walt! maybe we had better regroup here. that is terrific. that is part of the world we have been talking about. we have been talking last week especially, intensely as we have for 20 years, china is another experience which is really interesting and not that much different than in the state. but as we talk about china and some of our interviewers and so forth, sometimes talk about china and what they're doing and how they relate to us and are they a threat or an opportunity sometimes it gets quite emotional. >> you have mentioned we got to know david. frankfurt was kind of a clash between china and germany and the question in where china stands and what china stands

for. the same emotions we sometimes face here. when we were in china, of course the chinese asked us, what can we do to make our picture the picture the world has of us better? it is quite a bit of communication question. how does china communicate what it is banned how does the world try to understand what china really is? we used an example because it is somehow the world would be a neighborhood into which a new neighbor has moved. and this family has not gotten too much attention for quite a while and all of a sudden this family starts improving its house and gets the attention of the other neighbors and of

course with anything new in a certain environment, what starts first is gossip. and gossip is more interesting if is negative gossip. so we shouldn't be astonished if what we hear about china is mostly negative. not everything is gossip. some is quite justified but this should be balanced and we as the established neighbor as we call the west. we should try to get a picture of what this new neighbor is really like and this was where we started when we wrote our book. we wanted -- taking the experience in china and the smaller experience i had with my

ten years compared to his 40 years. >> 20 years! >> to analyze and stands for. >> you know the extraordinary story of the rise of china but it bears repeating. in 30 years china went from the 137 gdp -- 137 economy in the world, in just 30 years to becoming this year the second-largest economy in the world. extraordinary and we have got to understand what that means and how that impacts all of us. 470 of the fortune 500 of the u.s. are in china and we are already doing all this business and that is partly why they rose up to number ii. i want to put that in

perspective too. there are three countries that are about the same size in the economy. germany, japan and china. china moved up past germany last year and passed japan this year to be number 2. but these three countries, the size of their economy is between 4 and five trillion. when china moves up to the number 2 it will be five trillion something. the u.s. is fourteen trillion. that is the larger picture. so china is not going to pass the united states by next christmas as some headlines would suggest. it is going to take a long time. but it is interesting what they are doing. it is not only the gdp. the gdp is just a collective figure and the more you put all the figures together the more you lose intelligence.

there are certain parts of that chinese gdp that are going to move really fast. and those in the new technologies, you heard of a company that warren buffett invested in, the largest foreign investor of the electric car. they will introduce the electric car, a hybrid initially, into this country this year. that is a new technology. the head of that company said something very interesting. he said we can't possibly compete with ford and a lot of the big western companies who have had 100 years of experience with gasoline driven cars. however, with the electric car we are all at the same starting point. is not only the electric car. they are looking at robotics and biotechnology and telecommunications and nanotechnology, all of the new

technologies where everyone is at the same starting point. they won't complete with this experience. very smart. it will be maybe 20 or 25 years before china catches up with the u.s. if it ever does, in many areas china is going to xl. something else you must know. and that is that today -- this seems to be -- you probably kno it, many of you but it surprises everybody else. china's economy is now 70% private. seventy% private. private-sector. that is what china is all about. the private sector. the other thing we like to talk to people about is there are no

communists in china. china is a country with no ideology. it is not communist. it is not capitalist. it is something entirely different. it is a pragmatic building of a new social economic system. that is a system that we have called vertical democracy. >> you all know that about 200 years ago the constitution of the united states, america founded or created the modern democracy. we believe that china is on the way to create a counterpart, another kind of democracy which

we call vertical democracy. i want to make -- so we can visualize how we got to the understanding and why we call it a vertical democracy. we began looking at western democracy. when we were studying china we were not content with socialism with chinese characteristics. that does not express what it is. so we looked at the west and we find this is a different structure where the people are equally entitled to periodically elected a government. so the the the periods.

to simplify, in this western democracy you have party and party be. and of course they are competing to get the most votes to have the justification for governing. what is natural is party a has -- [talking over each other] >> has to make party a look -- that is in the nature of gaining as many people to work for my party. so if we look at the structure, it gives everybody the precision to vote for aid but is also a more delighting system. when we looked at china, and you probably know the political structure of china quite well,

we have a quite large government structure with different levels of decisionmaking, but although there are different parties, in general we have a 1-party system and then we have the huge population. now how is china ruled? we analyze that there are bottom up initiatives and top-down directions. and the way the system works is by this interplay of the bottom and the top. this, of course, the government is constant which allows the

government to make long-term plans and long-term strategies because is thinking logically but does not have to be election driven. the people on the bottom as we look at china and its development is more and more empowered and grows stronger and stronger and the government listens more and more. is a maturing process in this vertical structure of government that gets its justification not by being elected, although there are many elections on the local level, but by what they at chief. that is why we call that a vertical democracy. >> let me give you two quick

examples of the bottom up initiative in china. the first place in 1978 when -- i know all the people in china know the story of the 18 farmers and some of you know. very early in this period, and he is the great father of all the changes in china. 18 farmers in the northeast in a very poor village decided they would break up their collective. all farming was collective and these 18 farmers -- they discussed this for some time. we want to divide this into 18 families. could some people work very hard, some are very smart -- everyone works for themselves. this was totally against the ideology of the party at the

