Gordon Brown’s visit to China this week shows that the world is starting to take notice of a sleeping giant that has finally started to awaken.
China already has the largest population in the world, at well over 1 billion and soon it will have the biggest economy in the world to match. Making friends with a country ruled by Communism is never easy for the West, but Brown is aware that it has to be done. He is perhaps keen to show the US that sometimes you can get on with people that you don’t really like.
Of course, some of the actions undertaken by China deeply concern the West. The country executes more people than any other in the world, and its human rights program is practically non-existent. The country is also one of the world’s biggest polluters and huge plumes of smog cover it major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. China fails to recognise the threat posed by Global Warming and refuses to sign the Kyoto agreement. Instead the number of power station’s is only likely to increase, which is very worrying indeed.
However one thing uniting both China and the UK is Sport. The two countries will be the hosts of the next two Olympic games, with Beijing hositng the event this year. Gordon Brown is keen to use the games as a way of improving relations with China.
Love them, or loathe them, you cannot ignore them. China is growing as fast as Jack’s bean stalk. The UK has realised that it is time to make friends, but will the rest of the the G8 follow? Only time will tell.
