Martin Jacques says the global power shift from west to east is inevitable, but it need not be a threat if westerners can learn to understand and appreciate the culture that is driving it.
Jacques, a senior visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and a visiting professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, spoke about the rapid rise of China during his keynote address Jan. 28 to formally kick off the events of the University of Alberta’s International Week 2013.
Gordon Houlden, director of the U of A’s China Institute, introduced the British author and public speaker to the audience in the Myer Horowitz Theatre and telecast viewers in Calgary and Trinidad. He called Jacques bold and ambitious for his approach to tackling some of the toughest questions concerning China in recent years, such as how modern China achieved its remarkable pattern of growth and modernization, and noted that Jacques “is not afraid to challenge us to think hard about how far China’s momentum will carry the nation, and what will be the implications for the rest of this planet.”
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14.00: Langham Yangtze Hotel
Private event
Merry Christmas everyone! Before the turkey, sprouts, Queen and repeats, here’s IPPR’s Nick Pearce with a Santastic rundown of the best reads of 2012, stocking fillers all…
In the summer, IPPR launched its new journal, Juncture, and my recommend reading starts with the many world leading thinkers who have already written for it.
Each edition contains long-form essays on questions of importance to the centre-left in the UK but the journal is also deliberately cosmopolitan in reach, featuring pieces by theorists from around the world, country-specific articles and reflections on foreign policy challenges. Web-only articles are also regularly published.
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On Nov. 19, I was privileged to join my husband, Vergel, at the lecture of journalist-historian Martin Jacques for his book “When China Rules the World.”
I have been able to read only a few of the 600-plus pages of it at a time, since Vergel seldom puts it down. And just as well, as the book’s main thesis scares me: It’s only a matter of time before China and its 1.3 billion people, with basic beliefs that run counter to those I hold, rule the world.
I’m still struggling to fit into any manner of acceptable culture the carnage at Tiananmen or the seemingly amoral push for market profit or the bullying of neighbors by a nation that claims to be more civilized than any other. In fact, Jacques attributes this last attitude, which it assumes over territorial disputes (with our country, for one) to a Chinese sense of racial superiority that regards all outsiders as barbarians.
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When I titled my book, When China Rules The World, of course I didn’t literally mean China will rule the world because no country ever has. I referred to a situation where China is the most powerful and influential country in the world. I have no reason to change my view.
I finished writing in 2008, and everything since then has only confirmed my argument and accelerated the process. China is going to become the largest economy in the world.
It will be far from being the most developed economy, and still relatively primitive compared to the US economy, but by 2030, it stands a good chance of being much bigger than the US economy.
However, the present model is still largely based on a very labor-intensive economy which is very dependent on exports. Although China is steadily moving up the value chain and the economy is becoming more research-based, that process needs to be encouraged and accelerated, and that will require some serious economic reforms.
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