OPINION> Columnists
How 30 years changed my view of the world
By Alexis Hooi (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-12-17 07:56

As someone born in Singapore in the 1970s, I am hardly the person to write at length about the impact of China's reform and opening-up in the past 30 years.

When this country embarked on its sweeping economic and political reforms in 1978, I was just another citizen of a small nation being modernized.

While China rolled out its agricultural reforms and discontinued its communes, I was your average student embedded in a British-oriented education system concerned with passing exams. Like many of my generation in my country, I grew up as a teen enamored and fed with numerous things Western - American pop culture was the order of the day.

When thousands of China's State-owned enterprises made way for private homes and companies in cities across the country, my fleeting encounters with things from the Chinese mainland when I was in my 20s came through the Hong Kong and Taiwan entertainment industries.

Beyond movies and music, whatever definitive knowledge of China I gained was learned from history classes at home and abroad.

For the most of three decades, China was to me the distant land of my ancestors. But as an ethnic Chinese now making a living here, I am trying to close that gap - and finding it hard to get up to speed with its progress.

And what phenomenal progress that is. China has pulled more than 400 million people out of poverty in these past 30 years, a senior economist from the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said recently.

The world's fastest-growing economy has also fueled an increase of more than 90 percent in grain production within the period to feed its 1.3-billion population, FAO figures showed.

Drawing on a familial but inadequate foundation in Chinese language and culture, my view of the world is now seen through this country as it takes its place on the global stage.

From the news I deal with every day at work to the lives of Chinese people I meet beyond the office, I cannot get enough of coming face to face with the history and development of a major world civilization that is playing out right before my eyes.

In that regard, I am part of an expanding audience that is embracing a growing China.

Chinese language alone is becoming more popular worldwide, seen notably in the rising number of Confucius Institutes.

There are now more than 300 of the institutes in 78 countries and regions teaching Chinese language and culture since the first center was established in Seoul, South Korea, in 2004.

There will also be 100 million people outside of China picking up the Chinese language by 2010, estimates from the Office of Chinese Language Council International, an agency made up of Chinese state ministries and commissions, showed.

Like the challenges it faced in the past 30 years, China will encounter obstacles as it forges ahead to create better lives for its people.

But, as many such as myself are able to bear witness in their own way, the country has much to gain in continuing to reform and open up. Creating the need for greater understanding is one benefit of such change few will be able to deny.

E-mail: alexishooi@chinadaily.com.cn