Henry A. Kissinger Quotes

When I was a student there in the mid-1990s, they had just created the weekend; depth and individuality were slowly returning after the austere, colorless low of the 1970s. When I returned to live in China from 2005 to 2013, the country was building everything anew.

My grandfather was originally from the south of China before he emigrated to Malaysia pre-World War II. And I wanted to learn more about the history of the country of my ancestors. I knew I wanted a narrative set in contemporary Beijing. I was really interested in the effect of the rapid social and economic change on ordinary citizens in China.

In the latter half of the last century the impact of the expanding influence of Western culture and economic system brought about in China a severe conflict.

Only reform and opening up can develop China. We must not be afraid of any risks, and not be confused by any distractions.

30 years after China embarked on its fitful embrace of the free market, it has no single unifying doctrine—no ‘central melody’—and there is nothing predestined about what kind of country it is becoming.

China itself is now in the process of sloughing off not only the communist system, but also those outdated parts of Confucianism that prevent the rapid acquisition of knowledge needed to adjust to new ways of life and work.

What is applicable is to understand that first of all China has undergone a huge revolution in the last years. Anyone who saw China as I did in 1971 - and for that matter even in 1979, because not much had changed between 1971 and 1979 - and sees China today, knows one is in a different economic system.

Ordinary Chinese can actually make choices about their own lives which wasn’t possible 25 years ago.

The Chinese government today finds it hotter than ever to attract, develop, and retain talent. Graduates from the country’s top universities, who once would have filled government posts, are instead choosing to take jobs in the private sector. Ironically, by creating new opportunities for talented people, three decades of reform have made undertaking new reforms more difficult

Give us 20 years, and you'll not recognize this country!

… post-industrial society

Civic rationality and modern capitalism triumphed in the medieval northern European cities – but not in Chinese, Indian or Muslim cities

In Japan, there was no comparable (to our competitive economy) organic development; when the country was suddenly thrown open, the very idea of 'competition' was strange to them, and when Western economic writings were first translated into Japanese, it was necessary to make a new word for it. It was a combination of the Japanese words for 'race' and 'fight.'

I will take the best from each system and introduce it in Russia..

The duty of an American churchman in China is not simply introducing new ideas into the country, but modifying its industrial, social, and political life and institutions. Missionaries are the pioneers of trade and commerce. Civilization, learning, instruction breed new wants which commerce supplies.

The Empress Dowager enjoins her people that only by adopting what is superior about the foreign countries can we rectify what is wanting in China.

Making these changes is a matter of life and death for our country, and it will give our people a chance to lead a better life.

Unlike 30 years ago, people now admire the wealth of the West and lament the poverty of China; they stare awestruck at the power of the Western armies and scorn the cowardice of the Imperial troops; they enjoy the fairness and ease of the Customs and detest the fault-finding of China’s own tax collectors; they praise the orderly governance of the Western-Administered cities, and resent the harassment of our officials, big and small.

China became an economic power with few equals. By 2010 China gad overtaken Japan as the world’s second largest economy in terms of GDP, China’s transformation consistently drew one ideas beyond it shores.

There is big resistance from vested interests in China that don't want to open up to competition.

China's economic transformation began with the introduction in the 1980s of market incentives in the agricultural sector. These reforms were followed by a gradual opening to the global economy, a process that accelerated in the early 1990s.

China adopted a capitalist system in the 1980s, and they went from a 60% poverty rate to 10%.

As a Saudi journalist starting my career right after the oil boom of the 1970s, I witnessed the phenomenal growth and expansion of Saudi businesses and the pivotal role the leaders of these firms played in building the modern Saudi economy.

It is my idea to make capitalism create socialism in China so that these two economic forces of human evolution will work side by side in future civilization.

Prime Minister Singh is to be commended for beginning the process of transforming India into a global economic power by initiating economic liberalization in the early 1990s.