Confucius teaching to be humble!

By Li Hong, People's Daily Online

The Great Saint has ingrained in our blood to keep humble, maintain low-profile, and always do more while talk less. The good of following His teachings is relieving us of the contention, or, mostly, futile verbal tussle, over who will go up and who will go under. The philosophy is that one has no chance to "go up" by just drumbeating the air.

For almost two decades, our country has been sailing in the rough seas and have scaled some adorable mileages, amid a flood of varied voices: euphuism that the growth is so rapid and sizzling that ours will soon stand atop among the forest of nations; suspicions as to what extent a country led by "communists" could actually attain; and the never-die-out theory of "China threat", asserting an emerging powerhouse as big as China will harm almost all within our eyesight.

Incomplete statistics coming out at the dawn of 2010 have claimed that China becomes the biggest exporter, edging out Germany, that it surpasses the United States as the largest auto market, and that Chinese banks eclipse their American counterparts in aggregate holding values. Quite a few Western pundits have jumped to the fray analyzing this country's trajectory and probing its future.

Some predict that Chinese economy will reach US$120 trillion in 2040, as compared to our present level of mere US$5 trillion, and China's per-capita income will hit a mighty US$85,000 by then. However, some allege that our news reports are now filled with 'triumphalism' which, they believe, is based on sand, while others question whether China's data is credible or trustable. And, there always exist the no-sayers, forecasting China is facing an imminent big crash, something like the Great Recession which has hurt the United States deeply.

The discussions about this country are sure to get more extensive and noisier world over, and might entangle more Chinese out of pure patriotism as well as nationalism. But, please bear in mind that you won't attain anything for China by simply shouting out at your opponents on televisions or in the cyberspace. Bickering is mostly useless, and you get to do the real-thing for your country.

It is truly a blockbuster run for this country as it has climbed the ladders of prosperity ever since the revered Deng Xiaoping launched the Big Go for China. Once awakened and more got the chance of seeing the outside world with our own eyes, China is not to turn its head back. And, in the course of our interaction with foreign powers during the past 30 years, this country has learned a ton, quietly but accumulatively, about trade, investment, consumption, negotiation, compromise, partnership, efficiency, governance, and sustainability, among others.

In the learning process, this country keeps grateful towards the tutors, but that does not curtail our ability to tell bad from good. After assimilating the good and discarding the bad, China improves itself in governance, by a marked margin. And, the distinctiveness incoherent with this country is kept.

That the world's most developed system (at least in Chinese eyes) and weathered democracy could not avert an outrageous housing bubble, and outsized risk-taking by its bankers, and prevent a crushing recession from happening, has made us think. Maybe theirs is not the perfect one, though ours is either. But, maintaining our uniqueness is a better approach. Just name one key feather of ours: The central government keeps stern rules on the bankers operating within its jurisdiction (though I believe its monopoly on telecom and oil industries is doing a huge disfavor to the massive consumers).

Lately, the central bank of the country, independently, decided to sluice the outpouring of bank lending by raising the reserve requirements of all commercial banks. The move, in strong contrast to other economies where the fight to assault the Recession is still raging on, sends a signal to the country's vehement investors, and house gamblers alike, that China is for real. After all, sustainability is what we have just learned.

So, less quarrelling about which is more superior, more down-to-the-earth laboring.