Tony Blair's sincere, candid view of China

"Wall Street Journal" of the United States on August 26 carries former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's signed article concerning his own view of China, which is titled "We Can Help China Embrace the Future". In the article, the former British leader talked about his impression on Beijing's 2008 summer Olympics as well as on contemporary China, and also offer his ideas on how can the West get to know China and get along well with China.

"The Beijing Olympic Games were a powerful spectacle, stunning in sight and sound," said Blair. "But the moment that made the biggest impression on me came during an informal visit just before the Games to one of the new Chinese Internet companies, and in conversation with some of the younger Chinese entrepreneurs."

These people, men and women, were "smart, sharp, forthright". Above all, Blair noted, there was鈥�"a presence of the spirit of get up and go, that reminded me greatly of the U.S. at its best and any country on its way forward"鈥� and "that is the spirit that will define its future," he acknowledged.

What does the Olympic Games mean to China? In the words of Blair, "It is that they mark a new epoch 鈥�an opening up of China that can never be reversed. It also means that ignorance and fear of China will steadily decline as the reality of modern China becomes more apparent."

During his 10 years as British leader , he frankly conceded that "I could see the accelerating pace of China's continued emergence as a major power鈥�I understood it analytically. But I did not feel it emotionally and therefore did not fully understand it politically." Moreover, he noted clearly and explicitly that "power and influence is shifting to the East", and that "some see all this as a threat. I see it as an enormous opportunity."

In exhorting Western observers not only to "illuminate the distance to go, by all means, but recognize the distance traveled," Tony Blair said, "This means that the West needs a strong partnership with China, one that goes deep, not just economically but politically and culturally. The truth is that nothing in the 21st century will work well without China's full engagement."

This article reflects Blair's political sensitivity as a distinguished senior British statesman. He has come to see that a booming, prospering China offers an "opportunity" to the rest of the world, which should actively contact or engage it, and this profound, incisive view of his derives from his super political sensitivity. During his tenure as the British prime minister, Hong Kong smoothly returned to China and an all-round Sino-British partnership was forged with a frequent exchange of visits between leaders of the two countries, and bilateral cooperation in all spheres began "warming up".

To date, Britain has become the largest accumulative investor and the third largest trading partner within the European Union . Last year, the Sino-British trade volume reached close to 40 billion US dollars, a 100-percent increase over the figure for 2005.

Recognition of complex national conditions in China and the need for gradual, steady progress of its reform and opening up, and the recognition of the rise of the East not as a "doomsday" for the West -- also pose a visual angle for the West to get to know China.

Britain was the first nation in the Western world to set up a democratic system of the modern times, apart from its Civil Wars of the mid 17th century, its democratic political process has all along been alive with strong hues of reformism for the gradual spread of peaceful democratic governance. It is perhaps because of this reason that Blair is fully capable to understand the largeness and complexity of China and that its reform and opening-up progress have to be active but sound and steady.

Britons once had their psychological gaps of vicissitudes in history, but contemporary Britain, nevertheless, has again found or restablished its own position globally. It is precisely ascribed to its historical experience and correct angle of view that Blair is adept at exhorting them not to hesitate before the rise of the East, which they should see as "an enormous opportunity" rather than "a threat". "But we have to exercise a lot of imagination and eliminate any vestiges of historic arrogance," he said.

London 2012 gives Britain a tremendous chance to explore some of these changes and explain to the East what the modern West is about, he wrote at the end of his article. "My thoughts after the Beijing games are that we shouldn't try to emulate the wonder of the opening ceremony. It was the spectacular to end all spectaculars and probably can never be bettered. We should instead do something different, drawing maybe on the ideals and spirit of the Olympic movement," said former Prime Minister Tony Blair. "We should do it our way, like they did it theirs. And we should learn from and respect each other. That is the way of the 21st century."

By People's Daily Online, and its author is PD desk editor Wang Tian