60 foreigners who helped shape China's 60 years

• Source: Global Times
• [02:58 September 18 2009]
• Comments

Foreigners from the entertainment and sports world all come after reform opening-up.

"Thirty years reform and opening-up has brought China a booming economy and opening culture. People started to consume culture as entertainment," Zhang said. "Chinese people are not only citizens, but also consumers and people enjoy entertainment."

He said Chinese people have multiple identities and their life has become more adaptable and energetic. From this point of view, reform and opening-up has deeply influenced China.

Moving from East to West: how China's world view has altered

Modernization, according to Professor Jin Canrong, takes two paths: The first is an inward pattern in which modernization is driven by domestic powers. The country adopting this pattern modernizes through assistance from domestic elites. The second type follows an outward pattern. Countries with this pattern usually fall behind in modernization. And they yearn for outward assistance in their arrangement of the ideological and political system, economic development and people's livelihood.

"China belongs to the second type," Jin argued. "Western countries, the US in particular, represent modern thinking and lifestyle. So in the name lists, you will see an increasing number of Americans which echoes the fact that China, as a latecomer to modernization, is continually learning from the outside world in its process of transforming from an agricultural society into an industrialized society".

"Spatially speaking, the global influence on China is heading from East to West. The most influential foreigner evolves from the Soviet Union and East Europe gradually to the US," Zhang said.

On the list, you will find Russians like Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev and Ivan Arkhipov and other leaders of the Soviet Union cast a heavy influence on the Chinese in the 1950s and 1960s. Leaders from the Third World like Nehru, Tito and Ho Chi Minh also formed close relationships with China.

After China's reform and opening-up, Soviet Union and Eastern European influence gradually weakened, with fewer names from Asia, Africa and Latin America appearing on the list.

The influence of Third World countries faded. At the same time, Western influence deepened. This change reflects the reshuffling of the international order after the Cold War.

Zhang also said that we could see in this list of the last 60 years, competition in the international community has transformed from political and military to economic, social and development. The field of international competition is broadening from purely political to overall competition: military, corporate, entertainment and sports. Some less mainstream Western ideas, such as Nietzsche and so on, have begun to exert an impact on China. Founder of modern Chinese studies in the United States, John King Fairbank and other outside experts have exerted a real impact since the 1980s.

"It also reflects that Chinese people have begun to care how the world sees them," Zhang Yiwu said.

Evocative memories of a particular era

Disputes were inevitable during the selection process, although some candidates were not disputed. Lenin got the largest online vote, for example. David Beckham also received many votes, a reflection of the youthful character of the Internet. But so as not to miss out on influential but lesser-known candidates, the opinion of experts was weighed into the final consideration.

"This list must represent China's valuation of foreigners," said Shen Jiru, a researcher at the Institute of World Economics and Politics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times. Some in the current list are debatable, he said.

A signifiant part of the selection came from web users, he claimed, and public opinion is also equipped with great uncertainty.

"There are foreigners who impressed Chinese people in every era, like Nikolai Ostrovsky and How the Steel Was Tempered (The Making of a Hero). That novel really hits Chinese people deep in the soul," said Lu Jiande, vice-director of the Institute of Foreign Literature under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

"The list of foreigners should focus on how they influence New China and should evoke Chinese people's memories of a certain period."

"People's hearts will flutter and their thoughts wander back to a certain era when they read some of these names," Lu said. "If the person who makes the list really comprehends that span."