There are three problems with When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order by Guardian columnist Martin Jacques. The first is the title and its two central theses. The second is its length – at 435 pages before you even reach the appendix, bibliography, and end notes, it is quite a tome. And the third is the amount of economic minutiae into which the book dwells to try to prove its absurd point.
This is by no means a light read for a Sunday afternoon or for the flight from Washington to Beijing. Even for die hard historians, economists, political scientists and other academic types, this book is heavy going. Unless you enjoy picking through economic data and mulling over the meaning of the “nation-state” in Western and Eastern philosophy there are probably better books to be read.
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With U.S. domination of the world on the wane, the time is now to embark on a multilateral future
Columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote in 2004 that the predominance of U.S. power in the world after the fall of the Soviet Union was a “staggering development in history, not seen since the fall of Rome.” Krauthammer and his fellow neoconservatives famously concluded from this disparity in power that the United States needed to adopt an aggressive foreign policy agenda to enhance and continue its dominance in the “New American Century.”
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“Because of statistics I can dig out the deepest secrets, because of statistics I am not alone any more, I can play in the numbers, because of statistics I can re-arrange the stars in the sky” — Love the Motherland, Love Statistics, by Wang Jiaowei, a statistician in Shandong Province
The Global Bears on the Hunt
Several prominent global bears – hedge fund managers Jim Chanos and Hugh Hendry among them – have concluded that China is engaging in a major misallocation of capital that will not have a happy ending. Overinvestment in basic materials and infrastructure, lack of profitability of the state owned companies that dominate the economy, death of the export model, and a major real estate bubble are among their concerns.
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Are Chinese elites ready to go for superpower status and stop “hiding their claws,” as Deng Xiaoping used to put it? Does the leadership feel prepared to play the role of a dominant power? Here are some of the smarter answers that I’ve read in recent memory, from a Chinese thinker who doesn’t fall under one of the easy labels of either a western liberal or a reflexive nationalist. Wang Jisi, dean of the School of International Studies at Peking University, tells Yoichi Funabashi of Asahi Shimbun, that — Some younger-generation opinion leaders and others, maybe some officials as well, are calling for a more assertive policy toward other countries.
But the mainstream thinking, I mean the top leadership, is still very sober-minded about China’s own power and influence, and they are very conscious of China’s internal challenges combined with external challenges. Here is a snippet of an extended interview that is worth the time:
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The ascent of China will most likely be the biggest geopolitical drama of the 21st century. Wang Jisi, dean of the School of International Studies at Peking University, discusses China’s military expansion, the longevity of the country’s ‘peaceful rise,’ and the effects on global governance and international rules.
Question: I remember a couple of years ago the CCTV aired a program called “The Rise of Great Nations” that featured the histories of Rome, Great Britain, Germany, Japan and the Soviet Union. What implications do these lessons have for China?
Answer: I think the consensus here is that economic growth is the key to becoming a rising power. The Chinese have also concluded that to sustain economic growth it is also necessary to maintain political stability. In the rise and fall of great powers, one lesson the Chinese always learn is that aggression will not pay.
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Writing from England with a firm grasp of geopolitical realities, Martin Jacques has thrown down the gauntlet. Those who would dispute the thesis of this book, summed up in the title and sub-title, must marshal more evidence and more convincing arguments than he has.
Simply put, he states that the dominance of the West, led recently by the United States, will soon be over, to be replaced by the pervasive influence of China. He is aware of the controversial and, for many, frightening nature of his claim, so he backs it up with an impressive array of support from history, economics, and current events.
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