BEIJING – As President Hu Jintao heads for the G-20 Summit in London to tackle the global financial crisis, Chinese media is abuzz with clashing views about how the Middle Kingdom should manage its increasingly central role in world affairs.
With their economy still expanding and banks still awash with cash – and the government holding $2 trillion in foreign currency reserves, more than half of which is invested in debt that supports the United States – the Chinese are generally taking pride in their unprecedented new clout in world affairs.
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| Sarah Jiang / NBC News |
| The new book stirring up nationalist sentiments in China: “Unhappy China – The Great Time, Grand Vision and Our Challenges.” |
“Superior system advantage” is how Chinese central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan explains China’s relative strength. He recently called for an end to the dominance of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency, prompting concerns about China’s assertive economic nationalism.
And nationalism is proving to be the sensitive issue that both Chinese leaders and the public have to grapple with as they try to define the nation’s new “great power” status.
‘China is unhappy’
The latest salvo on the nationalism debate was fired by a group of scholars who argue in a best-selling new book that the current financial crisis is proof of the corruption of the world capitalist system led by the United States – and that it’s time for China to take the lead.
The group put out a collection of essays called “Unhappy China – The Great Time, Grand Vision and Our Challenges” in order to “spur, stimulate and wake up” China’s intellectuals.
The book declares: “With Chinese national strength growing at an unprecedented rate, China should stop self-debasing and come to recognize that it has the power to lead the world, and the necessity to break away from Western influence. We are most qualified to lead this world; Westerners should be second.”
Conceived by the authors last October as the global financial crisis began to sweep America and the world, the book was published in early March and is selling for $4.40 a copy. Its first printing sold out and the second printing of 270,000 is reportedly selling fast as well.
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