2.45pm: Institute of Foreign Policy Studies, Alipur Campus
2.00 – 3.45pm: School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University
5pm – 7pm: Aspen Institute India
6.30pm – 8pm: Lecture sponsored by the IIC and the Institute of Chinese Studies
10am – 12pm: Chennai Centre for China Studies
10am: Seminar Hall (Right Wing, Second Floor)
At the beginning of this year, Chinese premier Hu Jintao wrote an essay in which he pronounced: “The international culture of the West is strong while we are weak.”
Hu was referring to ‘soft power,’ a term coined by Harvard professor Joseph Nye to describe the value of attractiveness. US soft power sees the world gobble up Hollywood films and pop culture, generating a positive view of the country. Now China is engaged in a multi-billion dollar push to increase its own soft power.
Global events such as the Beijing Olympics and the Shanghai Expo have provided an opportunity for China to show to the world a new face, and big investments in the developing world have seen China’s image improve among the Africans and South Americans.
When China Rules the World considers how China has become a challenge to the West and is reshaping the global economy, but may not replace the US if it cannot make further cultural and institutional breakthrough.Ting Xu recommends this book to anyone interested in not only China and its future, but also the future of the West and the global world.
Martin Jacques is a highly distinguished British scholar, writer and columnist. When China Rules the World, first published in 2009, is among his most important publications. Since then the book has been translated into eleven languages, and sold nearly a quarter of a million copies worldwide. The book’s focus on Asian modernity and the rise of China as a global power is of course highly relevant for contemporary concerns and interests in globalisation, as well as its implications for evaluating an evolution from the economic and geopolitical ‘great divergence’ to the recent rapid ‘convergence’ between China and the West. Jacques argues that the rise of China has not followed the Western model of a transition to modernity and will challenge the global dominance of the Western nation-state. China, as a ‘civilisation-state’, will soon rule the world. Its impact will be not only economic but also cultural, leading to a global future of ‘contested modernity’.
There has been a steady stream of books about how Western primacy has been fading in a more pluralist and structurally transformed world. Many of these have intensified the ongoing foreign policy debate in the United States about ‘declinism’ – the relative diminution in America’s power and place in a changing global landscape.
Some works focused more on whether America’s hour of power had passed. Others surveyed a wider canvas to examine what the rise of the rest means for managing a more complex and uncertain world. Many writers have contributed to our understanding of how power shifts are reshaping the world. They include Kishore Mahbubani, Fareed Zakaria, Joseph Nye, Martin Jacques, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Richard Haas.
Retten die Chinesen den Schweizer Tourismus? Ihr wachsender Mittelstand sorgt derzeit für die bei weitem grössten Zuwachsraten aller Herkunftsländer.
Martin Jacques, in China hat in den letzten Jahrzehnten das grösste Wirtschaftswunder in der Geschichte der Menschheit stattgefunden – und wir im Westen nehmen es immer noch kaum zur Kenntnis. Weshalb?
Wir im Westen spüren, dass sich im Osten etwas Gewaltiges verändert. Aber wir haben grosse Mühe, es einzuordnen und zu verstehen. Vorherrschend ist eine zwiespältige Reaktion: Einerseits gibt es die weitverbreitete Überzeugung, dass der Westen am Ende ist. Andererseits gibt es nach wie vor die westliche Arroganz, dass sich alles um uns dreht. Schliesslich haben wir den Rest der Welt herumgeschubst, solange wir uns erinnern können.