Opening Keynote Martin Jacques at The 25th Anniversary: The Future Of Hong Kong Virtual Conference

13/09/2022, The Future Of Hong Kong Virtual Conference

Hong Kong ended up in a terrible mess in 2019, angry and divided. What went wrong? Whose fault was it? Like all complex problems it had multiple causes. The Western attitude was to try and ignore Chinese sovereignty and emphasise two systems. The Hong Kong population looked down on the Chinese and most of the region, regarding themselves to be rather superior. The Chinese underestimated the seriousness of the problems they had inherited in 1997 following 156 years of British colonialism. Eventually Hong Kong broke down. Now it is seeking to make a new start. It has a great opportunity. Hong Kong must fashion a much closer relationship with China. It must engage in a huge land reform programme to break the power of the tycoons. Huge inequality must be addressed. In ten years’ time, certainly twenty years’ time, Hong Kong can be very different, a place for the future. This is the opening keynote speech to a conference on the 25^th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong organised by the Global Institute for Tomorrow on August 25^th, 2022.

The West’s Cold War Narrative on China

29/08/2022, Guancha

In this interview for the influential independent Chinese website Guancha.com, Martin Jacques dissects the now dominant Western narrative about China. Between around 2000 and 2016, that narrative combined scepticism and hostility with curiosity and openness. The latter have now largely disappeared to be replaced by a Cold War narrative which reduces China to the Chinese Communist Party and more than 2000 years of extraordinary history to the period since 1949. It might be an effective tool of excommunication in the short run but it explains precious little about China. In the long run the West needs to make sense of China not dismiss it. The interview is in English with Chinese sub-titles.

One Country Two Systems: Achievements, Problems, and Prospects

16/06/2022, International Forum, Hong Kong

This is a speech given at an International Forum in Hong Kong, 16 June 2022.

Hong Kong is moving into a new phase of development. It has three key features: order and stability, integration with the Chinese economy, and crucially, winning the hearts and minds of the Hong Kong people

Is China the ‘most serious challenge’ to international order? | Inside Story

27/05/2022, Al Jazeera English

On May 26th, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken introduced the Biden administration’s long-awaited strategy to compete with China’s rise as a global power. He suggested that China poses the most serious long-term challenge to the international order. He argued that the Chinese Communist Party is becoming more repressive at home, and more aggressive abroad. Are the criticisms by the US justified?

Presenter: Mohammed Jamjoo

Guests: Martin Jacques – Author, When China Rules the World; Michael D Swaine – Director, East Asia Programme, Quincy Institute; Henry Huiyao Wang – Founder, Center for China and Globalization

Centre of gravity of Hong Kong needs to shift northward

16/05/2022, Global Times

If the central priority in Hong Kong in 2020 was to restore order and stability, the main task now confronting the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government is winning the support of the Hong Kong people. This is not an easy task. Ever since the handover, there has been grudging, but never enthusiastic, support for the government. I was present at the handover of both Hong Kong in 1997 and Macau in 1999 and the contrast was telling. While there was little evidence of popular support on the streets in Hong Kong, in Macau many thousands turned out to greet the arrival of the PLA. By 2014 there was growing dissatisfaction about the state of affairs in Hong Kong that culminated in the riots in 2019 and was exacerbated by Western interference. That year was to mark the end of One Country Two Systems Mark 1. It was no longer sustainable.

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Civilization state versus nation-state

This article was the most read article in April 2020. The original copy was published on the 15th January, 2011. The embedded video is extracted from an interview with Fu Xiaotian on Talk with World Leaders (Phoenix TV) on the 18th June, 2020

China confronts Europe with an enormous problem: we do not understand it

China confronts Europe with an enormous problem: we do not understand it. Worse, we are not even conscious of the fact. We insist on seeing the world through our Western prism. No other tradition or history or culture can compare. Ours is superior to all and others, in deviating from ours, are diminished as a consequence. This speaks not of our wisdom but our ignorance, an expression not of our cosmopolitanism but our insularity and provincialism. It is a consequence of being in the ascendant for at least two centuries, if not rather longer. Eurocentrism – or perhaps we should say western-centrism – has become our universal yardstick against which, in varying degrees, all others fail. (more…)

Hong Kong: The crisis that needs an end

23/12/19, CGTN

Martin Jacques speaks forthrightly on the crisis in Hong Kong and what needs to be done.

