Even though you see an industrial city when you first enter the Chinese city of Hangzhou, where the G20 Leaders Summit is being held, it would be rather unfair to identify the city with industry alone. Known as China's "heaven on earth," Hangzhou is one of the most beautiful cities in China and one of the few must-see cities in the world. Especially, Xihu, which is a paradisiacal lake, that is preserved from nearby industrial facilities.
While I was touring Hangzhou, I thought about the concept of contemporary civilization that signifies reaching and maintaining the highest levels in science, technology, education and general welfare. So far, we have also defined it as "Westernization."
Three years ago in the summer of 2013, the local administration in Detroit, one of the centers of industrial and automotive production in the U.S., went to court for bankruptcy. Detroit was a typical example of the American dream, and in other words, it was an example of rapid Westernization.
The Detroit local administration stated in its bankruptcy filing that the city's population, which reached 1.8 million in the 1950s because of the influx of people after the establishment of automotive factories, dropped to some 700,000 in 2013. As such, the city's tax revenues failed to meet its expenditures and it began facing vital problems such as the failure of satisfying security, illumination and health requirements. Despite Detroit being the U.S.'s automotive center, one-third of ambulance vehicles in the city were dysfunctional and half of the street lamps did not work. In the days when Detroit went bankrupt, Chinese industrial and commercial cities like Shanghai and Hangzhou were making infrastructure investments that would rapidly boost production in their region in a geometric way.
However, this development is not limited to China alone. Many developing countries, including Turkey, are making investments in order to turn metropolises, which have great potential for trade, culture and tourism, into global centers. This is also a period of time when big projects like the third Bosporus bridge, third airport and subway networks started to be actualized in Turkey. China's "One Belt, One Road" project, also known as OBOR, which China offered as a final presentation during the G20 Summit, is nothing more than a new Silk Road that will carry Shanghai's ports and Hangzhou's production potential to Europe through Turkey's railway networks.
I would like to touch on a very important aspect of China and a new Eastern development. During the whole G20 Summit, the Chinese administration closed most of the shopping malls and stores in Hangzhou where millions of people live. The city, which is the busiest one in the world in terms of daily trade, was almost completely deserted for nearly one month. However, China is capable of making up for this commercial loss.
Let us revisit Detroit, which went bankrupt in 2013. In that year, President Barack Obama's administration did not undertake the debts of the Detroit local administration and allocate a budget to pay them through the federal budget, leaving the city to its fate. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said they did not think about providing financial aid to the city, as the problem was between Michigan State, Detroit and its creditors. This case cannot be explained with a "liberal" perspective, as the same U.S. federal government funneled billions of dollars into bankrupt financial institutions after the 2008 crisis. Throughout the process, the Federal Reserve (Fed) sustained the system by collecting junk assets. Let alone the starving animals in the Detroit Zoo, university-educated and skilled homeless people, who have died in the streets of U.S. metropolises in increasing numbers since 2008, were not even statistical data for the U.S. economy.
American economist Paul Baran says the U.S. economy would have entered a recession period before the end of the 19th century and that capitalism could never have reached even the second half of the 20th century if the precipitating effects of monopolism had been left to operate without supervision. He suggests that, apart from state intervention, there are two other important dynamics - groundbreaking technological inventions and innovations and wars - which allow the system to survive. Apart from the wars that affected almost the entirety of the 19th and 20th centuries and that led the system's economy, there have been three groundbreaking and leading innovations - steam engines, railway networks and automobiles. All these three innovations or economic outputs were mixed with wars and determined the previous two centuries. Now, these are being replaced with the information and technology cycle, knowledge networks, computers, network technologies and gene technologies.
What went bankrupt in Detroit in 2013 was not indeed the automotive sector. The mechanical and electronic machine era, which determined the previous century, was coming to an end. With this bankruptcy, the definition of contemporary civilization, which had long been Westernization, also failed. Now, the contemporary civilization is in the East, which is producing knowledge networks and network technologies through human capital.
Countries like Turkey have a chance to keep up with not what they missed, but the knowledge and technology cycle, information network society and consequently a participatory democracy. This is a great historic opportunity.
Developed countries are experiencing the deepest and longest crisis ever. This crisis highlights opportunities to equalize the wealthy and the poor of the past. Now, it is time for cities like Hangzhou and Istanbul to flourish.
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