time. it turns out they had the support of the local leadership which was really very good and eventually paying found out about this and within five months this bottom up initiatives became national policy and they changed from collective farms to family units. everyone didn't do 100% over night but that was the initiative which started in a very short time that changed everything. a very recent example of bottom up initiative has been going on for five or six years or ten years, cities and provincess all over china have been initiating and doing business with foreign companies and foreign countries in creating joint projects. this was always supposed to go through beijing. more and more it didn't go through beijing. and just last year, 2009, the

national government made this national policy that all projects could be done directly to foreign companies and foreign countries up until $100 million and that had to be checked through the central government but it changed that policy so there are two bottom-up initiatives that were embraced by the leadership. you always have to -- have to keep a balance between the initiative is coming up with you more and more and the directives that coming down but in this 30 years--now 32 years, china going from 137 to -- how did they do it? how did they do it? that is what our book is about. we sorted out what is going on and we said there are eight

pillars that underlies this shift to a whole new kind of society. this is a very good name in chinese because in the chinese form it means the structure of the buildings and the principles so that was very good for us. and was articulated early and famously in a big speech was the emancipation of the minds. he said we have to move from indoctrination to emancipation. we the government can't do it alone. people have to do it. we have to emancipate the people so that they can build a new china. another of our pillars is framing the forest and letting the trees grow. so the government says here is what we are going to do but how

you do it is up to you. the special economic zone. in these economic zones there are no taxes and this and that but how you let your premiere's do it is up to you and those who took advantage of the emancipation of the mind first where entrepreneurs including artists who were great of entrepreneurs and the energy from that launched that. the other pillar we can mention is the idea of crossing the river by a feeling the stones. you have probably heard that. we sort of like it. i like it as a way of life. adjusting course as you try to get to the other side. no country on such a vast scale practices trial and error the way china has. they try things that don't work

and in this very pragmatic country we do what works and we let go of what doesn't work. we will probably be talking about more of the pillars in your response to questions but especially the emancipation of a mind was what launched china 32 years ago. >> when you say trial and error, you listen to that but imagine if in the united states there is a huge debate about health care and the health care system. what if president obama would say let's declare oklahoma to be a trial and error zone for the new model for healthcare. could that happen? probably not.

because party a would -- while we are not ranting against western democracy at all because of an european and europeans claim to have the heritage of human rights and all of that, we should look with an open mind at china and see what they achieve by using different methods of communicating with the people and listening to what the people want and how it works. the last time we were talking to students. we talked to students, at the

university of economic and finance and of the first time we came to that university we really thought we would be somewhere in the united states because it is such a modern campus and what we experienced when we had our conversations with the students and they do not hold back is this energy of the next generation of chinese. what you don't think of in the west and i did not before i got into china and analyzing what johnnie is about, where china comes from. what it has behind it. 2,000 years of imperialism and the 20th-century which was

filled with humiliation by other nations and chaos. and really that -- [talking over each other] >> really started from the floor. and chinese young people who are your age and little older was a completely different generation, a generation which has not experienced all the suffering and poverty their parents and grandparents have suffered. they experience a social freedom that has never been there before. we believe that this generation which is building the new china while you are building the america of tomorrow has the chance of creating a new world because for the first time the two biggest nations in the

world, china and the united states, are not enemies. to find a way to cooperate with each other in a positive way. and we think that is a great opportunity for you as being in america and for the chinese. and the more you see, when we read the articles about china, they are often pushed in the next mentality. look what china does. taking our jobs or doing this and that. that puts you in a victim thinking but you can also think, what opportunities do we have? what can we do with this new market? what can we do with a population

that is one sixth of the world which is much more open? it is opening up to the world and what can we do? for our personal lives and our countries to live together and make everything better? >> now your questions. [talking over each other] [inaudible] >> microphone. >> thank you for taking my question. in reading excerpts from your book and listening to use the guy have her lot about the efficiency of the vertical demographic system and bottom of change but i have to ask in a political system where there are not free elections of the government, how is it ensured that the government stays true to the will of the people and respects the rights of the people and you see this potential clash in the future on anything that might challenge

the 1-party system? >> there are elections in the leadership. it is not handed one from the other. they are very much contest among the leadership and they will be in the coming up collection of a lot leadership in 2012 as far as we can tell but it seems to us that the leadership is tested by its results. it is tested by its results. those results, the pugh are in new york. the polling organization. their results in china was that 89% of the people approve of the government and the leadership purses 47% in the u.s.. this is the western measurement. >> what i could add is, how is the system sustainable?