Produced by T-House for CGTN.

China, The Philippines and a New World Order

Martin Jacques delivered the Keynote Speech, titled ‘China, The Philippines and a New World Order’, at a special conference organised by the Chamber of Mines of the Philippines to a specially invited audience of leading government, media, business figures, and ambassadors, in Manila on 10 September 2019.

Watch the interview below:

Beginnings of a New World Order: The Rise of China

Martin Jacques delivered the Keynote Speech, titled ‘Beginnings of a New World Order: The Rise of China’, at This is Tomorrow, a Symposium organised by the University of Bath Institute for Policy Research (IPR).

The session was chaired by Professor Nick Pearce, and held 12 September 2019 at Arts Lecture Theatre, The Edge, University of Bath.

Video copyright held by the University of Bath.

Duterte’s ‘pivot to China’

Martin Jacques joins Karen Davila on ANC Headstart to talk about the ongoing US-China trade war, China’s handling of the situation in Hong Kong and why he thinks President Duterte’s pivot to China is the right decision.

Watch the interview below:

Chinese governance highly distinctive, remarkably effective

Martin Jacques discusses Chinese governance with People’s Daily Online on 5 July 2019.

Watch the interview below:

Why is the US moving toward a new Cold War against China?

Martin Jacques discusses the West’s fear of China’s progress, its transformed position on the world stage, and what kind of great power it will become. One-to-one interview with Liu Xin on The Point (CGTN) on 22 May 2019.

Watch the interview below:

TED Talk: Understanding the Rise of China

This hugely successful TED talk in London has now had over 4 million views. Martin Jacques asks: How do we in the West make sense of China and its phenomenal rise?

Can the West’s democracy survive China’s rise to dominance?

The following article by Martin Jacques was a contribution to the debate on the Economist website on the theme ‘Should the West worry about the threat to liberal values posed by China’s rise?’

For long the West has thought that history is on its side, that the global future would and should be in its own image. With the end of the cold war and the implosion of the Soviet Union, this conviction became stronger than ever. The future was Western; nothing else was imaginable. Of course, already, well before the end of the cold war, in 1978 to be exact, China had started its epic modernisation such that, in the annals of history, 1978 will surely prove to be a far more significant year than 1989. During China’s rise, hubris continued to shape the West’s perception and understanding of China. As the latter modernised it would become increasingly Western, it was supposed: Deng’s reforms marked the beginning of the privatisation and marketisation of the Chinese economy—its political system would in time become Western, otherwise China would inevitably fail.

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Let’s celebrate reform’s 40th anniversary

The following article by Martin Jacques appeared in China Daily, 20th January 2018.

As momentous historic events go, China’s reform period was relatively unheralded. Little did anyone realise at the time – probably no one, in fact – that 1978 would enter the history books as one of the most important years in modern history.

We should not be surprised. At the time, the Chinese economy was a mere one-twentieth of the size of the US economy, with a per capita GDP roughly on a par with that of Zambia, lower than half of the Asian average and lower than two-thirds of the African average. China’s impact on the world was very limited, even in East Asia. (more…)

‘The man of the moment in China’

(Double click on video for full screen)

Martin Jacques on China: 8 part video series

Part 1: How does China’s global outlook differ from the West’s?

‘The idea of a common future, or a sense of shared destiny, has become a very powerful theme of Chinese foreign policy’

In Part 1 of Martin Jacques on China (presented by CGTN), Martin Jacques explains China’s growing influence on the world stage, and considers why its global outlook is so different to that of Western countries. (more…)

Prescient author now rules the roost

17/11/17, China Daily, all editions worldwide
1/12/17, Daily Telegraph

Martin Jacques, the journalist and academic, is now seen by many as the man of the moment in China.

Click here to access PDF of the full article, published in China Daily on 17th November 2017. The article was written by Andrew Moody.

One to One Interview with Martin Jacques

On October 19^th, Martin Jacques did this one-to-one interview on China in Washington DC with Anand Naidoo, the host of The Heat, CGTN America’s flagship current affairs programme.

Part One:

Part Two:

Profile on CCTV

This short profile was broadcast on CCTV News and other CCTV channels in May 2016.