00:05 40 years china has been transformed out
00:13 the scale of its growth and the sheer
00:21 nothing like this has ever happened
00:28 but as china rises others will fall
00:32 in the 21st century the balance of power
00:40 so how did an impoverished and backward
00:45 become an engine of global capitalism
00:49 just forty years ago china had a new
00:51 leader a five foot tall chain smoking
00:53 veteran of the long march
00:55 with a reputation for pragmatism over
01:03 under done china renounced class
01:05 struggle and embraced the market
01:08 it saw the biggest lifting of people out
01:10 of poverty that has ever taken place
01:15 china became a global economic force
01:18 predicted to become the world's biggest
01:20 in a couple of decades but what actually
01:24 happened 40 years ago and how did china
01:43 china has 1.4 billion people a fifth of
01:50 for the last two centuries they've been
01:52 engaged in a long-running struggle over
01:54 the different pathways
01:59 china was a leading nation over 1 000
02:03 until the early 17th century
02:08 then china began to close door
02:12 we don't need these western gadgets
02:15 you know we are so powerful we have
02:17 everything on the earth
02:20 so from there china begins decline china
02:28 the chinese call what followed the
02:30 century of humiliation
02:33 and its memory has marked china to this
02:40 it suffered colonial oppression japanese
02:45 and then civil war 14 million chinese
02:50 in world war ii alone
02:54 and in the countryside the people were
02:57 reduced to starvation
03:02 from 1840 the first open world with uk
03:07 the longest continued stability for
03:10 with no more than 10 years so china's
03:13 modernization process
03:15 was interrupted again and again and by
03:19 former aggression by peasant uprising
03:22 by civil wars so the communist triumph
03:28 would bring peace but soon economic
03:31 disasters led to the great
03:33 famine and then in the 60s the class
03:35 struggles of the cultural revolution
03:38 when chairman mao waged war on china's
03:41 traditional culture
03:44 china had struggled with modernization
03:47 previously china had tried to modernize
03:50 in keeping china's old traditional way
03:55 and the cultural revolution essentially
03:58 on china's traditional way of doing
04:02 by the early 70s the country was
04:04 traumatized and exhausted
04:06 its economy in ruins the people were
04:15 most people would say ordinary people
04:18 were fed up with this excessive
04:22 radical ideological campaigns one after
04:28 so denzel ping personified this kind of
04:41 dung had been a party stalwart from the
04:43 time of the long march
04:44 in the civil war but in the cultural
04:47 he was purged for criticizing mao
04:51 exile to the countryside he worked as a
04:53 fitter in a tractor factory
04:57 dung had been in the top leadership ever
05:01 1949 and then he spent about
05:05 three years in the countryside
05:10 a lot of the greatest leaders churchill
05:13 abraham lincoln they all had been in
05:16 very high positions
05:18 fell and then had time to think
05:23 and dunk's conclusion was that rigid
05:25 ideology had wrecked china's economy
05:29 in the 1970s china was an agricultural
05:33 80 percent of the people worked the land
05:36 and after three decades of communism
05:38 they were still poor now
06:02 when i was growing up hunger
06:09 almost every day the sort of finding
06:11 something to each was
06:13 was always there the overriding priority
06:18 was to lift the people out of poverty
06:22 and in 1976 when mao died the
06:27 deng xiaoping returned from exile
06:30 determined to change
06:31 china's direction dung had a vision
06:34 and it was that china should become more
06:38 he shared mao zedong's concept that the
06:42 only way for china to become more
06:44 prosperous was to have stability
06:46 and he believed as did now
06:50 that the only way you could have
06:53 through one party rule by a communist
06:56 party that kept all of the power
06:58 in its own hands but mao's concept
07:02 was not really stability it was
07:04 permanent revolution
07:06 and dung didn't accept that so when dun
07:10 came back after mao died his vision was
07:13 that get rich is glorious
07:15 and that you do it in the most efficient
07:19 but to achieve that dung first needed to
07:22 outflank the hard-line conservatives in
07:24 the party leadership
07:26 and when he came back he asked first
07:47 the first step was to undo the damage
07:50 caused by mao's war