that was the question. we say that the sustainability of the system depends on keeping an equilibrium between the top down forces and the bottom up forces. and it is a maturing system. is only 30 years -- its history is 30 years. western democracy has 200 years. if we if think back, how did the united states look 60 years ago? john was one of the people who lived through the time when there were riots, when there was no fairness to anybody. it is easy to forget that western democracy had time to develop and mature and the

chinese -- as we think. but the government increasingly gives more space, more room to the bottom up initiatives and the backing of both sides, when the bottom goes up it goes too far and we take off a little bit and when the top down goes down, pushes too hard they have to back up. this balancing all is what will keep the chinese model sustainable. >> was not publicized in the west is all of the hearings being held for new project. a new dam being built or a new plant being built and the hearings that are being held in, the canceled two chemical plants because too many people in the neighborhoods were affected were

part of that. they are having all kinds of hearings in every province. the difference of tween province and province, china is the most decentralized country in the world. that is another if thing you have to see what is happening but the government backs off of things, when they think the people are not responding. for example, you know much more about this than we do. when they tried to change a stylistic change in the chinese characters, there was so much disapproval around the country that they canceled it and they're starting to do this. is just beginning. the whole thing about hearings for projects is part of this new vertical democracy that they are doing. that is the beginning but it is starting. that is what we think will

mature because the people are responding. but problems. >> this morning there was breaking news about google's computer systems being hacked or invaded by what might have been state-sponsored or state-supported initiative from china. it brought to mind the way china has limited the access to a lot of information through google. google working with china has had to limit the results of searches on their search engine and i was wondering how you reconcile this notion of the emancipation of the mind with the limiting of information. >> it is not breaking news.

the back and forth between the chinese government and google has been going on for six years and google really took a big hit you might remember 40 years ago when they agreed to some censorship that the government wanted and this continues and we don't know who is hacking but the larger picture is there are three hundred fifty million people on the internet in china, more than any other country in the world by far and the government gets freaked out now and then. we read a lot of bonds that are just amazing what they are writing about the government. they are trying to figure this out. from the western point of view this is a no-win game for the government. they are struggling to see how they can do the transition to the kind of openness that other societies have.

they are very defensive about the shortcomings of china. this is going to go on and on as everyone tries to figure it out and get comfortable with it. it is not a breaking story. >> this came up in china as well. we had a discussion with a government person on tv and he mentioned that china is going like a high-speed train. we commented yes, but you are covering some windows of that dream so that the people cannot look outside. the bottom line is the emancipation is not only within the people in this part, but the

emancipation of relaxing is also a process taking place in the government and what the chinese and you probably know very much, value very high, the ability and harmony. the idea might be from all of you. let's have elections next year. if the government is so good it will be elected anyway. imagine what would happen if that is really what takes place. one party or one group would fight against the other. the chance of really terrible chaos in this country. there is a balance of slowly and powering the people so that the process of democratization can be a harmonious one.

the united states has experienced that you cannot take democracy and put it on a country because it doesn't work. it doesn't grow out of the people. >> does thatean class is over? >> take out the question. >> thank you. i was wondering, this vertical democracy, could it be a model for other countries or is this a system of government that only works with the chinese minds that? >> if you were one of the many underdeveloped countries that has been trying for decades to grow and prosper and make its economy better and you are

dealing with the west government to government aid programs, you are open for another model. china has become -- how did they do it? in 30 years when we can't get it done, is becoming a model for a lot of developing countries including the underdeveloped countries. russia as a whole bunch of russians in china today trying to figure out the chinese model. how did they do it? it is becoming almost a competitive model to the western model. i was going to say in the last question that too often -- you can do democracy in many ways. it was invented by the greeks. and by our likes the greeks were not democratic. they had slaves, very few elections. women couldn't vote and so on.

switzerland, one of the great beacons of democracy, when all we got to vote 20 years ago. democracy is in flux and how you practice in all different ways. mississippi. are you ready for this? 13 amendment. end of slavery. mississippi didn't ratify the thirteenth amendment until 1995! it is primitive in many ways from a pure democracy point of view but the problem is you could do democracy in many ways but the west insists there's only one way and that is our way. that is going to get us nowhere if we keep thinking that is the only way. we have to get beyond that.

somebody in the back? >> i was in china for a month last summer but you two have been in china for decades so you must have seen many of the amazing changes you have been talking about. i wonder if you could discuss some of those changes and what inspired you to write a book about them. >> let me tell my story. i first started to go to china in 1967. it was such a poor, primitive, backward place. it was absolutely amazing. i have been there 100 times. all through the years seeing it grow but nothing much happened

until 1978. over the years people said you should write this. i had one variants. it is in the book. in 1996, i had a private meeting with the president of china. it was very interesting because we both grew up on a farm. i grew up on a farm in southern utah and he grew up in the northeast. we talked a lot about growing up on farms but we really got involved in lots of things. 1996 is the time when trouble with time on and the mainland and so on was the big subject. that was the elephant in the room and at one point i said to him in taiwan as a little story to tell and is doing a great job

telling it. china has a big story to tell and you are doing a terrible job. silence. finally he said any of you speak english? finally he said why don't you do it? why don't you tell the story? that really started me on the journey that really didn't get underway until we started to go to china in 2000. but the inspiration was how did they do it? no one had done this in the history of civilization. moved so fast for sustained change for so long a period and when someone says china is going to be a bubble, wait a minute. the only one who has ever done this before, why would you bet against china with that kind of

record? you can think that but it looks as if it is going to go on and our guest is china is crossing the river and getting to the other side, china is only a third of the way. >> what is so fascinating in china is when you look out of your hotel room and you throw a stone into the water the waves go out. when i went there for the first time, that was even taking place in shanghai. you look out of the window and where there were hats in general there were houses in march. not much but in september. it was unbelievable bills -- buildings are growing like mushrooms.

