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This is the transcript of a talk Martin Jacques gave at a Forum organised by China Daily at the G20 in Osaka on 25 June 2019.

There is no point in building castles in the air. We must live in the here and now. I am sure the great majority of us wish we were not where we are. We would prefer that the era, beginning in the late 1970s, of globalisation and multilateralism, and that was characterised by relative stability and cooperation in the relationship between the US and China, was still in place. It is not. And it will not return for a very long time. The reason for the breakdown in that old order is profound, as is invariably the case with great historical shifts. We need to understand the causes. Read more >

This article was published in JPI Peace Net and presented to the Jeju Forum for Peace and Prosperity in May 2019, South Korea, in the opening plenary session “Destined for War?: The Future of US-China Relations and its Implications for the Korean Peninsula”. Speakers included Martin Jacques, Prof. Graham Allison and Mr. Li Zhaoxing. The panel was moderated by Prof. Chung-in Moon. Read more >

Dr Yu Jie and Martin Jacques discussed the US/China Trade War with Jon Snow on Channel 4 News on 13 May 2019.

Watch the interview below:

Dr Yu Jie researches China’s economic policy at Chatham House. Martin Jacques is a senior fellow at the Department of Politics and International Studies, Cambridge University and a visiting professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

The following article was written by Martin Jacques for People’s Daily on the subject of the 40th Anniversary of Reform and Opening Up.

A Chinese translation of the article was published in People’s Daily on 15th January 2019. Read the Chinese version of the article here.

When Deng Xiaoping launched the special economic zones in Guangdong and Fujian provinces in 1978, encouraging farmers to sell some of their produce in the newly created markets, and then seeking foreign investment in the new zones, nobody in the world, not even Deng himself, could have imagined that China would, in a handful of decades, experience the most remarkable economictransformation in human history. It is a wonderful story; and from such humble origins. China, of course, is intimately familiar with this story, but the western world still remains largely ignorant of it.

Yet the western world was, in a sense, where, at least in part, it began. Deng, looking beyond China, could see that, while the latter had made considerable progress since the Revolution, it still had much to learn from both the West and the Asian tigers like Japan and South Korea. Deng was a communist but also a pragmatist. He could see the failings of the old centralised and autarchic system and searched for ways in which it might be made more dynamic. In so doing, Deng made two great changes to communist orthodoxy: the market was to be seen as an integral part of socialism along with the state and central planning; and the capitalist and socialist worlds, far from being estranged from each other,were to be regarded as part of the same international system, an integrated whole rather than separate and isolated from each other. And as a natural corollary of this,China should learn from, compete with, and measure itself against the capitalist world.

Deng’s reforms marked a profound intellectual revolution. One of the communist world’s greatest problems had been a tendency to stagnate, to retreat into orthodoxy, to adopt an almost biblical way of thinking, wheretablets of stone replaced creative thinking, with the latter too often dismissed as heresy. This helps us to understand why the Soviet Union failed: it ossified to the point of extinction. Deng’s ideas, in contrast, were hugely creative. They did not represent, as many in the West liked to think, the beginnings of a western-style capitalist system in China. On the contrary, they marked a step into the unknown, something entirely new. The Chinese did, indeed, borrow, most notably the idea of the market from the West, but in combining it with the state and planning, they created something new. And the desire to join the world and engage in long-term competition and cooperation with the West was a mark of confidence; expansiveness replaced a defensive, bunker mentality.

The consequence was a huge release of energy. Everything needed to be rethought – from the top down and the bottom up. China became the site of a massive experiment. The old certainties and guarantees were abandoned in favour of a restless search for new solutions, ambitions and targets.The West thought that Deng’s reforms were simply and only economic. This is nonsense. Actually, what the West meant was that they only recognised political reforms if they involved moving in a western direction. There were, indeed, major political reforms, the old-style state was not fit for purpose, a new one had to be created, and those who worked for it had to acquire a new kind of mentality and new skills.

