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Everywhere you go in China today, you see a country in a hurry. There's a head-long rush to build roads, factories, airports, and tower blocks, entire cities. In record time, China's industrial revolution is the biggest and the fastest in history. Chinese exports are in every country in the world, and Chinese companies like this one are investing literally all around the globe. You might think the ascent of China isn't your problem, but the fact is we're living through a massive historical shift of economic and political power from west to east and it's going to affect all our lives.
Today, our future and China's are intertwined in ways that would have been unimaginable even 10 years ago. When property prices crashed in the UK, this place, Canary Warf, had to be bailed out by the Chinese. They're no longer just a source of cheap imports for us. We need to increase our exports to them to get our economy out of the doldrums. Our politicians want the Chinese to invest in modernizing our crumbling infrastructure. We need them and that has implications for us that are less than palatable. If China can impose low wages and a tougher work ethic in emerging markets, the Chinese waste, how long before they could start doing it to us? Where once we had the bright ideas and the Chinese just assembled the
components? I have to admit that is pretty cool. Yeah. Could it soon be the other way round? So the idea that China doesn't innovate is just completely wrong. That's wrong. I disagree. Yeah. When China challenges our most deeply held beliefs about freedom of speech by locking up outspoken citizens, will we soon have to bite our tongues for fear of losing much needed investment? For some Western commentators, the prospect of China ruling the world is already a seriously scary one. But is the alternative scenario any better? Some say that sooner or later this vast country will collapse into turmoil as so often in the past.
The trouble is a China crash today would be a death blow to hopes of economic recovery in the West and it might also stoke the already smoldering fire of Chinese nationalism. So what should we be more worried about? A China that succeeds and takes over the world or a China that fails and takes the rest of the world down with it? We've never seen anything like it. 40 years ago, China's economy was smaller than Britain's. Today, it's more than six times larger. In 2016, according to the International Monetary Fund, it'll probably overtake the United States to become the biggest in the world.
To get an idea of just how much China has changed, take a look at this. There was a time when these were something of a delicacy in this part of the world. But now look, this is a dog beauty salon deep in the heart of Chongqing. How old is he? Or is it a sheep? Um, hand mention male. Mhm. Wow. Thank you very much indeed, Rakman. You are the new symbol of the new China. Puddle ownership really is a sure sign that China has entered the economic executive club. Now, on one level, that's good news for us.
Much of the money the Chinese new rich spend is going on our luxury branded goods. But what I want to find out is if China's high-speed growth is actually sustainable. After all, remember how the American dream went pop back in 2008? A collapsing property bubble nearly brought down the western financial system. You'd think the Chinese might have learned lessons from this. But everywhere I go in China, I see this scene. Residential real estate being built on a vast scale with borrowed money. And I begin to ask myself, is this just the latest bubble about to burst? And that's not the only threat to China's miracle economy. In the space of a generation, the country's gone from being one of the most equal societies in the world to
American levels of income inequality. Every year in China, there are tens of thousands of protests by the rural poor who've had their land grabbed by corrupt officials and rapacious land speculators. In the cities, too, there's growing unrest among China's 250 million migrant workers, while a lucky few have become billionaires. Most have to live on miserable wages and in shocking working conditions. in the last decades of most of the economist Wong Huer is an expert on the social problems of China's uprooted masses. We're standing on the outskirts of Beijing. Well, in what was once a village quite some distance from Beijing and there's a lot of construction going on behind us. Probably most of the
workers on this site are from very far from Beijing. These are migrant workers, right? Yes, migrant workers. The crucial issue is that we created uh 18 million jobs every year. Now, however, every year you have more than 25 million come to the labor market. So, you always cannot match that level. So, you have to some you have lot people on employment. It's old which sounds pretty unsustainable to me. You can imagine a pretty ugly scenario if the economy here cools off. Mass unemployment, millions of unhappy workers crammed into cities, mounting anger among the rural poor.
This is the fear that has haunted China's leaders from the time of the first emperor more than 2,000 years ago. The fear is that protest could turn into rebellion. The obvious way to keep a lid on popular unrest is more economic growth. The problem is that there are strong headwinds threatening to slow that growth down. It's rather hard to see these wonderful old people taking their morning exercise here in Chongqing's Shapping Bar Park as part of anybody's problem, but they are.