and what happened in the main city early on is now going to the provinces. the standard of living and the conditions are getting better. gradually. and moving the wealth is not only in the coastal area of china but it is moving towards the rest of china and the north of china because what is happening is the factory -- you have heard about migrant workers in china. china had mostly farms. they were really desert war. they were not learning to feed their families the next day. opening up the forms began and along coastal lines, the factories were built. farmers started to move where the factories are.

that brought four hundred million people out of poverty. now wages are going up in china and what is happening is the factory moving to where the people are. so increasingly factories are brought in the poor parts of china which brings economic risk to the people who have not had such a share of economic progress that china had. this is a question of the efficiency of a government. what the government knows very well is you cannot have economic progress without a well working infrastructure. so they are building bullet trains all over china to connect the 4 regions with the wealthy

regions. to give access to when is going on in the east of china to the west of china. >> in the back? >> can you hear me? you talk about the economic transformation in china dating back 30 years. in america i am interested in your comments about the trends for us here because for 30 years we have been having difficult economic developments, some of them directly reflecting china's rise. i am interested to hear your comments about that. that is a very common opinion in

this country. [talking over each other] >> there's a common opinion in this country. >> china is an opportunity, not a threat. the united states prepared the responsibility for what happens to the united states but the united states is part of a much larger shift from the west to the east that has been going on for some time. i am not sure it is irreversible but it hasn't been reversed by the time periods we are talking about. we talked about vertical democracy here. in the west and all over the west, of the parliaments are paralyzed. look in the u.k.. what is happening is the west with all of this progress, somehow their energies were spent and drifting back again.

whatever the reason is, the huge shift is from the west to the east with china being the leader in the east of the e economies that are coming up. china is helping in this regard a great deal. i mentioned 470 u.s. companies are in china. general motors, alcoa. their processes, january sales went up 50% in 2009. general motors is saying we will make a profit in 2010 which surprised everybody. because of all of the sales they are getting from china, china is helping this, not a threat to this but certainly the decline of the west is matching the rise of the east.

[inaudible] >> how do -- [talking over each other] >> how does that help in terms of the labour market and business that is done in america with the american -- >> this is the zero sum game where if you gain workers in china you lose workers somewhere else. in the global economy that is expanding you can increase workers everywhere. that is the direction we are going. we are moving in a large way toward a global economy where we are so economically connected and integrated that it is just one economy in the world. we won't be able to sort out the gdps. they are not very trustworthy now. you can say what the gdp of the u. s is.

it is so -- germany and china with the rest of the world as we move toward one economy for the whole world. they are taking jobs as old idea before globalization came along where the west was still mostly industrial and that has been spent and unless the west keeps up with the new technologies and creates new jobs it is going to be in trouble and look at china. china is focusing on the new technology, not the old industrial technology. the new technology. that is where the growth is and that is where the jobs are. west if it continues to focus on the old jobs and not on the new technologies and the new markets, will recede increasingly over this next

decade. you want to call on somebody? >> thanks for coming to share what you observe in china and your knowledge and your analysis. i particularly like the analysis of preferred apple democracy and i came here 20 years ago and i have heard a lot about why china is not doing this or that and i could tell there are certain things we are practicing here, our democracy cannot be directly transferred to china. ..

>> all of a sudden they can own car and houses and whatever. and i've seen that. but i see that more kids of our kids, our counterparts of kids sitting here really do not have a lot of things in the spiritual part, and they are working hard, studying very hard. but some part is missing, and that's something i whether you have observed. and another thing is you know, we tend to see chinese students studying very hard, but more as

not as creative or, not as much opportunity as our students have in america, in terms of, you know, being more creative are getting opportunity to freethinking, and they are all backed up. >> good question. >> but somehow their kid coming out in producing that kind of, you know, innovation or technology that is catching up and to be, as you say, number two. so how can our kids here prepare themselves and compete with the kids in china? thanks. >> good questions. >> to the first part of your question, the spiritual desire which we all have, 30 years ago, you know better than i do, you know, when you're dirt poor,

your spiritual desire, of course, is overwhelmed by the desire to reach a certain degree of wealth. and so of course the government and the people were working towards the direction of having modest wealth for themselves and for the country. but the government as well as the people, you know, it's when you wish, when you really wish for something, to get something, the period in which you want to have it and in which you are fighting for it to get it, this, whether it is wealth or a car or whatever, has a much higher value than when you have it. once you have it, you take it as a given. and then the awareness of other things is growing. and the same with the chinese. they have reached, or part of

the chinese have really reached a certain wealth. and now they are searching for the spiritual, to feed their spiritual needs. and i think it was kuchar now who said that we have to not only create a material deng xiaoping. what's the word? >> and national, a national country but a spiritual country. >> a spiritual country. so they are doing their best to revive confucianism, to treat the culture and the heritage that the heritage is i very highly and china. has a long, long and really wonderful history. which we see coming up. and we've been in tibet, for example, lately in september. and they make big efforts to keep the language to support the

