China: Key Player in a New World Game

The world’s rising powerhouse

9 April 2021 (Wall Street International)* — In 1986 on returning for my first 3-week visit to China, I wrote an article, “China: Key Player in a New World Game” in The Futurist, December 1986. I had been invited by China’s State Council at the recommendation of my good friends, Alvin and Heidi Toffler, best-selling authors of Future Shock (1970), who both had, and still, have a big following in China.

This surprise invitation was to speak at “The First International Conference on Creativity”, co-sponsored by the United Nations Education & Scientific Cooperation Organization (UNESCO), along with Edward de Bono of Britain and US psychologist/philosopher Jean Houston, author of The Possible Human (1982).

Mystified, I called the phone number in China of Professor Xu, the convenor at Shanghai-based Jiaotong University, and asked why I had been invited to this event, all expenses paid. Professor Xu replied in perfect English, “In China, you are a great scholar and your two books Creating Alternative Futures (1978) and The Politics of the Solar Age (1981) are widely-read in their Chinese translations”.

Naturally, I was intrigued and accepted. Even though I was not aware of these translations, I was thrilled to have my work read by Chinese people and I was excited to make a closer connection with some of China’s 2 billion citizens and their over 5,000-year-old culture.

Fast forward to today and China, the world’s rising powerhouse, already the largest economy measured in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), which corrects for over and undervalued currencies, which The Economistmeasures as “The Big Mac Index”, a more inclusive index than the Western-oriented GDP which still dominates mass media.