Professor of Chinese Politics, and Director, Institute of Social Sciences, University of Sydney
BA(Hons) (Manc), DipEcon (Peking), PhD (Lond), HonLittD (UTS), FASSA

Professor David S G Goodman addressed graduates from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the Great Hall, City campus, Wednesday 6 May 2009, 2.30pm.

At the ceremony, Professor Goodman received the UTS honorary award, Doctor of Letters (honoris causa).

Citation

This award is made to Professor David Stephen Gordon Goodman in recognition of his outstanding contribution to society and research.

David Goodman was born on 19 February 1948 and grew up and was educated in England. In 1970 he graduated from the University of Manchester with a Bachelor of Arts, First Class Honours in Politics and Modern History. He went on to do a postgraduate diploma in economics at Peking University, then in 1981 he was awarded a PhD in Chinese Politics from the London School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

Professor Goodman has had an outstanding research career spanning 35 years on social and political change in China. He has been the author of 10 influential books, and a large number of articles in leading international journals. He has been a prolific grant recipient for his research, has served on many editorial boards, and supervised a large number of research students. His research has been of the highest impact, not only because it has addressed all of the phases of China's economic development of the 20th century, but also because of its interdisciplinarity, making important contributions to political, economic, cultural and demographic issues. His research covers the role of colonial Germany in China, provincialism and democracy in China through various 'reform' periods, through to his current research on the new rich in China.

In 1994, Professor Goodman became the Director of the Institute for International Studies at UTS. Under his leadership the Institute for International Studies established a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies that articulated with other undergraduate degrees in a series of combined degrees. The Institute's academic interests focussed on the study of comparative social change and cultural diversity, including the teaching of languages other than English. The International Studies Program permitted the Bachelor of Arts in International Studies to be combined with 36 UTS undergraduate programs and in 2001 the Institute established a Research Degrees (PhD and Master of Arts by thesis) program in China Studies taught exclusively through the medium of Modern Standard Chinese. Students could also undertake research for a PhD in International Studies, in English.

In April 2004 Professor Goodman was elevated to the position of Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Vice President, International, later to become Deputy Vice-Chancellor (International) and Vice-President. The portfolio included responsibility for internationalising the curriculum and the University; the internationalisation of research; student and staff exchanges; international student recruitment; sponsored international student schemes and scholarships; and the University's international relations. As a result Professor Goodman's work the University has dramatically reconfigured its offshore activities and its international relations.

At the end of 2008, Professor Goodman left the University to undertake a new challenge as Professor of Chinese Politics and Director, Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Sydney which is currently working on a Provincial China Project.

It is a great honour for the University of Technology, Sydney to award David Stephen Gordon Goodman the degree Doctor of Letters (honoris causa) in recognition of his outstanding contribution to society and research.

Speech

The China threat

Have been puzzled in the last few weeks by the discussion of the 'China threat' in the media and by the opposition
Why am I puzzled?
Several reasons

Past paradigm of a globalised interdependent world seems suddenly to have been jettisoned, not least by the assumption that between 2020 and 2030 there will be a sea based military threat to Australia

China's economic development poorly understood

Notion of Chineseness is wayward

Global interdependence

The Defence White Paper is of course a strategic document rather than an operational plan. It frankly makes as much sense as Howards White Paper on Foreign Policy did when he came into office.

The you will recall he tried, at least for eighteen months, to turn his back on China, and indeed much of Australia's interactions.

That didn't work, and there seems little reason to believe this White Paper is any more serious.

We have problems staffing two submarines now, yet 12 are planned for the long term future.
And that's before we even consider the financing of the White Paper.
The White Paper is likely to be self limiting.

It may be prudent to make long-term and strategic statements about protecting Australia's northern borders, even when expecting the worst not to happen.
At the same time, it is unfortunate this White Paper should come at a time when the Opposition and at least part of the national media are engaged in China-baiting.

More serious is the supposition that the paradigm of an increasingly globalised interdependent world which has dominated Australian public policy for almost three decades, and which frankly has been the main cause of economic prosperity, should suddenly be abandoned.

It is of course difficult to convince people of the benefits of international trade, economic openness, and the free flow of goods, ideas and service even at the best of boom times.
One consequence of open international economics is that production and employment follows the costs of factors of production.
Even in a boom era, there are concerns about the loss of production capacity and employment opportunities
Obviously in an economic downturn such pressures increase.
At the same time, the benefits of global interdependence also have to be borne in mind.
Cheaper manufactures and consumer durables, and a higher standard of living.

Example of ironing board.

When I was a kid, consumer durables were very expensive
Ironing boards for example were a substantial expense

They were made to last and if you bought one, would expect to have it forever
Now they are a throw away trifle

Not well made

But if one breaks

You can buy another very cheaply

So we have a situation in which some people's standard of living rises

But in which those who are put out of work certainly don't immediately benefit

This is where the power of the state should be brought to bear

Greater wealth distribution through taxation
provision of both education and retraining to meet the various challenges of globalisation
and provision of state supported, health, education and welfare

Australia is actually well placed economically to implement such a program

The international division of labour works heavily in Australia's favour.

Currently only one country currently has a trade surplus with China (Australia).