language, to support the tibet and culture. what they need and the people and the government is fighting for is to have a balance between modernity and between history and the valleys of history. and that's not easy, and every single person, we all have to balance our life between what we want to achieve economically and what we want to achieve and our personal values. >> as to education, first of all, china has a literacy rate of 97%. because of the chinese have always put a premium on education. but their education system is almost totally rote learning. particular those who are forced to go to university. everything is taught to the

exam. it is all wrote, all born. but is true of most education with this one except it. but most education systems in the world. all over the world we are teaching, we are doing the education. yesterday, as we're trying to get through today, and we should be really at least teaching education for today if not for tomorrow. the chinese are working on that. i remember, remember the television show them the dialogue? we had a big television show in china, and the government had just announced that mandatory education for nationwide, eight years, was going to go to 12 years by 2020. and i said, wait a minute, wait a minute. you're talking about keeping kids in school for four more years, but giving them the same kind of education, same kind of

wrote education that doesn't address to the creativity. and i said, the point is, what are they doing when they are sitting in school for eight years or soon-to-be 12 years? what are they learning? how are they learning? and we got a great alteration for the. the recognition that that's what's got to be addressed if so we talked about crossing the river by feeling the stones, trial and error, a lot of experimentation going on in china to try and figure out what kind of education system, what kind of education for today's world. and no one in the world has really mastered that, except the united states and higher education. such a great, not primary and secondary except here. with such a great higher education system because of competition. for decades and decades and decades, the universities have competed for students, competed for competition for customers. making their schools better for customers. and we're trying to introduce, sake look, you have learned so

much on the marketplace by economics, why don't have a marketplace comma economic system or at least change from this wrote education. that's a big, big issue in china. >> thank you. so i guess i might be a next-generation that should talk about because i live in china, and i have been here for like two years ago. so what i observed was that the education system was actually not that great, as you said, entire because, i mean, what i experienced was the constant change of policies made by the government, educational department, and they basically, they are talking about different ways of selecting the elite for the country. but i think, and they also emphasis -- what they did, and

this is much on becoming elite instead of becoming a person. and i kind of disagree with some people, that the focus on heritage and on cultural thing. because that's what actually hindered the creativity in china, because what the parents, what the authority said, and they just keep following that thing. and also what i observed was the law, the law and enforcement part of the government was actually not that great. so how do you think that china should improve on the laws in the education? and that's basically my question. >> as you probably know, late last year the education minister got fired.

remember? for china. which is a measure of what's going on. fortunately, much of the education system is also decentralized, andrew in the hands of the provinces and cities in many regards. but the problem is that whether, given what you have said, is the wrote learning that we think is the most corrupting thing in that system. >> we had a discussion actually with one of the government officials. and he said that the priorities to change the education system, but who is the course, who teaches you? those people were educated in a different time. and so the mindset of the teachers cannot be changed so easily. that's the problem. how do you change the teaching

methods of the teachers who are totally still in that chinese thinking of respecting authority, not questioning authority, be quiet as a mouse, and only speak when you're asked. this mindset, you have to start with the teachers, but that's very difficult to change the thinking of the teachers. and what they, of course, tried to do is get people into china who bring a different spirit. and that cannot be done overnight. >> one interesting new directive, this is not responsive to what you were saying, but every -- in every primary and secondary school you have to take science and math. and these have been taught by anybody, but now the new directive is for those teachers

who teaches science and math, they teachers have to have a degree in those subjects everywhere before they can teach it. that might even push harder for more wrote learning and feedback, but it is part of really trying to be responsive to this. it is a great flocks and we think this is good rather than being frozen in some position that they will keep. there's lots of talks about, lots of interest, lots of push there. and you ought to contribute to that, too, to the dialogue. >> and to the thought of the elite. you know, i think i said i am european. and we have noticed that the chinese, chinese government is trying to build an elite who can run the country. but not an elite soviet stock, but people who can really think,

that shows that, you know, some capital is billionaire, let's put it that way, of now part of the government. and moving and people who are not part of the communist party. but i can tell you, if you're in the west and you compare the politicians and the thinking in the education of some western politicians of eastern europe, then you sometimes wish they had some of the wit of the chinese politicians. but that is, you know, a european statement. >> there's someone standing back there. >> i am the vital. thank you again for being here today to give us this opportunity. i appreciate your comments up front about being mindful of the sources and intent of the stories that we read in the media, and i certainly try to be mindful of that. at given that, are there one or two men, perhaps, negative trends that you are seeing as china tries to figure all of

this out what you have some concerns for the nation about? >> i think the number one is the lack of confidence in what they are doing and the defensiveness they have about what they're doing, and the lack of sophistication in talking about what they are doing. it's just amazing to me have the chinese leadership is jerked around by stories in the western press. i mean, they really know about them and they really get upset about them, and they really don't know what to do about them. they are very inapt in dealing with the rest of the world, though they are trying. this whole idea they want to join the world, they want to be part of the world, but they are still pretty primitive and how you do that and how you respond to the interactions that you have with the rest of the world. and, of course, the gap, the gap between urban and rural, which

we all know about. i mean, they are working on that and it's going to take a long time, but it is still profoundly there. there's a great difference between the urban centers and out on the farm, the rural areas. and the migration to the cities has been the largest the world has ever witnessed. and that's the history of the development of the west, too, the migration to the cities. but still, that gap is one of the biggest problems that china has, for sure. >> on to one thing that's not talk about is the aging. >> demographic. >> the demographic. if all the things we can think about, one child, everyone getting older, you know, the demographics are really going to be a problem down the line. >> i know you stated a lot of reasons for the rise of china. and i believe you listed $8.

