Professor Gungwu Wang presents the Australian Centre on China in the World Annual Lecture for 2012.
Forty years ago, two choices made history. Australia chose China over Taiwan and China chose the United States over the Soviet Union. Both led to happy results for the two countries that decided to make their great leaps. China faces new choices today. In the context of the rapid changes in China since 1972, Professor Gungwu Wang uses a quote from Yu Yongding as his text: "China must choose between higher growth and faster structural adjustment. It cannot have both at the same time." Professor Wang discusses China's cultural growth and political adjustment, and argues that it can have both at the same time.
As a growing power, whatever road China takes will have a great impact. The future that Professor Wang believes its history and the people's capacity can build is one in which China is open to global development and does not retreat into the false modernity of nationalism and ideology that has plagued the world for the past century.
About the speaker
Professor Wang Gungwu is a Fellow and former President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities; Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Science. In Singapore, he is Chairman of the East Asian Institute, the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. Professor Wang received his B.A. (Hons.) and M.A. degrees from the University of Malaya in Singapore, and his Ph.D. at the University of London (1957). From 1986 to 1995, he was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong.
Professor Wang Gungwu's recent books in English include Community and Nation: China, Southeast Asia and Australia(1992); The Chinese Way; China's Position in International Relations (1995); The Chinese Overseas: From Earthbound China to the Quest for Autonomy (2000); Don’t Leave Home: Migration and the Chinese (2001); Anglo-Chinese Encounters since 1800: War, Trade, Science and Governance (2003); Diasporic Chinese Ventures Edited by Gregor Benton and Liu Hong (2004). He also edited Global History and Migrations (1997); Nation-building: Five Southeast Asian Histories (2005) and (with Zheng Yongnian) China and the New International Order (2008).