"Great China" in the eyes of a Serbian journalist

Peace is the most important precondition for future development and final realization of idea of "Great China", according to a Serbian journalist who spent some 14 years in Beijing and coined the very term.

In his latest book, The Birth of Great China, published in June 2012, Aleksandar Novacic presents the term "Great China" as guiding principle of all leaders of modern China in the past century, those who have helped the country make the revolutionary change from a collapsed empire to a world superpower in just 100 years.

"Everyone knows that China is a great country, but not of the specific term: Great China. This is a book about Chinese leaders within last 100 years who changes the country under their guidance. Each of them had the idea of Great China, and his own visions of it," said Novacic.

During the past 30 years Novacic has researched the development of China and wrote six books, namely The Big Turn (1979), Red Mandarin (1996), Dragons Are Coming (1999), Chinese Mosaic (2000), China, the Dragon on Olympus (2008), and The Birth of Great China (2012).

Graduated from political sciences in Belgrade University, Novacic got a job in Tanjug News Agency. He arrived in Beijing for the first time in 1976, among the first foreign batch of correspondents who have visited the until-then-closed provinces like Tibet and Xinjiang, as well as the special economic zones such as Shenzhen.

"It was time of big earthquake. Only revolutionary songs and speeches of officials came from street loudspeakers," he recalled in an armchair, with his six books about China on his lap. "Four years later when I was leaving Beijing, there was classic music on radio. I thought: that's a big change."

One of his early books Novacic dedicated completely to a leader that in his opinion made all this possible.

"I think Deng Xiaoping was one of greatest leaders China and the world ever had. He put China on her feet, and created one of the greatest changes in 20th century, but without great human sacrifices," he said in his hardwood-furnitured apartment in downtown Belgrade.

In Chinese calendar, with its 12-year circle, the year of 1976, like 2012, was the year of dragon. Novacic noted this with interest.

"I did not know that it was the Chinese Year of Dragon, only later did one friend turn my attention on this fact. We were then sitting in the bamboo chairs in a hot August afternoon ... It is only the half of the dragon year and it has already proved worthy of its reputation of destiny-making year, said my friend," he recalled.

"But main events are still to come," reflecting on his extensive experience from 1970s till mid-1990s as a correspondent on several shifts in Beijing and Moscow, Novacic said.

The year 1976 was named "the year of a waking dragon," and it was the starting point of making the dream of "Great China" come true at last, he said.