were any of those pillars about china's lack of environmental regulations? were any of those about china's poor building codes? were any of those about china's lack of basic workers rights? were any of those pillars on those topics? >> yes. the pillars -- there's a couple of them. first of all, you should know, we monitor all -- we monitor papers, local reports and local press is really, the golden age for local reporting. we monitor everything that's going on locally in china. and the two biggest issues, the two biggest issues for local papers all over china both editorially and in their news coverage are corruption and the environment. they talk about those two things more than anything else.

and i could add that to the list. but it is amazing what china is doing in both areas, although there are huge, huge problems, but also on workers rights. a lot of them have workers rights programs for policy for migrant workers, including providing lawyers and things like that. but bigger problems are corruption and the environment that you brought up. and in some areas, china is leading the world in environment on clean energy with nuclear plants. they are building 50 this year -- this decade. and their view as with other countries, that's the only clean energy. and coal which relies mostly energy in china, they are bolding all their nuke plants are coal plants which cuts down

on pollution. their billing with him at elsinore. but mostly they're talking about all the time. and the new directive that came out last year is you cannot in china have a project of any kind, a building, a bridge, any kind of project without the sustainability, environmental sustainability, program, sustainability program for the environment, or you can get approval for any projects. so they've got a long way to go, awful long way to go and all the regard you speak of, but things are happening. that are never reported in the west. >> and as you said, you know, the laws, the law, judicial system is reformed but it is one thing to have the written law, and it's another thing to have that law implemented. implemented in the provinces. and what happens in the united

states if somebody's treating his people unfair, but the people are fear to lose their jobs? you know, you are afraid to really complain and use the legal right to have because you might have a legal right but on the other hand, you might lose your job. that's in europe, the case. and much more in the country of that dimension. it is not easy to bring the level of, the maturity level of the system or the law, slowly improving judicial system from one day to the other, to the whole country. because it needs to be executed, and that's the difficult part. >> we have about 12 minutes left and we want to get as many student questions as possible. >> short questions, short answers.

>> you mentioned that the law system, the judicial systems in china are not established. can you elaborate on how it is not a completely, how it is not completely fair system like the united states? >> you know, if you, as a worker have the right to sue your boss, but at the same time, you know that once you sue him you don't have a job and you don't know how that all works out, that you have to -- with history of the chinese, they are not really the people who stand up against the boss and yell and shout. we have an example in the book. you know, compare an american worker or a student who might be too tough, versus the chinese who have to learn to oppose and fight for the rights. >> in criminal law, you know, china extraordinary up until very recently, the lawyers, one of the great growth industries

in china is lawyers. i'm not sure that's good news or bad, but it is a huge growth industry because of all the new rules in the judicial system, but up until just last year, lawyers couldn't talk to the people they were defending. and they couldn't, they couldn't deal with them before going into the courtroom. that was changed last year. how much that is being called already, i don't know, but it is change so that the lawyers become the lawyers for the people, work with the people that are being charged with a crime. that is a huge change for china. we will see how it plays out. that's in place now, and how plays out, particularly in the provinces. unit, getting down to the provinces sometimes takes a long time. we said that this system is only 30% as far as we can tell much or. it's got a long way to go.

short, short. >> going back to the global question, there's been talk on the news of possible government-sponsored chinese hackers that have been infiltrating not only private companies, private u.s. companies, it also highly secretive u.s. government files as will. if this is true, should foreign nations and companies be wary of future interaction with china? >> well, the way you formulate the question, does that mean that china should be responsible for the misconduct of people who happened to be chinese, most of those by the way are operating out of taiwan now. and there are foreigners that go through taiwan and into the mainland and so on. this is still all got to be worked out. this is right in midstream, all

of this. in fact, sitting here in the media center, i have to say, that all of the media and all of the wonderful stuff we know about, it's in this long shakeout period. everything with the internet and all the other things, it's a long shakeout period. we don't know what's going to happen. we will not know what's going to happen for many, many, for many years in our view. and this is sort of part of that process. >> we talked about the education in china. >> speak up, please. >> we talked about the education system in china, and if that improves, and if the children have more of a freedom of sinking their own thoughts. would they come to challenge the democracy that china have right now? and if so, would they improve the government or would that cost some kind of problem in china's? >> what we experienced is that there is a very strong