07:51 on the middle class
07:55 at 66 when the cultural revolution broke
07:59 they closed down universities they
08:00 closed down all the examinations
08:02 there were a few people who received
08:04 party recommendations to go to school
08:06 but schools were not operating the way
08:16 when i finished my high school i went to
08:19 a factory in shanghai i did not have any
08:27 a whole generation of china's youth had
08:29 been sent to the countryside
08:31 for what was called re-education through
08:36 to learn what it was like to be a
08:40 i was the the probably last cohort of
08:44 high school that you have to go to the
08:47 to receive re-education
08:51 i was thinking of my life was just you
08:52 know i stayed there for
08:54 for my lifetime just gonna be in that
09:03 and then in summer 1977 dung called a
09:06 conference in beijing
09:08 on the future of education high
09:12 department professor liu dauyu he told
09:17 you are invited by the thing so being
09:24 the great hall you know in beijing
09:27 i go to the the people grew up
09:34 speak because at that time you know that
09:37 after cultural revolution they are very
09:41 fair you know people were scared yeah
09:45 yeah then the things are being said
09:48 you can't take any opinion
09:55 and did you speak i propose to the
10:03 i proposed 16 words
10:06 for the inter of the university
10:11 those 16 words would change modern china
10:14 exams should start again as soon as
10:16 possible they should be free
10:19 fair and open to all not just the party
10:22 dung agreed and the first exams took
10:26 that december of 1977.
10:29 when the news announced that actually we
10:32 take the examination to get into college
10:36 we're just it's so we're just so
10:39 happy and it was exhilarated it's just
10:44 life-changing you know sort of moment
10:50 it was very tough 5.7 million
10:53 candidates applying for the exam only
10:57 less than five percent were admitted and
11:01 varied from 18 to 35 you know in my
11:06 i was 20 at that time
11:10 they were coal miners they were farmers
11:13 they were soldiers they were
11:16 workers young apprentice like me
11:19 so that exam changed life for many
11:26 in a culture that had for so long
11:28 believed in the value of education
11:30 it was a transformational moment
12:06 it was the first step in his path to
12:09 the following year 1978 he emerged as
12:18 he wasn't fully in charge hua guafang
12:23 officially the top leader but
12:26 it was clear that he had been given the
12:28 authority by his colleagues
12:30 to be the dominant figure
12:42 he realized that all those people who
12:45 had spent their lives working for mao
12:47 including himself was started in 1922
12:51 that what they had been thinking about
12:53 was completely wrong
12:55 and to be able to lead that kind of
12:59 dramatic change to get
13:02 several hundred million people to accept
13:05 quite new and quite different was
13:08 absolutely necessary
13:17 when i graduated from college in 1978
13:22 i could feel the strong wind of change
13:25 chinese many people like me the chinese
13:29 face the world and rediscover the world
13:34 and also to learn from the world
13:38 in may 1978 dung sent a five-week
13:41 fact-finding mission to europe
14:03 they were shocked by what they saw
14:05 they've been taught
14:06 that capitalist countries brutally
14:08 exploited their workers
14:10 were backward and decadent but now they
14:12 saw for themselves how far
14:14 communist china had fallen behind
14:51 himself now went on a mission to
14:53 singapore and japan
14:56 dun was one of the few communist leaders
15:00 in china who was exposed to the outside
15:04 he spent almost six years in france
15:07 as a part work part studies student
15:11 so this kind of international outlook
15:20 in japan dung understood the extent of
15:23 china's backwardness
15:45 he saw the modern robots in the factory
15:49 he saw the most modern steel plant in
15:52 the world at that time
15:54 he talked to matsushta who the great
15:59 and he could see the extraordinary
16:03 and he was excited like a little kid and
16:06 seeing all those things
16:09 dung wanted the chinese people to see
16:12 others lived he asked specifically
16:16 the essential television crew to
16:19 film people's life he said please
16:23 focus on how ordinary people in japan
16:26 in singapore lived it's an eye-opening
16:31 for chinese at that time you know when
16:35 source with television japanese workers
16:40 have refrigerators at home you know
