The Rise Of Great Nations/What China Wants

The Sun Bin Blog recently did an in depth post on the recently completed 12 part CCTV documentary series, "The Rise of the Great Nations" [can be downloaded in Chinese here].  The post is entitled, "The Great Nations" and "What does China want?"   Sun Bin believes the show reflects Beijing's views on where China must go in the next 20-50 years if it is to continue to thrive and he devotes the first part of the post to why we should consider the show as state policy.  I agree with Sun Bin that a show of this scope and sort does, at least generally, reflect official policy.

The second part of the Sun Bin post sets forth what he sees [summarized]as the themes Beijing is seeking to convey through the show:

1. "Great Nation = Innovation and contribution to its own people and the world."  The innovation of Thomas Edison, Dutch shipbuilders, and Japanese businesses were discussed throughout the program and in the finale, the head of the Chinese Diplomatic Institute, Wu Jianmin said something like, "Great nations contribute to world development.  Innovation is essential for making such contributions and innovation is not possible if free thinking is constrained."
2. "Aggression through force is to be avoided at all costs." Nazi Germany and Japan are examples of this.  Aggression is the wrong way to build a Great Nation.  Wealth through expansion and aggression is not reliable.  The modern world competes through business and innovation and contributions to humanity and scientific knowledge, not through military success.
3. "Rule of law and building of a system."  "Almost all episodes emphasized the rule of law." 
4. "Focus on internal development and building sustainable capabilities."  Military expansion is ephemeral. 
5. "A lot of attention is given to building a system and ensuring the fundamentals, both economically and politically."
6. "The government must play a leading role in taking a country to great nation status."  The show praised the government's role in Russia's 1920s-1930s industrialization and also spoke well of how Keynesian economics influenced the government's role during the Roosevelt administration.

Based on the the above analysis, Sun Bin then posits we can expect the following in the way of Chinese reform:

• "US or UK style Democracy will be the long term goal." Sun Bin bases this on how the show constantly discussed how the "political/societal infrastructure" of the United States and the United Kingdom played "an essential role" in their rise.  Sun Bin sees this as "challenging the traditional party line that there are many types of definition for so-called 'democracy' and that 'China is different'." 
• "To make China an open society before turning it into a democracy." Sun Bin expects China to copy Britain by opening up its media before it becomes a democracy.
• "China is determined to play by the rule of the modern world, and to make compromise both internally and externally."  Sun Bin posits that China has "already compromised with the US in many international issues" and has begun "its rapprochement with Japan."  The show focused on how compromise among groups led to the forming democratic governments in Holland, the UK and the US.  The Finale of the show "explicitly" mentioned that "no great nation was built by defeating the hegemon at the time. 
  

The China in Transition Blog, in a post entitled, "New Wave of Democratic Talks in Chinese Media Attracts Attentions," notes that "people in China" are noticing "that the media have been unusually outspoken lately." Evidence of this new outspokenness can be seen in "published interviews with human rights activists and dissent academics who are not favored by government censors, and several articles frankly advocating democracy and rule of law, something not very often seen in mainland media."  Most "remarkable" of all, however, "is a documentary series aired on one of China�s major propaganda organs, China Central Television, The Rise of the Great Nations," which explained in a "fairly objective" way why these great nations thrived.  The blog sees this show as so "unusual for CCTV that many viewers said they could not believe the show was produced by the station."

The EastWestNorthSouth blog gathered up some interesting comments on the show from the ChineseNewsNet site and translated them, here.

Not sure I share Sun Bin's enthusiasm, particularly in light of recent Chinese legal/media events.