patriotism in china, within the young generation. they love their country. >> proud. >> they are proud of the country. but this is a generation which is more critical, because they compare china to the west. they partly glorify the west, opposite than the west does when looking at china. and i think that it will work out that the young generation, with their different demands, the government will have to respond to. and there is a change because the government doesn't stay the same. the people and the government are sort of more and more of a different generation. and so we believe that the change is, if the government continues that way, there can be a very smooth change. but the people, the demand of the young people, of course, is

totally different than the one, the demand of their parents. >> thank you for coming and for taking my question. my question was, i'm interested to hear your opinion on 2008 earthquake and have china responded to that. and what that revealed about the failings and strength of vertical democracy. >> well, the 2008 earthquake, there are several ways, several stories about that. one, it was totally transparent. the earthquake that occurred some years before killed like 200,000 people, was hidden from view. the chinese didn't like any journalist in. they didn't write about the press. and so this time around, they let journalists in. it was lead with journalists. stories were being reported, and we got the story out, including using inferior material to build school houses, and all that. the reason we know about that is

because the chinese opened it up this time, and that side of it was progress. the other side is, a lot of the people have been put in prison in connection with this answer your building and so on. but so, there was good news and bad news. the good news was the transparency that the government was now willing to put forth in such a disaster. >> yeah, and it was really in a wage uniting for the chinese. we experienced for many people who we know, who drop whatever job they had and went there. again and again to help you and sent money. it was much more, let's work together and help the people to fix it. and we were there a little after the earthquake in an area that was not hit by the earthquake. but the spirit was moving

together by a nation much more than let's hide what happens there. >> thank you. my question is, is china's current pace of economic growth environmentally sustainable? and what should china do as a player in the global community to address the environmental problems it is facing? >> i but we dealt with that. well, we answered that question earlier about coming into, the two biggest issues in china are corruption and the environment. and what they're doing in connection with energy and the environment pollution. and we were in beijing a lot in the blue sky days is increasing. >> there are two things.

on one hand, china doesn't want the west to tell the country what to do and environmental considerations and things. but on the other hand, they see a chance to become a front runner, on environmental questions. and their hit by the environmental damage that is in china much more than we are hit. so they're really working hard. >> what the chinese really don't like is being lectured to about their violent and what they should do about the environment. they look at the westin say look, you screwed up your environment in the west. you have no more moral ground to lecture us about what we should do about our environment. in the meantime, seems to us they're doing more about environment than anybody. but the west keeps lecturing them and at the same time the west is to, you know, making its contribution to the environmental degradation of the planet.

what about the west? what are they doing? i mean, copenhagen they did nothing. it was a joke almost. was that serious? what about the west? because of china becomes a scapegoat in a lot of senses, i can say. >> i am the principal of tenafly highchool. so on behalf of our school i wanted to thank you, doris and john for being with us and taking time. [applause] . .

we are delighted to see you all here at the embassy and is special welcome to howard evans and tina brown. we at the embassy are delighted to be participating in the launch of harris book, the book covered a huge amount of ground from harry is chou lahood in

northern england and for a time you would notice you were living in ackles a few hundred yards from where julia later grew up in winchester. and then on to his professional career. as a journalist, editor, publisher and author. but this isn't just another autobiography, this is also a biography of the newspaper industry over many, many significant decades in the book describes the that almost industrial process of producing a newspaper really the best part over the last century. now, all of that in one way has vanished but the book is decidedly not in the obituary for printing journalism. mark twain sent on not an editor of a newspaper and shall always try to do right into good so that god will not make me one. [laughter]

his 14 years as the editor of sunday's time and then a year as the editor of the davy times of the london produced works of mr. nearly high standard. in 2001 journalists named him the greatest british newspaper editor of all time. [applause] and he championed what yesterday's review of the book in the new york times called a crusading style of journalism in which he anticipates afflicted the guilty and champions the innocent. and people of my generation who got interested in national and international politics very often did so because of the sunday times because of its fire, its control leadership and its investigative zeal. but this is also a transatlantic story. harold first encounter with americans i read the other day was during the second of world war in manchester and his fellow

ship in 1956 began a lifelong association. he and teenine have lived here for nearly 30 years. although teenine doesn't remember we were her contemporaries at oxford and she has the knack of stopping the traffic there just as she has done here ever since. his american career took him to u.s. news and world report and a number of other top publications to random house and publishing to writing including the award winning american century. now, harry and teenine are both american citizens and on not holding that against you. [laughter] but she retained extraordinarily close links with the uk. this embassy and i wish the book every success, it's a remarkable story so ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming sir harold evans. [applause]

>> i can't be elevated so i have to allow for this. sir michael, thank you so much for those excellent words. is always good to come back to britain which is where we are. and not to go through the formalities of proving to ibm, which is what happens, of course, when you go through any security, the lucky -- nigel is so lucky because this is true. he lived very close to me and he's lucky because we never met. [laughter] because who knows what might have happened if i had met the gorgeous julia. [laughter] who became a scientist and like me ended up in the united states. tonight really should be a celebration, not of me frankly, but of reporting.

