Keynote Speech2 - Preparing for the Rising China “Korea has an important political decision to make. Whether it should establish a new relationship with China, accepting China’s rising as the reality or it should make backward steps, following the old American order.” Martin Jacques who is well known for his book, ‘When China Rules the World’, insisted so at the second keynote speech of Asia Future Forum 2011 on the 15th. Jacques stated that the world’s hegemony has been changing rapidly from England to America and then to China and that we need to understand this shift in China’s perspective. In his speech, he demonstrated China rising with various statistics. China is becoming the biggest trade partner for many countries in Europe and North America. China Development Bank and China Export and Import Bank dealt had more capitals than World Bank in 2009 and 2010. He said, “Like it or not, China will have strong influence on the world. The current global financial crisis will accelerate China’s rising.” He pointed out the three risks in the rising of China: it is too fast, China itself is not yet ready for it and the uncertainty of the projection for the shifts in international hegemony is too large. Jacques said, “Westerners are anxious about the fact that they have to start calling Hu Jintao to ask for money. This is why the U.S. is implementing military exercises with Korea and Japan and proceeding with Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership (TPP). According to Jacques, cultural and historic understandings should precede the complete comprehension of China. China has maintained civilization-state over 2000 years and identifies as such rather than the western ‘nation-state’. That is why unlike the West that considers the nation as an ‘outsider’, China considers the nation as part of their family. In addition, 90% of Chinese population of 1.3 billion people identifies as the Hans. This can bring the people together but also prevents them to understand and accept ‘differences’. Jacques insisted that the tributary system that persisted in East Asia for thousands of years in the past may revive in the wake of China rising. He added, “Now is the time to ponder over the differences between the old and new tributary systems and how Korean diplomatic position should change.”