16:43 it's awakening it's a it's a shock
16:49 in 1978 there were no fridges and tvs
16:52 in the chinese countryside hundreds of
16:56 millions worked the land in a rigid
16:58 system of collective
16:59 farms huge communes on the stalinist
17:04 but it had been a total failure china
17:11 this is feng young in anhui province
17:14 a fifth of the county had died in the
17:16 great famine in the early 1960s
17:20 and here the seeds of change were
17:22 beginning to sprout at the grass
17:24 roots that winter of 1978
17:28 in the village of xiaogang desperate
17:31 local farmers broke with the commune
17:33 system of collective farming
17:36 in this house on the 24th of november
17:39 they secretly swore a pact
17:41 to go back to family farms selling their
17:46 it was against the law and the penalties
17:51 but in this room risking their lives
17:54 they put their thumbprints to what they
18:28 what did you what were the words that
18:30 you put on the document what was the
18:55 and were you were you scared that the
18:57 the government might find out was it
19:22 so the ordinary people of china wanted
19:28 the party leadership though was still
19:30 split over the course china should take
19:33 between the reformers and the hardliners
19:36 feared opening up the market would
19:38 betray the revolution
19:42 sensing the mood in the nation that
19:45 deng xiaoping convened a conference
19:53 the big grey building on the corner is
19:58 it's quite difficult to find there's no
19:59 sign saying it's a hotel
20:01 and not everybody can book in there
20:04 especially if you're a foreigner
20:06 although if you look it up on
20:07 tripadvisor it says that the the decor
20:10 is lovely and the staff are extremely
20:12 good looking and very well trained
20:14 but it's owned by the people's
20:16 liberation army and many important
20:18 meetings of the communist party taking
20:20 place there over the last few decades
20:23 showing the path of china's future but
20:25 none of them so important
20:27 as the meeting in december 1978.
20:38 200 delegates from all over china met
20:42 to discuss the economy and the commune
20:45 system of agriculture
20:48 still under mao's shadow they were
20:50 divided about the future
20:52 so maneuvering against the hard-liners
20:55 dung prepared a short keynote speech
20:58 that crystallized all he'd thought about
21:00 in his years in the countryside
21:04 the key dung said was to reject ideology
21:08 from now on we must seek truth from
21:14 we have to think about what we've done
21:18 we're too poor too backward i honestly
21:22 feel sorry for the people
21:26 from now on he said we must embrace
21:29 science and technology
21:30 and open up the market to change the
21:32 backward condition of our country
21:39 the conservatives were shocked the
21:41 reformers were excited
21:44 dun concluded the time has come to
21:57 but that winter dung was also looking
22:00 the usa recognized the nationalists in
22:04 not the communists on the mainland as
22:06 the legitimate rulers of china
22:09 but now beijing and the us were in
22:11 secret negotiations
22:13 stapleton roy was there our relations
22:16 with china for 20 years were frozen
22:18 in a pattern of total hostility during
22:22 the relations between china and the
22:24 soviet union deteriorated and we
22:26 couldn't take advantage of that
22:28 and that's what this secret negotiations
22:31 we had to break relations with the
22:33 friendly government we had to end a
22:35 security treaty with a friendly
22:38 and we had to remove all of our military
22:44 and so president carter was given the
22:48 did he want to only get a partial
22:51 relationship with china
22:52 or was he prepared to take the enormous
22:57 in order to get a full diplomatic
22:59 relationship with china it was very
23:01 before we began the negotiations we
23:04 briefed the top leadership in congress
23:07 both the republican and democratic
23:09 leadership in congress
23:11 as to what our bottom line was in the
23:14 and what they told us was you're doing
23:17 but we are going to criticize you right
23:20 so in other words they were supportive
23:22 of what we were doing
23:24 but for political reasons they were
23:27 the way it was done
23:32 on the 1st of january 1979 the u.s
23:36 recognized the people's republic and
23:38 then in mid-january dung went to
23:41 to meet president jimmy carter
23:46 today we take another step in the
23:50 normalization of relations which we have
