Much of Europe is once more in virtual lockdown. In the United States, Covid-19 continues to spread unabated. The situation in the West is now as bad as at any time since it all began. With the honourable exception of New Zealand, the West has singularly failed to quell, let alone eliminate, the virus. Why has the West failed so miserably? Interview with Liu Xin.
The pandemic will wrought huge changes in the world, much greater than the 2008 financial crisis. The fact that China has handled the pandemic far more successfully and competently than the United States, and the West more generally, will have far-reaching consequences. Without a vaccine it is clear that Western societies will fail to eliminate covid-19. The 2008 Western financial crisis led to Trump. The pandemic will change the world in ways that we don’t yet understand and cannot predict. The 2020s threaten to be a period of great turmoil, volatility and unpredictability. One thing is for sure: the pandemic will accelerate China’s rise and the US’s decline. This was an online talk given to the Understanding China Conference in Guangzhou 20-22 November 2020.
It is impossible to understand China unless you understand Chinese Civilization. China is a product of it civilizational background. There are many Civilizations and they are crucial to understanding the world. How can we make sense of the Muslim world, or India, or Iran, or Russia, or Africa without understanding the Civilizations that inform and shape them. Yet the West is silent on Civilizations, even for the most part about its own. This provides a powerful clue to how the West sees the world and how it is struggling with the differences in its own midst. This was an online talk given to the Understanding China Conference in Guangzhou 20-22 November 2020.
How will US-Europe relations be affected by the US presidential election? Ever since the Iraq war, much of Europe has been moving away from America and the Trump presidency has accelerated this development. This process is likely to continue, especially if Trump is re-elected. Although Europe and the US have similar attitudes towards China on matters like human rights and trade matters, they are very different on one crucial aspect: while the US fears the rise of China because it threatens its global hegemony, Europe abandoned any idea of itself as a hegemonic player a long time ago. This interview was with Tian Wei for CGTN.
There is no point in believing we can make sense of China by a skin-deep knowledge of present-day China. We will be little the wiser. Chinese civilization is over 4,000 years old: as a political entity it is over 2,000 years old, the longest continuously existing polity in the world. Chinese history and culture is fundamentally different from that of the West: it always has been and always will be. So best to dispense with our Western-tinted spectacles and open our minds to arguably the world’s most successful civilization. China has been the most advanced country not just once but at least four times; and we are on the verge of this becoming five. A country, a culture and a people with the most extraordinary history that is fast becoming the magnet of the future.
We have entered a New Cold War. The US is attacking on China on many fronts. It cannot accept China’s rise. Like all hegemons, it cannot imagine a world in which it is no longer dominant. But in reality the US is in rapid relative decline. Its dominance has become an anachronism. The fact is that an international system led by China and the developing world will be much superior to one characterised by Western dominance, with the US and Europe accounting for less than 15% of the world’s population.
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. Read more >
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. Read more >