Between now and 2050, the number of over 60s in China is going to rise by a staggering 230 million. So the share of the elderly in the population will rise from just 12% now to very nearly a third. Just as in Europe, a dwindling number of workers is going to be supporting an ever larger population of old folks. And that's not the only threat to China's continued growth. Down here, I can literally smell one of the other huge challenges facing China today. All that record-breaking economic growth is causing an environmental disaster.
Cleaning up this mess is going to require massive investment in green technology. The scary thing for China's leaders is that economic success has generated a whole new set of problems. And the even scarier thing is that sooner or later that economic growth is bound to slow. China's leaders know they have to maintain a growth rate of at least 7% a year just to keep the employment rate where it is now. And that means they're being forced to do something that we in the West may find rather embarrassingly familiar. Overseas expansion. Some say it's the only way to secure the resources that are needed to keep the Chinese economic miracle going.
Watching China's expansion in action provides some fascinating and disturbing clues about how a Chinese dominated world might look. So this factory produces copper piping. Yes, copper tool. Yeah, copper piping. Mr. Sun manages this factory for China's biggest copper pipe manufacturer. Actually, the biggest copper pipe manufacturer in the world. How much of this stuff does the company get through? Uh 40 400 million. 400,000 tons. Yeah. 400. That is a heck of a lot of copper. In fact, China now accounts for more than 2-fifths of all global consumption of coal, aluminium, zinc, and copper.
The only way to satisfy this insatiable demand, to keep the Chinese economy growing, and to stave off unrest at home, is to seek out those resources abroad. And that's why to understand China's impact on the world, you really do need to follow the metal. If you want to get a glimpse of what it's like to live with Chinese expansion, it's one of the best places to start. For what the Chinese are doing here in Africa today, they may be doing much closer to home tomorrow. This mineshaft with its maze of connecting tunnels has been sunk a mile down into the heart of one of Africa's greatest deposits of natural wealth.
It's hot. It's smelly. It's airless. It's very, very noisy. And if you suffer from claustrophobia, it's hell on earth or rather hell under the earth. About a mile under the earth to be precise. But every time you use an electrical appliance, just turn on the light or put up your computer. You're using the stuff that they mine down here. I'm talking about copper. And of course, it's the Chinese more than anyone who need this copper to supply their factories and keep their people working. This mine in Luansa is owned by the Chinese state, which acquired it at a knockdown price in the middle of the 2009 recession.
Just like the western economies today, the Zambians needed the money. As copper prices surged, driven above all by soaring Chinese demand, it proved to be a pretty good investment. Mr. Chung and his assistant Jack Leo typify a new breed of Chinese entrepreneur. They've been attracted to Zambia's copper belt by the promise of juicy returns. Provided they're prepared to work hard, very hard. So it works 24/7. 24 hours a day. 7 days. Oh, when the machines are in operation.
Yeah. They work 24 hours. Wow. And all the copper from here goes to China. Yes. China. You created this from nothing. This wasn't here before. How many Zambians do you employ now? How much copper do you produce every year? 2,000 to 3,000 tons a year. You don't need to be a mathematical genius to work that one out. If you can produce 2,000 tons of copper a year, and copper costs $8,000 a ton, then you're grossing $16 million a year. And that's just in the first year this smelter's been operating. The Zambian copper belt is China's version of the Wild West these days. From Indola to Kitwe, copper kings like Mr. Chun are getting rich quick.
And it's not just Zambia, nor for that matter just Africa. All over the world, from Angola to Brazil all the way to Cambodia, you'll encounter Chinese managers, engineers, and foremen hard at it. At the very least, China is building a global portfolio of investments. At the most, this is the beginning of a new world empire. Because this is more than just a scramble for resources. The Chinese aren't just coming to Africa to work. Some are coming here to live. Okay, let's get serious. Take this man. Mr. Song runs a soybeer bean farm a couple of hours outside Zambia's capital, Lusaka.
He represents the old-fashioned type of settler, carving a new life out of the soil. This is a farm that is owned by you or by a Chinese state company. Who is the real owner? Oh, the owner the Chinese state. Okay. So you work I for me I'm own manager. You're the manager of the farm. Okay. So I wish I was owner. Maybe one day you will be. Maybe. How long do you think you'll stay here in Zambia? Maybe forever. Yes. I like here. You like it here?
