Well, thank you very much and it’s a great privilege to share the
platform with such inspirational speakers as you’ve already heard
this evening. Of course as it was mentioned I have a particular
perspective on China. I’ve fallen in love with China in particular
one part of it occupied by Xuelin Li and my wife.
Of all the statistics that are presented about China, the one which
always inspires me is that no country in human history has ever
lifted more people out of poverty than China. Seven hundred
million, three quarters of the total lifted out of poverty between
2000 and 2010 were here in China. That should make us celebrate and
take note and try to understand. My perspective of understanding
was not analysis of the economics. It was to walk through China, to
walk a thousand miles.
Originally, it was meant to be from Beijing, the northern capital
to Nanjing, the southern capital. But I walked a little bit too
fast and I got there three weeks early and Xuelin said you’ve
arrived three weeks early, well, now you can walk on to my home
city, which is Hangzhou and that’s how it became that we walk for
peace to Nanjing and love for Hangzhou. And that was an amazing
time.I remember one afternoon, we’ve been walking for three weeks
out of Beijing, I have to say many things that are said about
walking, but often walking as I found when I set off through
Beijing, I was overtaking the traffic as I walked down through the
various ring roads to the five, six ring road.
And we walked about three weeks and it was during the August, so it
was very hot temperatures.We started to climb high to the Taian
mountains in Shandong province and we moved into Shandong province
and into the Taian mountains. And it was beautiful countryside.
It’s one of the things worth remembering about China is, of course,
that a lot of people are looking China and saying, well, it’s an
economic miracle, well, it’s already been mentioned. This miracle
has actually been happening almost every century for the past three
thousand years. We arrived in a small village called Shenjiatun, I
just pictured in the mountains nowhere around, hardly a road to be
seen.
A few local houses around a local square. In the middle of the
square, a great tree, an oak tree. And beside the oak tree, there
was a well. We sat down from the heat of the temperatures of about
40 degrees. Xuelin and I sat down beside the well and underneath
the tree, and not long before people start coming to join us and
start to talk about what we were doing, why we were doing, what we
were doing.And as we sat there, they explain that the tree that was
providing the shade was some five hundred years old, that the well
just beside this was seven hundred years old. And we were getting
very nostalgic about this and I said to the few people over there.
I said have you had many visitors to your village? Many foreigners
come to your village? And they looked at each other and they said
no.
And I start really excited.I thought I discovered somewhere new and
they said but we were not quite sure. But the person who would know
is the old man of the village. He’s 95 years old. He’s lived here
all of his life, apart from two years in 1943 when he went off to
fight to liberate Jinan which was under Japanese occupation at the
time, but he’s lived here all his life. So they went into the field
and they brought him and he sat under the tree and they said has
anybody, any foreigner visited at this village before. He said no,
no, this man is the first.
I was amazed. I felt like Marco Polo. And to capture the moment, I
said to Xuelin, I said do you think that they will be OK if we
actually took a photograph, a photograph. I thought hang on, they
will get a little bit worry, perhaps they don’t know what a camera
is, let alone the camera can now be found on the phone. And so they
all lined up and Xuelin ask him to take a photograph and they took
a photograph with her phone.
And this was an amazing time. I thought I will give talks about
this, just this experience in Shenjiatun for many many years to
come. And then as the photograph has finished, everybody, including
the old man, pulled out their smart phones and started to go to
Shelin to ask her for her QS code, so they could join her WeChat
group and get copies of the photograph. I thought that were amazed.
But to me it was the perfect beautiful illustration of the ancient
and the modern, the old and the new resting together here in China.
It was an extraordinary thing.
As we continued walking, we visited many of the places that the
previous speakers talked about the Confucian tradition which is so
important I think to help people understand what China is about and
where those traditions come from, just as much as trying to
understand European civilization without understanding the
importance of the Greek philosophers, Socrates, Aristoteles, Plato,
all the Christian religion in that part of our culture development.
Confucius is critical.
And so when we were in Qufu, and we actually saw the place where he
was born, the beds where he was raised and the place where he was
finally laid to rest. We began to understand the importance which
is put not on self, but on others. And this was important to
remember. It was this drive to serve others, to work hard to be
good for others, which was a really important lesson to learn.
Everywhere we went, as we walked through small villages, often at
the end of a hard day of walk, Xuelin and I would wonder where we
were staying and we were going to search some dumplings or some tea
in the local market square.
And in the local square, what would we see. Well, in western
countries often you won’t see anyone other than young people,
because the squares are associated with alcohol and pubs and often
they will be places that the very old and very young wouldn’t go.
But not so in China. We would see the line dancing. In fact, we
used to join in with various dancers dancing in the squares with
the more senior experienced dancers at the front and the less
experienced watching and taking the note and the children sitting
there in front of them and the man sitting to the side playing
chesses. It was a wonderful picture. But what reminded us was that
young people and children are the center of attention for the
Chinese.