24:00 the eyes of texas were on dongxiao king
24:03 as the chinese vice premiere continued
24:05 his tour of this country
24:07 in an eight-day trip dung visited
24:11 and nasa in houston he even had time to
24:15 get down home at a texas rodeo but
24:18 behind the fun was a cool
24:19 calculating brain he needed the us
24:34 engagement had a number of goals some of
24:36 which were self-serving on our part
24:38 uh some of which had to do with changing
24:41 at which the west has been
24:43 extraordinarily successful there's no
24:45 question about where the lion's share of
24:47 influence has flowed and much of the
24:51 energy of engagement and i'm not talking
24:53 about government to government but the
24:55 institutions universities in some cases
24:58 cities counties churches that were
25:00 involved in engagement
25:02 it really was about development for a
25:05 lifting people out of poverty and
25:08 improving their lives as a matter of
25:15 to finance the first stage of the reform
25:17 dung asked the un for help
25:19 he'd already made a speech there in 1974
25:22 calling for a new economic order
25:26 and china he dreamed would one day lead
25:37 the person sent to china to begin the
25:40 program was a young tech consultant jack
25:44 fensterstock in the summer of 1978
25:48 i was contacted by a ranking official at
25:52 asking me to come to new york to discuss
25:55 with them a highly secretive project
25:57 and they told me that uh when i at the
26:00 that by the end of the year china was
26:02 going to announce its opening up to the
26:05 and that it was felt that they would
26:07 need some technical assistance
26:09 so i was asked to lead this sort of
26:11 programming mission to try to figure out
26:13 what china wanted to do and how the un
26:16 in in the area of computing which by the
26:19 late 70s was clear was going to be the
26:21 future the third industrial revolution
26:24 they were way behind they were way
26:27 and they realized this and
26:30 the money was used for the equipment
26:33 mainframes and what they call that time
26:37 the training of their people better ways
26:40 retrieving you know the world's science
26:42 technological and industrial information
26:45 we put in a rudimentary hospital
26:49 china just had all these pieces of paper
26:51 there was no way of it being organized
26:53 so we set up a database system
26:55 and then getting into the area of how to
26:58 database modeling you know econometrics
27:02 you know all of this they took off very
27:11 so in early 79 the stage was set for the
27:15 guangzhou on the pearl river in south
27:18 was to be the testing ground china's
27:22 commercial capital the city had gone
27:24 into a steep decline
27:26 since the revolution of 1949. when you
27:29 came here 40 years ago what you saw was
27:33 decaying factories with old-fashioned
27:36 poor infrastructure almost no cars in
27:41 guangzhou said a local communist party
27:45 has become the tired old man of the
27:49 and the reason was very simple what good
28:02 my first visit at design was 1973
28:05 and at that time i remember in guangzhou
28:09 there were still dog carts there were a
28:10 lot of people without clothes
28:12 who were so thin that you could not
28:16 you know wonder if they were going to
28:19 on his return from the states dunn came
28:22 to initiate the economic reforms
28:26 a short drive into the pearl river delta
28:29 you could look straight
28:30 across to hong kong then still under
28:35 40 years ago this was a vision of the
28:38 this strait was the gateway to a better
28:40 life for thousands of poor chinese whose
28:43 dreams of wealth often ended in bitter
28:47 and even tragedy seven hundred thousand
28:51 mainly young men had attempted to cross
28:55 but many of them swimming directly
28:58 a hundred and forty thousand made it
29:00 most were turned back
29:01 but many drowned one of the coves here
29:04 the cove of corpses the reasons for the
29:07 migration of course
29:09 were economic you could earn over there
29:12 a hundred times the daily wage
29:15 of a labourer here in guangzhou
29:20 to change that deng xiaoping found an
29:22 ally in the new boss in guangdong
29:25 an old revolutionary comrade who shared
29:27 his views on reform
29:29 xi jong-shun the father of today's
29:31 president xi jinping
30:14 huge deals for local industry unleashing
30:17 the potential of the new economic
30:21 here in shenzhen then just a rocky
30:23 peninsula opposite hong kong
30:25 a local entrepreneur proposed a business
