This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Ruth Lectures.

This lecture in the series Bursting at the Seams, given by Geoffrey Sacks, was originally broadcast in 2007.

Hello and welcome to Beijing for the second in this year's series of Reef lectures entitled Bursting at the Seams.

Today we're in the room of the 10,000 masses at the China

Centre for Economic Research at Peking University. And yes, the university is still called

Peking University. It's the first time the BBC has recorded a wreath lecture in China,

and we couldn't be in a more appropriate place at a more appropriate time.

Last week, our lecturer Geoffrey Sachs, the international economist, set the scene for his

argument that all the world's great powers can and must cooperate if our planet is not to

descend into disease-ridden, poverty-stricken devastation.

Nowhere is more important in this process than China, a country of 1.3 billion people now being

transformed into a global power of enormous influence and strength. What China chooses to do,

and more importantly, how she chooses to do it it will be crucial in the next phase of the

world's development. This recent great leap forward of China's has already come at a price,

not least in the damage that's been done to its environment. It's still a one-party state

without democratic elections, and many in the West believe that it can't play a full part

on the world stage until it addresses matters of individual liberty and human rights.

Peking University has a reputation in the People's Republic for revolutionary thinking,

and with us in our audience tonight are many of its students, as well as academics, journalists, and businessmen,

with whom we'll discuss these issues later.

But first, will you please welcome this year's BBC Reith Lecturer, Jeffrey Sachs?

Good evening, everybody, and what a thrill it is to be at Peking University and to be together with you.

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