Part of the statement of Professor Mel Gurtov, Portland State University, to the Oregon House Education Subcommittee on Higher Education presented 2/14/07:
Until recently, China's leaders were content to have their country stay in the background and maintain fairly reactive international policies, in keepiong with Deng Xiaoping's advice to "maintain a low profile" and "never take the lead." But those days are over. China's "peaceful rise," a slogan adopted in 2003, has meant catching up with the major economies, becoming a "responsible great power," and scouring the world for vital energy and mineral resources, often without regard to the environmental and human-rights costs. These trends, which are very unlikely to be reverse or seriously modified, pose challenges and opportunities for us. Here are three of them:
First, China is busily seeking global and local partnerships to promote its rapid economic development. Our universities and communities have been involved for some time in working with Chinese institutions at many levels, particularly training students and officials. But to be effective in these partnerships, as my colleagues will point out, we will need many more well-educated, language proficient, and culturally sensitive individuals in our schools and government than we now have.
Second, China's economic emergence has created serious roadblocks in governance, environmental protection, and energy security. Oregon institutions have the capacity to help in each of these areas - for examples, with sustainable developoment ideas, leadership training, and technologies.
Third, China is wired: the number of people with access to cell phones, the Internet, and satellite TV is growing at a phenomenal rate. The hunger for information will surely outpace the government's ability to filter it. Our IT firms are ideally suited to promote information sharing.
Oregon's and the U.S.'s futures are increasingly linked with China's. China's rise already affects our environment and our economy, in such forms as trans-Pacific pollution, trade, and China's huge financial reserves. Though much attention in Washington focuses on China as a potential strategic competitor, the real China challenge for us seems to me to depend on our "soft power" - the quality of our education, training and information.
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