The Chinese economy is a source of wonder and fascination in the West, as well it might be. According to the World Bank, the People’s Republic clocked a cool 9.1% growth in 2011, while the United States languished at 1.7%. While the Chinese central bank is sitting on $3.24tn of reserves, the United States federal government is the most heavily-indebted entity in the history of humanity, with nearly $16tn in liabilities.[1] While the absolute figures are smaller, the debt problem in Europe is so acute that it may yet rip the Eurozone apart, and it will almost definitely be a drag on growth for a decade or more.[2] Increasingly, bewildered politicians in Europe are lashing out at each other, with few seeming to appreciate the magnitude of the debt problem and even fewer willing to level with the public about what it means.
In a February 2003 edition of Newsweek, Professor of History at Yale University, Paul Kennedy, said, “the US military budget will soon be equal to that of all countries in the world combined.”
Yet even now, hawkish policy makers in Washington are concerned that the US defence forces are dangerously thin and overstretched. So how can both facts be true?
And, a book by Martin Jacques, When China Rules the World provides adequate and, precise answers to economic rise in Asia.
Even before Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection in September 2008, war, scandal, economics and politics had plunged Americans into sullen self-deprecation. Commentaries in newspapers and books announced the Post-American World. China was riding high on the success of the Beijing Olympics, its grand coming-out party. It came out relatively unscathed in the first phase of the global financial crisis that followed Lehman Brothers’ collapse. Sustained economic growth and rising prosperity in Asia were shifting the global balance of power eastwards.
It was around this time that Martin Jacques’ When China Rules the World first hit the bookstores, the certainty of its title confirming Americans’ fears. Four years on, an updated edition is out. The US is not fully out of the latest of its periodic bouts of declinist thinking, but, as I have argued in these pages, China finds itself in its most vulnerable moment in two decades (see “Dealing with a vulnerable China”, November 21, 2011).
New Delhi: Martin Jacques is the author of the global best-seller When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order, first published in 2009. In India to promote the second edition of the book, Jacques spoke in an interview about how China’s growth story owes its success to its oft-questioned form of government, the “Chinisation” of the world as it develops further and relations with India.
The first edition of your book came out in 2009. What are the changes you’ve noticed in China since 2009? And could you also explain the title that you have chosen?
China has carried on growing quite quickly, I’d imagine about 9% a year since then. It looks more prosperous, feels more prosperous, the economy has grown by 40% and, of course, internationally due to the Western crisis it’s been catapulted into greater prominence. While the Western economies have been stationary, China is in many ways shaping the global economy more than the US through trade because there is a huge footprint through trade; you know many countries around the world count China among their biggest trading partner—in Africa, in Latin America, in Chile, in Brazil, Egypt, South Africa, India.
Henry Kissinger, On China. New York: Penguin Press, 2011, pp. 608, ISBN 978 1 5942 0271 1.
Martin Jacques, When China Rules the World: The Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the End of the Western World. London: Allen Lane, 2009, pp. 576, ISBN 978 0 7139 9254 0.
The two books by Henry Kissinger and Martin Jacques remind me of European writings on China during the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. Whether reported by commercial or military officials operating off the coasts of China or by Jesuits working in the Qing court, they focused on the wealth and power of that empire. Some outlined ways of managing a relationship that would profit their masters back in Europe; others were impressed by how the Chinese governed their peoples and sought to understand the values which made that state so strong.
For the next 200 years, the story was largely different. From respect and some degree of awe, attitudes shifted to increasing contempt for a system that was decaying. Writings described the people as poor and divided, confused by the empires and ideologies that competed for attention, and chastened by knowing that their civilisation was inferior to one based on science and industrial capitalism. There was also pity for an industrious people who had been let down by incompetent leaders. Even the Chinese themselves began to believe that their civilisation was doomed and only violent revolution could save their country.
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After three decades of rapid growth, China’s economy stands at a crossroads today, its future direction holding implications for the rest of the world. Author Martin Jacques spoke with Sohel Sanghani about the challenges China faces, how its rise as a world power still appears strong – and how India should respond:
Your new book is titled When China Rules The World – is that an inevitable conclusion?
No, it’s a figure of speech. I explore China’s rise by assessing what sort of power it will be and how it will change the world as it grows richer and stronger.
Martin Jacques, author of the well-received “When China Rules The World”, tells Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty why that country will outpace India and why it will not become more Western in the process
Reviews worldwide have called it “by far the best book on China”, “a forcefully written lively book that is full of provocations and predictions”, “offering deep knowledge and understanding” about “the end of the Western world and the birth of a new world order.”
Martin Jacques, the author of this celebrated book When China Rules the Worldis currently promoting it in India, China’s largest neighbour which is also viewed as its challenger in the region. Sitting at the New Delhi office of his publisher, Penguin, Jacques dishes out a genial smile, almost sage like, or is it that of a conqueror who knows what today holds and what tomorrow shall bring? With hands clasped together behind his head, he is all keen to reason out with you why he thinks China is the crown prince of the world economy, how it is inching closer to the throne. After all, he chased the subject for almost a decade to fill up a tome of a book at 800 pages.
Why won’t China wholly break with its past?
There is a tension between the old and new in China, but more than in any other country, the Chinese reference their history constantly.
If China becomes economically all-powerful, what will happen to the world?
China won’t become more Western as it grows more powerful. Instead, the world will grow more Chinese. With economic power, China will expand its soft power abroad as well.
Martin Jacques isn’t just convinced about something that a lot of people believe but would rather not voice — that China will soon be the most powerful nation in the world — but he is also courageous enough to have written a book on the subject.
On Friday, The Bengal Club in association with The Telegraph and the Aspen Institute presented, as part of Bengal Club Library Talk, a discussion with Jacques on his book,When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order. The talk and the ensuing interactive session was moderated by the retired major general Arun Roy.