30:28 involving foreign investment a no-go
30:34 he had a plan to create a breakers yard
30:38 here where old chinese merchant vessels
30:41 and there were lots of them
30:43 would be broke into pieces and sold a
30:45 scrap metal to hong kong merchants
30:48 the other side of the water to feed the
30:51 boom over there now of course there
30:54 there was no space for such an
30:56 enterprise but there was here
30:58 so on the 31st of january 1979 barely a
31:02 since the plenum meeting in the jinji
31:06 the deal was signed the first foreign
31:10 contract in the history of the people's
31:16 dung had warned xi that central
31:18 government had no money to give him
31:20 but they devised a plan to try to free
31:22 the economy through local
31:24 enterprise they called it a special
31:28 this was totally typical of deng
31:31 xiaoping's approach
31:33 they set up these four experimental
31:37 near hong kong and macau and they
31:40 permitted market forces to operate in
31:42 those zones but not elsewhere in the
31:45 and when the zones were wildly
31:48 in large measure because hong kong took
31:50 advantage of the cheap labor
31:52 available on the mainland and
31:56 moved their production facilities into
32:03 then became the model for the entire
32:07 in a system stifled by bureaucracy and
32:11 dung's idea was to give more freedom to
32:15 i think this is really the key test
32:17 something at the local level
32:20 see if it works if it works expand it on
32:24 if there's push back pull it back and
32:28 expand it again thousands of small
32:31 businesses were now allowed to spring up
32:34 china the first on the coast of jejung
32:38 at wenzhou which had always been less
32:40 controlled by beijing
32:42 because of its location you can see how
32:45 wenzhou's been shaped by geography
32:48 hemmed in by the mountains cut off from
32:51 it's always been an outward looking
32:53 place from the sung dynasty onwards its
32:57 sailed down the river up the coast to
32:59 the yangtze delta cities
33:01 down to the pearl river and on to
33:03 vietnam so when the great opening up
33:05 40 years ago this city with its
33:09 clan based businesses was ideally
33:11 situated to take advantage of the new
33:14 and when joe was the first city in china
33:17 to establish a system
33:18 of small private enterprise
33:23 wenzhou would be the birthplace of
33:25 china's private economy
33:27 a hundred and thirty thousand small
33:30 from noodle bars to china's first
33:34 and the first private business
33:36 certificate in 1979
33:38 was issued to a young woman selling
33:40 knitting in the street
34:10 so how did you get into buttons then how
34:13 did the button story
34:51 so china embarked on an economic and
34:55 mixing the communist command economy
34:58 with the energy of capitalist
35:01 xiaoping took a position of absolute
35:06 and the view was it doesn't matter if
35:08 it's socialism or market as long as it
35:11 and this idea of combining both at that
35:14 time was something that
35:15 international economists western
35:17 economists imf world bank did not accept
35:20 but that's what they did
35:23 the communist party could push through
35:25 big construction projects
35:27 quickly providing the infrastructure for
35:31 but they also needed to liberate talents
35:34 lower down the chain of command
35:36 as deng xiaoping put it to democratize
35:39 economic production the big
35:42 thing that we realized is that they had
35:46 sort of penta productive forces and
35:48 since the biggest component
35:50 of productive forces is the human
35:53 they spent a lot of effort on this so
35:56 they changed from one man rule into
35:59 collective leadership
36:01 no longer could decisions just be made
36:05 so they gave people downstream the
36:08 and the authority to make decisions so
36:11 motivated and talented middle people
36:14 were really important in this
36:15 the most important these were the real
36:17 people who got everything done
36:20 and to train the managers of the future
36:23 chinese students were sent to foreign
36:26 without party control in the next twenty
36:29 over two hundred thousand studied in the
36:33 i remember i think it's brucing national
36:36 security advisor to
36:37 to jimmy carter asked them you know
36:41 how many students you want to send to
36:46 and then said how many you can receive
36:49 yeah for us no limit it's a lot of
36:53 courage because that
36:54 living standard between china and the
36:56 west was so different you know
