Canadian John Ralston Saul has his finger on the pulse of world affairs. Courtesy of John Ralston Saul

Some critics say writer, global economist, philosopher and "prophet" John Ralston Saul has his finger on the pulse of world affairs. However the best-selling Canadian author's finger has actually seen better days. "I had an accident just before I came to China a very Canadian accident," he explains. "I slipped on the ice and broke my finger. They took me to hospital where I joined a queue of 30 other people who had slipped on the ice that morning too."

For a man who normally brandishes the written word, rather than his hands, to express himself, Saul used his bandaged finger as a baton as the energetic 59-year-old conducted his interviews in Shanghai last week.

For the past five years, Saul has been critiquing world economics with what he terms "the collapse of globalism".

But rather than nullify readers with pages of unreadable data and exhaustive language, Saul deliberately writes in plain English in order to drive his arguments home.

"I like to knock language that is false," he said. "I want to get rid of delusions and illusions, and hook away to find the root problems. Global economists seem to be too busy out-theorizing one another, when they should be searching for the right ideas."

Some of Saul's contemporaries in the globalism debate may have accused him of being a populist, of carrying content considered lightweight, but this does not seem to trouble the Canadian writer, who is married to Adrienne Clarkson, former governor general of Canada.

He excels in asking the right questions about why globalist ideology is under serious attack. "Asking the right question is already halfway towards finding the right answer," he argues.

He also excels at introducing globalist theories to educated audiences who may not be specialized in the modern climate of economics.

"During my time here in Shanghai, I have met many foreign workers in their 20s and 30s who know more about China than any minister of finance in Europe or North America does," he says boldly. "It's quite astonishing. And it makes Western views seem outdated, even laughable."

Saul first came to China in 1979. Since then he has traveled extensively throughout central Asia, specifically the Indian subcontinent, and his views on China's spectacular growth are engaging and refreshing. "What you are seeing with China is the rebuilding of their nation in their own model," he says.

"In many ways they are going back to the Middle Kingdom view of themselves. It's fascinating to watch. True believers in globalization have desperately tried to explain China to the West, but they fail to see that China has its own views, ideals, and imagination than the West."

Saul, it must be said, is a great lover of Western principles and philosophy. He has written many books on the subject, including the international bestseller Voltaire's Bastards, a strident insight into the dictatorship of reason when left unchecked by other human qualities.

The Canadian edition of Time magazine even went so far to call him "a prophet".

Yet his latest book, The Collapse of Globalism and the Reinvention of the World has put him squarely on the map as a counterattacking critic of the Western principle of globalization. Saul even believes globalization has achieved the polar opposite of what it set out to achieve.

"Everybody said globalization would be inevitable," he says. "Everyone said it would be for the greater good of the world. But the West is under the impression that it is their world.

"In many ways it mirrors the late 18th Century British-Indian cotton controversy, and then the mid-19th century trade into China that led to the Opium Wars. The language has barely changed. It's the same rhetoric.

"Globalization serves the interests of the West only, and this influence has given rise to many destructive patterns."

China is clearly on his mind today. "The fear is that China wishes to replace the West. I don't think they do. Of course they want to trade, and to sell goods, and to lock up natural resources, but that has nothing to do with running the world," Saul says.

Saul also shows himself to be an attentive admirer of current Chinese policy. He proffers the example of Premier Wen Jiabao's now widely reported statement at the National People's Congress earlier this month that the speed of a fleet is determined not by the fastest ship, but by the slowest.

"In many ways, this is the precise opposite of globalist theory, which says a rising tide raises all boats," states Saul.

"Any fisherman can tell you that a rising tide does not raise all boats. A rising tide is a time of turbulence. You would go into open water, or put down strong anchor, or tie your boats up until the turbulence abated.

"China's view shows a greater understanding of the reality. I was very impressed. It's a very sophisticated argument. Three times as sophisticated as the West. They favor the Confucius model when approaching the rich-poor divide."

Saul highlights his own condemnation of globalist theory very clearly. He argues that Western growth rose to power in a time of scarcity in the 19th century, when there was a huge market and a huge demand for everything.

"Guess what?" he says. "We are now in world of surplus. Everybody is, except for a few internal regions. Yet the corporations, the ministers, and the lobbyists have kept to the same model, the model of scarcity, yet applied it to a world of surplus. It's the wrong theory for the wrong world. The West hasn't rethought globalism in 100 years."

Strong words indeed but what will happen to China in this brave new world?

"My guess is what we will see is a squeezing by Europe and the US, and then gradually China and India will turn towards their own internal regions, which is an enormous growth market."

His views on other topics are equally succinct.

He adores the works of Joseph Conrad but loathes the writings of New York Times foreign columnist Thomas Friedman. "The world is not flat as Friedman states," says Saul. "The world is round. China has shown that. He's the Barbara Cartland of global economics."

Saul prefers Socrates to Plato. He holds no quarter with virtual financial worlds, or with the belief that technology as a tool of freedom, or that corporations will bend towards environmental change, unless, of course, they can deduce a profit from such change.

He also trusts wholeheartedly in the human art of common sense, in knowing unconsciously what is right, what is moral, and applying it to the everyday human world.

(China Daily 03/31/2007 page6)