Yes. I know. Most of the Chinese I've met in Zambia are men who've left their families back home in China. [clears throat] But Mr. Song is so committed to his future in Africa that he's brought his wife and daughter to live here, too. Do you think of yourself as Chinese or Zambian? It's a big question, isn't it? Yeah. Zambian. Great. Surprise me. But I'm happy with that. Yeah, that's a good answer. Yeah. Now we got to test the love. I must say I can't resist Mr. Song and his family. Oh, he's got the work ethic all right. But he's got something else and something beyond just a sense of adventure, too. Something has taken Mr.
Song all the way across the world from China to Africa and persuaded him to stay. Funny, when I look at the Chinese in Zambia today, it seems strangely reminiscent of a time when another global power dominated the country. 100 years ago, it was we British who owned the copper mines in Luancha. But we colonized a place we came to stay. The townships have all the amenities, even if sometimes only in miniature, of 20th century civilization. And this is the kind of empire I can relate to. It's the uh recreation area. This was where the officials and engineers of the mining company would come to disport themselves in a very British way. Like the other recreation clubs, Roana Club, among its many attractions, has a first rate bowling
green. And this used to be the ballroom where on Saturday nights, people would come for drinks and dancing. Well, it's been converted by its new Chinese owners into badminton courts. How are the mighty fallen? So, are the Chinese just taking over where the British left off? Are their mining investments and their casinos just the first phase of a secret plan to build an empire? Officially, the answer is no. The Chinese are communists, not imperialists. They're here in Africa only to promote mutual well-being.
China gets the copper. In return, the Zambians get goodies like this. This Chinese designed soccer stadium could rival any in the world. It's being built outside Indola in Zambia's copper belt as a gift from the People's Republic of China to the football crazy Zambians. Like so much else the Chinese are doing in Zambia, this is a project that generates jobs for Africans. How many people will this hold when it's finished? How many spectators?
You mean the capacity? Yeah. is 40,100 seats. Fantastic. After this stadium has been finished, we made some contribution to the Zambian government as well as the local economy. So, it's an economic contribution, but it's also a symbol, isn't it? It symbolizes Zambian Chinese. Yes, correct. Yeah. Do you think a Chinese team will come here and play a Zambian team? Yeah, maybe. I wonder who will win. Okay, thank you. Who do you think won? I think China deserves to win. They build a stadium.
What is amazing about this stadium is that the local team that plays here attracts a crowd of 5,000 for its games normally. So I think they are going to feel quite lost in there when they start playing regularly. It starts to sound like one of those winwin propositions they like to talk about in business school. China secures its own economic stability by buying up raw materials, while countries like Zambia get productive investment instead of the aid handouts the West has been offering since the end of empire. If that's right, then maybe a world dominated by the Chinese won't be so bad after all. But then again, that's what all empires say.
China invests abroad to secure raw materials to keep its economy growing and to head off any unrest at home. In East Africa, for instance, the Chinese get the copper their industry needs so much of. In return, the people who live here get jobs and Chinese construction. Like this new hospital in the Zambian capital, Lusaka. Should we go down here? Yeah. There are thousands of Chinese working on projects like this all around the world. And boy, do they work. Hopefully this man, if you wonder why the manager, Leo Chong Hong, is looking a bit worn out, well, so would you if you had his job? So, how long have you been working here?
Me 20 months is 20 months. Yeah. And in all of that time, have you been working just on this site or have you had any time off? Uh, only the Chinese New Year. So, how many days? One day, two days. Uh, three days. Three days off in 20 months. That sounds like slavery to me. There's no time here for pink gins on the ver like in Britain's imperial heyday. The Chinese are here only to work. They just don't have time for anything else. When you finish work after 9 hours, do you stay here or do you go out?
Uh, we stay inside the camp. Never go out. Uh, we go out shopping sometimes. Yeah. Do you go out to bars and drink some beer? Bars? No. We drink inside. It's a work ethic that the rest of us haven't had for a generation. If you want to know why the Chinese are catching up with the West, this has to be part of the answer. But there's another less pleasant ethic you encounter here. An attitude of superiority over the locals that's distinctly colonial. How do the Zambians compare with Chinese workers?
Not as good as China. Really? Jack should know something about hard labor. like that. He's been working for Mr. Chong seven days a week for 13 months. The students, they look at me that he's had one day off. But that was because he had malaria. What's the biggest difference between China and Africa? Do you think? I think people. We work so hard. Yeah. But them not really. Can Africans work as hard as the Chinese? Can you train the guys out there to work as hard as you?