36:58 china was much lower and many were
37:01 concerned that students may not
37:02 choose to return to china and then said
37:06 internal party meetings if one out of
37:09 can return to china this policy
37:13 will be a victory for us
37:17 but success in the universities depended
37:20 on standards in schools
37:23 and a major feature of the reform
37:25 process was a huge investment in primary
37:28 and secondary education
37:30 especially for women i remember when i
37:34 was in the middle school
37:35 in my class there were lots of students
37:37 from the countryside from nearby
37:39 villages and there were very few
37:42 girls and even the few in our class
37:46 they were constantly urged by their
37:50 quit study and go home
37:53 but all these have changed as the
37:56 society has progressed
37:58 now you see in the countryside boys
38:01 schools and they can decide their own
38:07 by the early 80s the signs of reform
38:10 from the schools to the cars on the
38:12 streets where once there were only
38:15 and a huge demographic change began
38:19 a key feature of china's modernization
38:21 process has been urbanization
38:24 the rural population of china has been
38:26 moving into the cities at a rapid pace
38:31 now to understand china's rapid economic
38:36 the productivity of a rural worker
38:39 who moves into a city and gets a factory
38:44 increases about 20 times with a fast
38:47 growing middle class
38:49 production had to keep pace with
38:52 and though big centrally controlled
38:54 factories dominated
38:56 tens of thousands of small enterprises
38:59 accounted for a growing percentage of
39:01 output in construction materials and
39:05 and leather this shoe factory in wenzhou
39:09 was a typical early eighties success
39:49 so in just four years china's
39:51 agriculture education and industry were
39:54 private business allowed to flourish
39:57 they even opened a stock exchange
40:00 the energies of the chinese people were
40:04 you're talking about social
40:06 transformation economic transformation
40:09 psychology changing all of these things
40:12 moved at such a huge pace it's often
40:15 baffles people here not to say foreign
40:18 observers who are trying to catch up and
40:20 understand what's happening
40:24 but deng xiaoping's concept of political
40:28 was still only within one party rule
40:31 he embraced only economic liberalization
40:35 he rejects political liberalization
40:38 or globalization the western style he
40:41 said we must be very cautious on the
40:45 i call his political reform is
40:48 not democratization
40:54 chinese discourse of modernization since
40:58 has been distinct from what we call
41:00 modernity in the west
41:02 china has never claimed interest in
41:04 liberal ideas and values it has claimed
41:06 that it is pursuing
41:07 modernization by which it means economic
41:15 economically this meant seeking new
41:18 relationships and trade deals around the
41:21 but politically the absolute power of
41:23 the communist party
41:27 dumb was a pragmatist his famous quote
41:30 you know is it doesn't matter whether a
41:32 cat is black or white
41:33 if it catches rats it's a good cat and
41:36 he was experimental
41:38 in looking for the best way to
41:39 accomplish something but the real
41:42 to socialism in china occurred after
41:50 so after decades of struggle china's
41:52 path to modernization had been set
41:57 at the beginning china's low production
41:59 costs offered huge opportunities to the
42:03 what was happening was the valve was
42:05 opening i worked on a lot of the early
42:08 inbound investments i did the very first
42:12 deal for exxon mobil for roche
42:16 for buyer chemical i negotiated
42:19 ericsson's first joint venture here
42:22 and with its fast expanding urban
42:25 china's gdp would increase nearly 70
42:29 in 40 years the reform and openness
42:32 policies have been wildly successful
42:35 in modernizing chinese society and its
42:40 but china has what i call a pre-modern
42:45 it's based on this concept that power
42:47 should be concentrated in the hands of
42:50 and all modern political systems are
42:52 based on the concept of power corrupts
42:55 and therefore it needs to be checked and
42:56 balanced and that the just powers of
42:59 governance are derived from the consent
43:01 of the government so there needs to be
43:02 some sort of legitimization
43:04 process china does not accept
43:08 those modern concepts and so the
43:11 contradiction between the way that china
