Chinese skeptical of superpower flattery

• Source: Global Times
• [12:34 April 19 2009]

“Superpower in the making”
McCain isn’t alone in calling China a superpower. It is an identity that many in the West have given to China for years, but perhaps just recently has become more commonplace.

The British Sunday newspaper The Observer, for one, claimed this month that China is “a superpower in the making.” Timothy Garton Ash, a historian, political writer and columnist for The Observer’s daily edition, The Guardian, said he believed that China, through the catalysis of the current global economic crisis, has definitively emerged as a 21st-century world power, and he said it should be welcomed.

“The US is in the process of becoming a relative superpower, rather than an absolute superpower,” Henri Guaino, the special adviser to French President Nicolas Sarkozy said in an interview with French TV channel France 24.

Chinese spurn title as myth
Fu Ying, Chinese Ambassador to Britain, said in a recent interview with the BBC, “We in China feel very flattered, over-flattered, when we are given all these big hats of being rich, being wealthy and possessing huge reserves.”
She stressed her suggestion the next day by telling Chinese media, “No matter how the foreign countries flatter us, we must understand our own situation according to our own history and culture. We can neither feel too complacent nor too humble.”

Tao Wenzhao of the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences attempted to tone down Senator McCain’s remarks.

“The polling result demonstrated a matured mindset among Chinese, most of whom took an objective view toward their national competitiveness and the role China plays in the international community,” Tao told Global Times.

But Zhang Lili, director of the International Studies Department at China Foreign Affairs University, told Global Times that China should be “elated” after receiving such accolades from Western politicians.

One of the reasons why they tout China as a superpower, Zhang said, is that they want China to help them solve their own problems, like the ongoing financial crisis in Western countries.

“They all looked at the Chinese foreign reserve, which is worth nearly $2 trillion, but China has to solve its own problems first, such as improving its unsophisticated social security system,” Zhang said.

The United States is very eager to quickly get out of its economic downturn, but China is not its savior; there is still a large distance between the two countries’ economies, Zhang said.

Qiu Wei, Cong Mu also contributed to the story