Tough job. Yeah. Cuz uh it's nature like us. We tend to be work hard. Yeah. But then they like enjoy life. Yeah. Not like us. I can't help feeling that maybe there's a lesson here in Zambia for all of us. As the Chinese come to dominate the global economy, they'll expect everyone to work as hard as they do. And it's not just about the amount of work. It's also about the conditions. The Chinese bought the copper mine here in Chambishi after it had been closed for 13 years. There were no jobs back then, but now the mine employs more than 12,200 men.
You'd think the workers here would be grateful, but they're not. I guess everybody knows you here. Yes, they do. Agnes and Gandway is their union leader. So this is where the miners come on a Sunday. Yes. How many days a week do you work? I was six days. Yes. How well does a minor paid? Really? I was getting 43,000 quarter. If you to get $100. Yeah. This suck. Oh, I see. All these men are clearly very angry about the way the Chinese compared with other foreign mine owners treat their Zambian employees.
You've worked for all these different people. Who are the worst employers? The worst. The Westy are the Chinese. The worst are the Chinese. The Chinese. The Chinese are the worst. The Chinese may be building a fancy football stadium and a new hospital in Zambia, but that doesn't make them saints in the eyes of the people who live here. A typical monthly wage packet is around £54, the minimum wage in Zambia. Hardly enough to feed a family. It's just that they pay Chinese wages for Chinese working hours. And that has unnerving implications for everyone who wants to win Chinese investment.
The lesson from Zambia seems clear. If you want the Chinese to invest in your economy, and we seem to want that to happen here, then you'd better be prepared to work Chinese hours for Chinese pay. Now, you may say that doesn't apply to us. They're impoverished Africa and we're the developed West. We're meant to be the smart ones, aren't we? With the bright ideas. The Chinese just screwdriver things together for us. But then you find that the Chinese are doing what we think of as our job. They're innovating, too. Welcome to the Jong Guan Sunun district of Beijing, China's Silicon Valley. Back in the 1980s, it was just a small street where electrical goods were sold.
Now it's home to some of the world's biggest laboratories for research and development in electronics. Lenovo was founded 25 years ago with just 50 employees. Today, after its takeover of the mighty IBM's personal computer business, it's the second biggest PC manufacturer in the world. One of the myths I think about China today is that it's You may think that the cuttingedge high techch gadgets we use are all designed in the west and merely assembled in China. Yeah, her J Chong is Lenovo's chief technological officer in charge of R&D and he has news for you. If a fifth of humanity is your market and that is China, then pretty quickly innovations that happen here will become global standards. Of course, I will show you a demo.
It's we call her hybrid system. Oh, I see. This is a venovo the pad. So you can just slot it in and out and it's a laptop screen and a touch pad. I have to admit that is pretty cool. Yeah. So the idea that China doesn't innovate is just completely wrong. That's wrong. I disagree. Yeah. In fact, in the past 15 years, the number of new patents granted to Chinese innovators has increased by a factor of 29, overtaking Britain, Russia, France, and now even Germany in the process. China has built the world's fastest passenger train, timed at 300 mph. And even as the American space program gets cut back, China is expanding hers.
Both are symbols of a profound shift in global power. China's reached a critical juncture in its economic development. The days when things were all designed in California but assembled in China are surely over. In fact, I can imagine a future in which they're designed in China but assembled in California. For hundreds of years, the West got rich by having the technological edge over the rest of the world. But that era is ending. Increasingly, it's we who are becoming dependent on China's economic dynamism. Amazingly, no fewer than half the apartments in that Canary Warf development are owned by Chinese investors. And that symbolizes the reality that China is now the West's
single biggest creditor. The Chinese own a huge chunk of the US government debt. They have more than $2 trillion in international reserves. No wonder the Europeans went capinand to Beijing when they needed somebody to bail out the euro. So, we'd better get used to living with China as a new economic superpower in our lives. And that may mean working longer hours for less money. Yet, if that seems alarming, just consider the alternative. That would mean no Chinese investment in our alien economies, no more Chinese spending on Western brands, and no one to buy the West's soaring government debt.