43:14 and the nature of the society that has
43:17 transformed through the success of the
43:20 reform and openness policies
43:22 is a fundamental contradiction in china
43:27 but 40 years on that's not a
43:30 contradiction to the chinese government
43:32 who proclaim their marriage of one party
43:35 and capitalist enterprise as the chinese
43:40 and their economy is changing now big
43:44 have seized their chance in a global
43:49 so 1999 the the time when alibaba was
43:53 the name let's always link to the story
43:56 open sesame so open sesame that means
44:02 how we can help the small and
44:04 middle-sized enterprises
44:06 to do the business open the treasure
44:10 across the whole world exactly okay
44:12 maybe like people have not realized
44:14 i bought from day one is a kind of
44:16 globalization of the symbol
44:18 because the first website of alibaba is
44:26 so as companies like alibaba reach out
44:30 economic liberation has enabled the
44:34 chinese middle class with its own tastes
44:41 china's middle class it's about 400
44:44 it's bigger than the population of the
44:46 united states getting bigger
44:51 and these are people who are early
44:54 of technology who value education
44:57 extremely highly and will suffer for it
45:01 and as family there are also people who
45:04 in increasing their national prestige
45:12 the rate of accumulation of wealth of
45:16 but it's still fairly high and not only
45:18 are they early adapters of technologies
45:21 but they are adapting technologies and
45:24 new products new markets in
45:27 a still relatively unregulated market
45:30 where they don't face the kinds of
45:31 consumer product protections that a lot
45:33 of countries in the west and many in the
45:36 so they're moving forward very quickly
45:41 and that lack of regulation has helped
45:44 china catch up very fast
45:46 with western technology
45:50 often playing fast and loose with
45:52 intellectual property
45:57 i don't buy into this that everything
45:59 has been copied what they did was called
46:02 learning by doing and what they did was
46:04 they imported know-how and technology
46:07 they weren't so interested in the how of
46:09 it the theory of it
46:11 let's put it to work let's start putting
46:14 to work let's start heading to the
46:16 economy and we have time
46:18 you know later on to figure all this out
46:23 but they started their own programs they
46:25 don't want to be dependent anymore on
46:31 a key example is china's high-speed
46:51 how big is the the network now is it
46:54 is the network expanding every year
47:14 that's incredible 25 000 kilometers of
47:17 high-speed network looking at the future
47:21 is still expanding how do you see the
47:34 and now the chinese government is
47:36 pursuing globalization
47:39 through their belt and road initiative
47:42 linking up the trade of asia europe and
47:49 searching for new markets and raw
47:51 materials it's an infrastructure project
47:54 of extraordinary scale
47:56 and ambition right back in the middle
48:00 chinese junks and arab dolls carried the
48:05 tea and silk and especially ceramics
48:08 to the persian gulf and the west and now
48:10 they're doing it again
48:14 from these container ports of ships are
48:17 flooding across the world
48:18 and wherever you live whether you're in
48:22 or africa or asia there'll be something
48:25 that ends up on your table
48:31 and with growing economic power comes
48:35 political and cultural influence
48:39 the balance of power in the world is
48:41 shifting very quickly
48:44 china is very adept at spreading
48:47 its practices or getting acceptance for
48:51 through money through the markets and
48:54 a nefarious plot this is happening in
48:56 the broad light of day and largely with
48:57 the complicity of american corporations
49:00 that want to sell into china but it has
49:04 and i think that the most telling
49:07 is hollywood hollywood's profit model is
49:12 china has the world's highest box office
49:14 if you want to be a blockbuster you
49:15 therefore must play in china
49:18 china censors films heavily
49:21 the result is that american filmmakers
49:24 and these are the people who would claim
49:26 to be the architects of soft power and
49:28 celebrants of the human spirit human
49:30 freedom they won't greenlight a script
49:33 that can't show in china so we have
49:35 handed to them a direct channel
49:37 for influencing what we see here at the
49:41 money talks they china will become the
49:43 taste makers to the world
