than 20 years, is convinced and proves it convincingly: the world is facing a second Cold War: the new superpower China against the old, weakening superpower USA with its crisis-ridden allies in Europe and Japan. The conflict is being fought on every conceivable field: Economy, currency, technology, capital power, raw materials, environment, military and, last but not least, ideological issues.

While the West indulges in dreams of a better and fairer world and views this hoped-for and longed-for world through the clouded spectacles of wishing, China is working single-mindedly and pragmatically on the consistent modernization of its gigantic country. And with immense

Determined and pragmatic.

The author sums up the message of the author, who knows the country very well. In a nutshell, this is the message of the author who knows the country. And it proves it: The image of China commonly portrayed in the media is in need of correction. It does not do justice either to reality or to the needs of economic players. In this regard, a remark by Florian Coulmas, director of the German Institute for Japanese Studies in Tokyo, comes to mind: "The national mass media filter out a story from the global information supply, which they introduce into the respective discourse context, thereby satisfying and reinforcing the expectations of their consumers. This will remain the case for the time being, because the willingness to believe that the world is a village is great in the age of the Internet, and few media consumers bother to look up for themselves what this village looks like outside the excerpt presented to them by their domestic news media." (NZZ, August 2, 2011, page 15)

China trades

Urs Schoettli, former long-time correspondent for the NZZ in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Beijing and current Asia consultant for several Swiss companies, also warns in his current book "Die neuen Asiaten - Ein Generationenwechsel und die Folgen" (The New Asians - A Generation Change and the Consequences): "Today, it is China's turn to climb to the top of the world, not only in the economy, but also in the sciences. This can be seen in the quality of the universities and research institutions of the state and industry. As in India, millions of young people in China are ready to take up the banner of progress and thereby gain social prestige. Europe should take this as a model!"

Wolfgang Hirn also emphasises this and refers to the book "The Coming Jobs War" by Jim Clifton, Chairman of the Gallup polling company. In it, Clifton calculates that three billion of the five billion people over the age of 15 will work or want to work in the future, but that there are only full-time jobs for 1.2 billion. His conclusion: There will be a great global competition for the available jobs. Who will win it? Those who have the best education. And the countries that act first. Hirn's succinct comment: China is acting.

High level of education

The result of this action can be seen. When the Chinese took part in a PISA test for the first time in 2011, the results surprised the public, but not the experts. The students from Shanghai achieved top scores in reading,

Dynamic and self-confident

arithmetic and in the natural sciences - ahead of all other Western nations in the OECD. Which prompts Hirn to remark: "Instead of wallowing in complacent arrogance, those responsible in the West should take the successes of Chinese students, and thus also of the education system there, seriously."

But it's not just this misguided, blind and self-congratulatory arrogance with which the West prefers to look at China that plays into the hands of the Chinese. What is even more worrying in this country is the growing larmoyance combined with a worrying decline in the willingness to make an effort and the resilience of the younger generation. It may be emotionally uplifting to exhaust oneself praying and singing for world peace with like-minded people at church congresses, but whether this is the right course for the individual life may be strongly doubted, especially in view of the Clifton study. Anyone who knows just a little about history knows that this world is not a permanently cosy place for dreamers.

Technologies of the future

And only dreamers can overlook the fact that China is rapidly catching up. Brain: "The technological gap between the Middle Kingdom and the West is getting smaller and smaller, even if many in the West don't want to admit it... Money and brains - China has both almost in abundance. China is pumping billions into future technologies." And "in the country's elite universities, critical questioning is definitely demanded and encouraged." So something,

Money and brains in abundance

which is in short supply in an authoritarian system, as critics of the Chinese scientific establishment never tire of pointing out. Creativity is by no means something that characterises Western countries alone.

The fact is that the Chinese are now world champions when it comes to patents. As early as 2010, they overtook the inventor nation Japan, which ten years earlier had developed four times as many patents as the Chinese. In 2011, the Chinese then overtook the Americans to become the world's number one. The Chinese filed exactly 526,412 patents with the authorities in 2011. "It all happened much faster than we thought," Hirn quotes Robert Sternbridge, who monitors the global patent scene at the information group Thomson Reuters. And in this context, he puts the relevant critics in their place with a remark by Andreas Kreimeyer, a member of the board at the chemical company BASF: There is a whole wave of patents coming out of China that are "not just mass, but also class".

More precise view

In short, anyone who invests time in reading this well-founded book will have invested it well. In eight chapters - Money and Capital; Economy; Education and Technology; Environmental Protection; Raw Materials; Ideology; Foreign Policy; Struggle for World Power - Hirn paints a picture of China that reliably helps one to become a little wiser in looking at and dealing with China on the basis of knowledge of the facts. As the English philosopher, statesman and scientist Francis Bacon said, "Some books you have only to taste, others to devour, and a few to chew through and digest." Blessed meal, then!