Worse, an economic slowdown might also unleash forces inside China. that are far more threatening than anything we've yet encountered. One of the comforting stories we tell ourselves is that as the Chinese become richer, they'll become more like us and will ultimately adopt our values. But I'm not sure it's going to be quite like that. I don't detect much popular appetite for westernstyle democracy in China. What I do detect is a growing Chinese nationalism. I got up at 4 this morning to come and film the raising of the red flag in Tanaman Square. Now, that's not my best time, but I thought at least there
wouldn't be too many people here at such an early hour. Didn't expect that about 1% of the population of the People's Republic would have got here first. This is Chinese nationalism in action. So, you've come all this way and got up at 4:00 this morning just to watch the flag being raised. They arrived here at 3:00 a.m. 3. You must be tired. And why is it so important? If you ran up the British flag at 4 in the morning, nobody would show up. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you. Well, he seemed nice enough. But there's a darker side to the resurgent nationalism that has surfaced in China, particularly among the young.
One way this manifests itself is in shrill attacks on the way the western media represent China. I first saw this video in 2008, which was a momentous year for China. It was the year of the Beijing Olympics, but it was also the year of massive unrest in Tibet. And the video is an incandescent response to the Western media's treatment of the Tibetan events. Well, I was dying to know who made it, but I just couldn't find out. 3 years later, I found them. This group of young Chinese nationalists set up an organization called anti-CNN. Its aim was to give a pro-Chinese version of the conflict between ethnic Tibetans and HanChinese.
What inspired you to make this video? You seem to be saying that China should be more assertive and should make its position clearer in a more forthright way. Sometimes we should be more associative. Yeah. To give our voice right is right. Wrong is wrong. Not so not always. So our government is too weak. You see, right? Sometimes your government's too weak. Sometimes their claims about Western media bias may seem bizarre to us, but just think about what they said.
This new generation of Chinese nationalists think their own government, the people who gave us Teneaman Square and the crackdown in Tibet, is too weak. It's a good illustration of the newly assertive mood among many young Chinese. And some of them have passed the stage of just making videos to express their feelings. They already regard themselves as being at war with the West. But this is a uniquely 21st century form of war. Now, you may think that the strategic front line of the Chinese American rivalry is somewhere in the South China Sea or the Taiwan Strait, but you're
wrong. It's right here in the cyber cafes of the back streets of Beijing. Leo Ching is a honker, a Chinese computer hacker, and founder of the Red Hacker Alliance. Mr. Leo sees his patriotic mission as defending Chinese interests against attacks from the West. But the best form of defense is often attack. According to MI5, Chinese hackers have infiltrated the computers of British defense, energy, telecommunications, and manufacturing companies to steal their intellectual property.
Our intelligence agencies have also monitored thousands of attacks aiming to access restricted information on government computers, including those of the Ministry of Defense and the Foreign Office. Leo Ching may not have been responsible for these attacks on Britain, but there's no doubt he personifies a new kind of online warrior. In the West, a hacker is usually seen as a as a criminal. So, how can you be a nationalist hacker? Can you explain that to me? Is there a cyber war going on now between China and the United States? This is not a video game. The US government has stated that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war. So, will China be our economic savior
or our geopolitical nemesis? There's no use pretending the answer doesn't matter to you. It makes a big difference if a fifth of humanity decides to hack you rather than to hire you. So, which will it be? Well, I believe history offers a clue. China is bound to grow. It's also bound to grow more slowly. Its internal problems, demographic, environmental, and social are serious, but not so serious that they can't be coped with a combination of overseas expansion, exports, investment, and immigration, and technological innovation. The real worry is that in order to deal with these problems and to stave off any pressure for democratization, China's leaders may be tempted to exploit that strong mood of patriotic
fervor that is such a striking feature of China today. This is the nightmare scenario. China's economy falters. Unrest breaks out. And the spectre of Dong Luan, turmoil, returns. To appease popular anger, the Chinese government panders to a resurgent nationalism. It blames the West for its problems and becomes increasingly aggressive towards us. Far-fetched? Not really. It wouldn't be the first time in history that a rising power has pursued an aggressive foreign policy to stave off pressure for domestic political reform.
Rapid growth, We've seen it all. before. I for one am vividly reminded of the way that Germany made its first bid for world power 100 years ago. A bid that led ultimately to the First World War. So, China really is the biggest question of our time. Could its rise repeat the same disastrous trajectory of Germany a 100 years ago? Or can we somehow manage the transition from west to east in a way that is peaceful, not violent? Well, on the answer to that question depends not just the prosperity of the world, but its future peace.