49:45 both at the supply and the demand side
49:48 because they have the numbers
49:55 but china's influence will go beyond
49:57 economics and culture
50:01 its sheer size means that it will join
50:04 the us as a leader in a.i
50:09 ai will be the next phase of their
50:15 the ai is the fourth industrial
50:17 revolution the initial steam engine
50:18 industrial revolution
50:20 electricity uh the digital revolution of
50:28 the oil that makes the ai machine run is
50:31 and china will have more data because of
50:34 and because it is able to direct and use
50:36 their data as they wish
50:38 so china may be very well positioned
50:41 to be one of the two leaders in
50:43 artificial intelligence
50:48 to pursue that goal china is now
50:50 encouraging big business to work with
50:53 new tech universities
50:56 many run by foreign educated scientists
51:02 this area is one of the most
51:04 economically developed area in china
51:08 and by combining hong kong and macau
51:11 the central government has a plan to
51:14 pro data area into one of the
51:18 biggest bay areas in the world
51:21 to become competitive as compared to
51:24 and san francisco bay and already
51:27 chinese corporations like tencent
51:29 alibaba and huawei are spreading their
51:32 influence around the globe
51:34 challenging the supremacy of u.s
51:38 but they're also positioning themselves
51:40 to take the lead in the greatest problem
51:42 facing the world today
51:44 climate change having inflicted huge
51:48 damage on their own environment
51:50 china signed up to the paris climate
51:53 and they're now massively investing in
51:57 which they see as another growth
52:00 economically and politically especially
52:05 has walked away from the paris accords
52:10 china will lead on environment it will
52:12 be the global leader
52:14 in the fight against climate change it's
52:16 also going to be one of the global
52:18 leaders if not the leader
52:19 on technology it's already the largest
52:24 ai is not just about robots serving you
52:27 about all the technology required for
52:31 this involves massive data to manage
52:35 solar all of these systems because this
52:37 will create all kinds of jobs
52:39 this is not the environment preventing
52:43 the next growth opportunity is in fixing
52:49 that long-term vision on the face of it
52:53 but commentators in the west think that
52:55 china's unwillingness to embrace
52:57 western-style democracy might impede the
53:02 in the future china is not
53:05 necessarily committed to the idea that
53:07 electoral democracy
53:08 can provide stability in china but
53:12 when the party no longer tells them
53:13 where they can go where they can work
53:15 where they can study what they can read
53:18 where they can travel
53:19 all those freedoms emerged in china over
53:25 but the danger is if you're open to the
53:28 outside world it's hard to maintain
53:30 ideological conformity on the part of
53:37 china wants to become a world leader in
53:39 artificial intelligence in robotics
53:42 in a whole bunch of areas that require
53:46 require highly educated people and
53:50 if china closes itself off from the
53:52 outside world in order to maintain
53:54 ideological conformity they cannot
53:59 pattern of rapid growth
54:10 how things will work out in the future
54:16 western commentators have repeatedly
54:18 predicted that china's mix of capitalism
54:21 and one-party rule was bound to fail
54:28 so far they've been proved wrong
54:32 when china started its reform four
54:36 china's per capita gdp was lower than
54:40 kenya with the level of malawi now china
54:44 the second largest economy by official
54:46 exchange rate and largest economy by ppp
54:48 purchasing power parity
54:51 and obvious china done something right
55:04 this old idea that a consumerist middle
55:08 an advocate for democracy tends to
55:11 presume that these people are locked in
55:15 but if you look at the way that people
55:18 in shanghai in shenzhen they go down to
55:22 thailand a few times a year they go to
55:24 the french open they go to turks and
55:25 caicos they can import
55:27 dairy from new zealand they can go to
55:31 hospitals for the rich their children
55:33 are at school in the uk
55:35 in canada in the us
55:40 the system the party has brought them to
55:42 this it has brought them this abundance
55:45 these opportunities so i think that the
55:49 day of reckoning and that's a western
55:51 way of speaking not a chinese way of
55:54 is probably a lot further off than we