that's what my book is about. it is is about when newspapers can achieve, not when an editor can achieve, but what the reporters on the ground can achieve. that's why i'm particularly on tonight to have been bradley here who represents journalism at its best and many other excellent reporters here. i'm also glad we're here with the synthesis i think of remarkable quality about what is best going on at the moment because the people apart from me to read every newspaper every day and so at a week provides that synthesis and guidance as well. so celebrating reporting means actually which all of us know what reporting is. news is what somebody somewhere

was to suppress. everything else is advertising. [laughter] and, in fact, to, of course, those in journalism will know the truth of that. what i'd like to say, when i is writing this book wasn't really -- i did get nostalgic for what i've written, especially in these times for people are questioning what is in printing and one of might do. and when i was able to achieve was not by me but by these reporters so when we were campaigning for victims who were bombed without arms and legs on government approve prescriptions and the one the great battle against a truck companies and the attorney general of my beloved britain, i feel by the way dual citizenship so i don't know of that will make life difficult for me now, but we were able to do that because of

the reporters in question. actually started the chemistry of the line and i remember going on to the officers in the insider group and seeing the molecular structure where and frankly nobody had done it. nobody had lived at how the disaster occurred. ralph nader is here tonight and was a tremendous support and that campaign and a lot of people were supportive and all these campaigns. the dc-10 disaster, the largest air crash in the world at the time. congress began to investigate, so the truth about what have been created a terrible disaster left to the press and i'm proud of what the reporters on that particular story did or take another one, i am sure in night you can remember, exposing that great cover-up and the damage he

did in the lives that he lost was extremely tricky. i want to say again that was a question of reporting. now, straight reporting is very important. an investigative journalist is only an aspect of it but is a very difficult former and the sunday times we found a team was a great way to do it. one of the things i'm proud that the paper is cheap was to bring some kind of understanding of what the history and the currency is a vote was happening in northern ireland. john barry is here tonight, the head of the inside committee, and his team working through some of the most difficult circumstances ever produced a fantastic book and report called perspective. when i was prosecuted by the i.r.a. of which i was for suggesting some of the members are stealing money, i could go

to belfast and most unfortunate the guys were escorting the took a wrong turn to get down here. it reminds me of what the reporters on the spot were doing everyday so that's what we're here to celebrate tonight. just-in-time and i've seen a more and more were really good reporting is being squeezed out of existence. often buy it meatheads i call them, people would take newspapers as a great way to make money which is intended lager and to just know that a reporter or a newspaper -- it's a very -- we have to keep reminding everybody that journalism is not dead. the vehicle will change and so it must change so that's very important and i've always been very grateful that my publicist's gave me the time to send out what a newspaper can

do. not just the sunday times, what could newspapers can do everywhere. we have here tonight a very distinguished person whom i knew it in the 1960's and he went back to bankroll and created a most wonderful publishing empire television and investigation so it is essential to the indian democracy of the press. so when we drink tonight let's drink to reporting and thank you very much oliver cummingtonite. [applause] [applause] >> this was a portion of a booktv program.

from the 2009 miami book fair international a discussion on the supreme court, author of american original, presents her biography of justice antonin scalia. and barry friedman author of the will of the people argues the supreme court bases its decisions on popular opinion as much as it does on constitutional precedent.

>> i thought i would start with the last chapter of the book and to make you a understand why i even wrote this. many of you are familiar with the second amendment case of the court decided about a. a half ago, the d.c. handguns' case and that was the very first time the supreme court said there's an individual right to own firearms and handguns in the constitution and justice scalia wrote that opinion. it was the biggest majority opinion he had had to date and he came on the court in 1986 and i start my last chapter with him at his desk working on that with his pack of marlboro lights at his side and trying to keep it in check not responding with any kind of angry to any of the dissenting justices which has been one of his issues he's gone on and i mention that because i found that as i was working on this book he was becoming more and more important. many people said y justice

scalia especially after do something on justice o'connor really was devoted to influence your fellow justices and ends up controlling the porch, justice scalia was never known for that but one of the points of my book was overtime he became someone who wasn't just dissenting his speaking to his acolytes beyond the marble walls but was controlling cases and this culminated in the washington dc handan case. i thought i would talk about how i ended up talking to him and getting access about what i found out with the surprises and hit a couple highlights and then turned over to barry. justice o'connor was ronald reagan's first appointment, of course, chosen to fulfill his campaign promise of a first woman on the courts but as i was doing research on her every last the real manifestation of of reagan cultural social

revolution, the counterrevolution was instantly appointed in 1986, much more the person who ronald reagan and many who supported him wanted on the court said that interested me in justice scalia. i have actually interviewed him for the first time in 1919 renounced with congressional quarterly before the post in usa today and once i decided to do the book on him i wrote him a letter and said i've got this contract to do this book, i know we've known each other and i had to admit to him when i was with congressional quarterly he lied to me when i was at the washington post he didn't and he actually wrote me a note after i left the post to go to usa today that said even though i'm sicilian i have held a grudge against you, john. [laughter] which happen in the paper which bothered him more. so i said i'm going to do this book on new and i said i hope to understand and i'm going to be interviewing lots of people and i hope you will give me access and he wrote me back a terrific