In a very real sense the dislocations in the Australian economy that result from greater wealth generation through China are resoluble in Australia itself

The issue of global interdependence has also been raised recently in the Australian media with comments of opposition to Chinese investment here these comments are frankly moralistic in tone and their attempted justification

Michael Sainsbury in The Australian this Monday was fairly typical.
he argued that Chinese investment in an Australian company should be stopped because the Chinese company in question engaged in economic relations with the regime in Myanmar.
The article then went on to catalogue the sins of the Myanmar government. Guilt by association in short.

This moralistic approach is interesting.
It's particularly interesting that other countries are not found to be threats when we don't like the morality of their rulers.

No one for example suggested that USA interests close to George Bush shouldn't be permitted to invest in Australia after the USA decided to liberate Iraq.

Chinese economy

As these comments suggest, the Australian media is full of comments about China Rising and the economic challenges this presents to the rest of the world

China's rise is real but needs to be kept in perspective
Rising — yes recently, but the longer term provides a different picture
There is a common belief that China's growth in the last thirty years has come from nothing to extreme wealth
well not quite
China's economy has gone from being the biggest to being outclassed by the industrial giants of the 19th and 20th centuries to growing again
It has never been a small economy
and even during 1952 to 1978 was growing solidly
Until 1830 China was the largest economy in the world
It had 36% of world population and about 1/3 of world GDP.
China's decline was relative to other countries that were industrialising

It didn't get poorer, other countries got richer

And by a lot

There are about 200 countries in the world
China has never been ranked lower than 4th and is currently on its way to being the largest economy again

During 1952 to 1978 China's growth in GDP, and GDP per capita was higher than that of the USA

Since 1978 of course its growth has been spectacular
but keep this growth in perspective
the USA has 4.6% of the world's population and about 25% of its GDP
China has 20% of the world's population and 15% of its GDP
The key challenges for China are to develop the interior and domestic consumption

Scale is the key to understanding the Chinese economy and its place in the world

Though we are used to employing national stats to describe the Chinese economy

They don't really reflect economic reality
as everyone who has ever studied Economics 101 will rapidly realise

National economies are not usually able to grow at 9/10% pa for thirty years without overheating

The explanation in the China case is of course that China is not an integrated economy

It's a series of not very well integrated regional economies

The use of coal is a good example
North China has a huge coalfield with large supplies of high quality coal
yet it buys coal and coal mines from and in Australia and Brazil

Why ? Because transport costs are too high within China

So the pattern of economic development is Growth in each regional economy in series rather than across the whole country simultaneously
and this intense regionalism is recognised by the governmental budgetary system

China has the highest degree of decentralised expenditure and revenue of any country

About 70% of governmental expenditure is decentralised to subnational levels

Chineseness

Mr Turnbull attempted to garner some spurious legitamcy for statements on China in his speech the other day through reference to a quote in Chinese about the Mountains are high, and the Emperor is far away. Wasn't quite sure what he was on about and where this fitted in to his speech.

Am completely sure though that Mr Turnbull is unaware of the origin of the quote; which mountains, for example, were being referred to ?
China and Chineseness are far more slippery concepts than simply identifying the Empire and the people who lived in it
Within what we now call China Both concepts are fairly recent neologisms

Only about a hundred years old

The words China and Chinese were much more common in Europe before 1900 where it was used for the most part to mean the exotic
Chinese whispers
Chinese gardens

And in the Spanish colonies in the New World where class was based on colour, it was used to refer to certain exotic mixtures of blacks, whites and indians.
the exception was porcelain, a process which was called China and which did indeed come from the country we now call China
China wasn't called China (Zhongguo in Chinese) by anyone in China until about 1900
the word didn't exist
The Empire was known by the name of its dynastic rulers
Which is why Chinatown in Chinese is actually called after the Tang Dynsaty

The era when outmigration started
The Emperor was the representative of heaven on earth — which was described as 'all under heaven'.

The term China itself was only first used to describe the Chinese state in 1912 with the declaration of the Republic

The definition of the Han Chinese and Chineseness really only starts with the modernising revolutionaries in about 1900
The revolutionaries called themselves Han Chinese after the Han dynasty and against the Manchurian Qing, seen now as outsiders
As a concept Han Chineseness was adopted by the Qing themselves in 1906

Chinese are differentiated by language, food, customs of birth, death and marriages, and even myths of origin
Language is the most obvious divider
Modern Standard Chinese, mandarin, is many people's second language and remarkably few people's first language
There are about 360 local languages in about 9 major Chinese language groups

While they are all written in Chinese characters they may differ greatly in pronounciation, grammar and syntax.
many are mutually intelligible

Modern Standard Chinese was adopted as the national language in 1926
and has only recently become nationalised on a large scale in the last twenty five years

But food and other customs are all also highly varied
Guangdong contrasted to Shanxi or Sichuan food.
The amazing thing though is that everyone privileges being Chinese

one in 8 of Sydney's population is Chinese of one kind or another

so one would hardly expect to find a responsible Sydney politician suggesting that all those we might describe as ethnically Chinese were somehow subversive or associated with the Chinese state
It's almost as silly as putting all Mexicans in quarantine, wherever they may be based in the world, just because there has been a serious flu outbreak in that country

Two observations by way of conclusion:

Strikes me that the real China threat is ignorance.
The need is there for more China knowledge. Frankly you're in the right place for that. UTS is one of the world's leading centres for the study of contemporary China, and its China Research Centre is the outstanding place for research on social and cultural change.