We know how investment in young people and in children pays off
multiple multiple times if you can get it. And so the fact that you
would see children not just playing with other children, not just
on their own, but actually surrounded by adults all fighting for
the opportunity to look after the child. You realize this is very
important in understanding China. They invest in their future. They
invest in their children. And you see that then reflected in
education.You see the education performance, PISA, which is the
international ranking of educational performance looks at all of
the countries around the world and where does it find the math and
science performance is the best in Shanghai. Amazing. That out of
all of the countries in the world, China, which still in nominal
GDP terms, is only 72nd in the world should come top because of the
importance of education.
I remember going through Suqian, and we were walking through Suqian
and at the end of the day I would stop and talk to people who was
there with Xuelin.And we were talking to an old man who was raking
the sides of the road, the sides of the road, the way that they
maintained in China is wonderful and we saw a lot of these people
always working, looking after and keeping the road very tidy and
free from litter. And this man was working in the heat of the day
and I started talking and said is this your piece of land. He said
no. I said is this your job and you paid to do this. He said no. I
said so why are you doing it. And he said because work is good for
you. Work is good for you. I agree with that. I agree with
that.
Hard work, so education, investing in the young. Hard work, these
are all important lessons for the future. But there was another
element. You see, China is actually quite a sentimental country.
It’s very optimistic. There was a YouGov opinion poll which is
carried out and it said that do you believe the world is getting
better. Most of the countries in the world it was either negative
or very slightly positive. The UK came in about 4%. In China, 41%
thought the world was getting better. Amazing. So 41% think the
world is getting better.
There is a saying. It says this, we see the world not as it is, but
as we are. If you are pessimistic, then you won’t see the value in
investing in the future and investing in yourself. If you are
optimistic, you are excited about the future. You want to invest in
the future. Important lesson No.3 about China, it’s an optimistic
world. If you come here as a pessimist, you’ll never understand
China. You need to be positive to understand China.
That investment in children feeds through into infrastructure. So
many people have talked about the importance of infrastructure. The
massive growth of high speed rail lines around the country is quite
amazing and there is still a queue of people trying to get on them.
There is no empty seats on the train. Such is the demand. There is
twice as much high speed rail track in China already than there is
across the whole of Europe. That’s quite amazing.
The investment in infrastructure we heard about One Belt One Road
is important in road ways which have doubled in size of the last
five to six years. It’s in the growth of airports which have also
increased in size. Just take ports for example, because that is a
very instructive issue. Ports, of the ten busiest ports in the
world, how many do you think are in China. Well, let me tell you,
seven. How many do you think are in the United States? None. How
many do you think are in the Europe? None. It’s remarkable what is
happening here. Now, is it remarkable in some senses, yes, of
course it is.
But we go back to this point that China has been a dominant
economic power through human history. It comes because of the
central plain which I was walking right across between the Yellow
River and Yangtze River. It’s an immensely fertile plain. It’s
surrounded by hills which protect it from invaders. So not
surprisingly, it was always going to be a place where civilization
would flourish. It was so fertile that farmers could actually get
two crops per year. One crop that they could use to feed their
family. Another crop that they could trade. The prosperity that you
see.
That passion for education of course continues with young people
beyond school age. It goes into universities. Two thirds of the
population of overseas population of universities around the world
are made by Chinese. There are 17,000 students attending UK
universities from the United States. There are 19,000 that are
attending UK universities from India. The figure for China is
90,000.
What’s more, 78% of those young people come back. They come back to
China. They don’t stay in the west. They come back. They go and get
their education and then they come back, the so-called turtles who
come back because the opportunities are so immense here. Now, the
opportunities are fantastic.
But that leads us to our next lesson for understanding China from
my walk. As I walked through towns and villages, I would see
everywhere no matter what time of day, people would be working, but
often they will be working for themselves. You know, enterprises is
very much part of the Chinese dream. The idea of setting up your
own business is an incredibly powerful dream that people have. Many
advanced economies have failed because of this reason that as it
gone through the industrial revolution, the big industries have
sucked in all of the talent to a few small employers and when those
industries decline and companies fail as they will, there’s no new
growth left to take its place. Therefore, perhaps one of the most
telling statistics that you could find about the new China is this,
is that a number of new enterprises that started in China doubled
between 2010 and 2016, ok, that’s fine.
But let me tell you what a double, too. 1.6 million, still not
impressed, let me put that in context. 1.6 million new businesses
created in China is more than all the new businesses created in
Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States, all those
together. It’s incredible investment in the future, because people
are optimistic, because people are working hard and because they
have invested in the future of themselves and of others.
And among those 1.6 million new businesses will be the future
Alibaba, the future Huawei, the future Wanda and perhaps the people
running them are in this room today. That’s what comes when you
have a dynamic economy, confident about the future.
Let me come back to where I started, my passion, my passion for
prosperity, for global growth and for people to be lifted out of
poverty. We share that passion, I’m sure, but another one is this
peace. Everything which China has achieved over the past remarkable
thirty years of its growth has come through peace and prosperity.It
is important that peace is the other side to the continue
prosperity. So on behalf of Xuelin and I can we thank you for this
opportunity and wish you long peace and prosperity, which you can
share with the world. Thank you.