(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
The leaders of the West knew – basically – very well. That one day China would occupy the world stage and question the power of the world. China's development has not threatened the world with gunpowder and bullets and what's worse. No, from a civilization other than the Western, the approach of the "Kingdom of the Middle" to the conquest of world domination was different. Favored by the World Trade Organization rules for a so-called developing country and with efficient production methods and cheap labor, no matter the working environment rules, a nation of over a billion people worked steadily up and out of the shadow – to become an interesting partner in economic globalization – orchestrated by "Washington Consensus ".
Not only was China interesting to the West as a hotbed of cheap labor to support our need for sustained material and economic growth. China further emerged with a well-oiled production apparatus. Out of China, the "Kingdom of the Middle" could also offer the West the establishment and expansion of socially important infrastructure with production times unknown in the Western Hemisphere.
With a history from a different era and with a self-understanding of having a special mission, China, under incredible popular suffering and despite internal contradictions and enormous environmental problems, has evolved into a world power that can no longer be ignored as a potential new superpower.
Technology
Many companies in the US and Europe have had to succumb because technological developments in China have shown them back wheels. This has happened primarily for production companies. The next wave will include the data-based companies. The Chinese have tested and developed new innovative digital business models in the world's largest domestic market and are ready to out compete the West's businesses.
In addition, the Chinese are putting their expansion into a major political framework, where the climate challenge occupies a dominant position. That is why Christina Boutrup's book The Great Tech Evolution also carries the subtitle How China Shapes Our Future.
In the West, we have been so close to our own technological and business innovations as the US icons Google, Facebook, Amazon, Uber, Tesla and Apple that we have not paid much attention to the overall strategic content of the Chinese Alibaba , Tencent and Baidu with WeChat (social media platform) and with front figures like Jack Ma, Richard Liu (JD.com) and Ren Zhengfei (Huawei).
With its Made in China 2025 plan, China is in the process of automating the world's largest production apparatus and controlling the world's largest amounts of data in very few Internet companies with global ambitions. With artificial intelligence, China, without blocking from ethical debates, has developed advanced solutions regarding face recognition, drone delivery and self-driving cars. Copy-China is history, and the accession to the WTO in 2001 has so far resulted in "the West needs more China than vice versa".
A choice between a surveillance in a China design and in a Western design is perhaps like a choice between plague and cholera.
The West finds the Chinese market "fragmented, complex and dynamic," and the risk of investing in China is high. But the risk of staying home may prove even greater, argues Christina Boutrup.
On the other hand, the Chinese are still exploring the West after learning new things in innovation, design and production methods, and not least in terms of «soft values». It was seen at the Nordic Edge Expo 2018 in Stavanger with emphasis on Smart Cities. – Taking responsibility, cooperation and thinking across are qualities in production that the Chinese now have an eye for must be included if they are to reach new heights and develop and devise products, concepts and services also in the future.
The control
Where in the West we have increasingly let the market dominate and be the primate in the political decisions, then in China the political leadership is swinging the bar. Also in terms of the market. From a Western market point of view, it is therefore regrettable that in China, Chinese suppliers are selected for the production of goods – on the basis of political motivation.
When it comes to "man in society," the revelations of Facebook and Cambridge Analytica's methods of not talking about Edward Snowden's revelations have shown that while governance is overtly political in China, the governance manipulations in the West work more in the hidden. So a choice between a surveillance in a China design and in a Western design is perhaps like a choice between plague and cholera. In this context, would it be fair to say that, at least in the EU, there is still a voice trying to keep the democratic tab high?
Spiritual awakening?
Weapons of mass destruction, global warming as a result of capitalism's built-in imperative of sustained economic growth, the threat of biodiversity, and so forth coherently picture the crisis of total civilization or what has otherwise been called the 6th mass extermination.
The probability of a mass extinction can be justified in materialistic technology and will not be solved by a materialistic consciousness. With the further development of artificial intelligence, humanity is now further threatened. Einstein expressed its problems as follows: "The significant problems we have cannot be solved with the same way of thinking with which we created them."
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