There was no end point. Reform and opening up was the beginning of a restless, ever-changing, always dynamic, highly creative process, at all levels of Chinese society. The only constant was change. China had to be recreated. And the process was so successful that China, as it doubled in size every seven years, and even now every decade, had to be continually recreated. It involved the entire society, no part was left untouched, from the Communist Party, the system of government, and foreign policy to the nature of cities and the systems of transportation. Most important of all, though,has been the transformation of the Chinese people, who have been the makers and bearers of the change. Reform and opening up has imbued them with an extraordinary energy, a huge desire for change, growing curiosity, ambition, openness and a great appetite for learning. They are epitomised by Chinese students abroad: extremely hard-working, conscientious, open-minded, curious about the world, and hugely committed to learning.That is why, by global standards, Chinese students are such good students, often the best.

China’s transformation did not stop at its borders, on the contrary it flowed over its borders to impact seemingly every nook and cranny of the world. It has transformed China, butit is alsoin the process of transforming the world. The meaning of reform and opening up, therefore, is not confined to China; it is worldwide. We are very familiar with many aspects of this: China as a huge trading nation, its foreign investments, its tourists and, of course, Belt and Road. But there is another and rather different dimension. Reform and opening up represented a new way of thinking. It marked a break with the highly centralised and universalistic model of the state, together with the idea of socialism in one country (or bloc), as typified by the Soviet Union. But also, and far more importantly, it offeredan alternative to the Western neo-liberal model and its developmental adjunct, the Washington Consensus. The growing appeal of China’s approach is manifest in much of the developing world, as illustrated by the widespread and enthusiastic support for the Belt and Road Initiative.

After forty extraordinarily successful years, what is the future for reform and opening up? As I have emphasised, it is not a set of shibboleths, a tablet of stone of eternal verities, a rigid plan. On the contrary, it is a way of thinking, a process, a vision of transformation that combines pragmatism with a strategic perspective. Belt and Road, it should be noted, belongs to the same school of thinking: no plan, no blueprint, no timescale, experimental, constantly evolving, finding out what works, pragmatic, but based on a clear vision of the objective, the transformation of a continent. Or, to put it another way, it is very Chinese, drawing from the country’s long history and culture, the traditions of the CPC, and the needs, interests and views of the participating countries.

We have now arrived at a new juncture. Reform and opening up more or less coincided with a relatively benign and cooperative phase in US-China relations. Deng Xiaoping was always deeply aware of the importance to China of a friendly relationship with the US. That, of course, was when the relationship between the two countries was extremely unequal. Now the relationship is much more equal, though by no means equal. And the very fact of this shift in power is a fundamental reason why President Trump has adopted a much more hostile attitude towards China. There is no question that this will make things more challenging for China – and, indeed, the wider world – in a variety of ways. At root, Trump wants to make the rise of China more difficult – or, if he could, prevent or reverse it, but that is dreamland – and thereby reset the relationship between the two countries in a way that is more favourable for the United States.

China would not be inimical to some of the US proposals; for example, expanding the possibilities for foreign investment in its financial sector, which presently is very restricted, boosting imports, and strengthening intellectual property rights. These are items on China’s agenda for reform and opening up which, in part, areintended to enhance relations between China and the developed countries. But demands that China cease subsidising its new tech industries and those detailed in Made in China 2025, and that it roll back the state-owned enterprises, represent a flagrant violation of China’s rights and choices as a sovereign country. They are entirely unacceptable.

The era of reform and opening up has always been a very difficult balancing act, on the one hand that China should becomean integral part of the global economy, while, on the other hand, preserving what is different about it, based on its highly distinctive history and culture, and its own political choices. China’s path has never been either or but a combination of the two. Contrary to the West’sagenda, China is not western and never will be western, though it has learnt much from the West, just as the West will increasingly have to learn from China. And these, we should remember, are not only choices that confront China: in some degree or another, every developing country, in its own way, faces the same kind of choices, which is why China has such a growing appeal for so many of them. It does not require them to subordinate themselves to western values and norms, nor, for that matter, its own. Reform and opening up rejects the idea of a homogenous western-style world and embraces a world that respects difference and the integrity of different civilizations.

The following article was published in China Daily on October 10 2018.

China’s rapid growth since the reform and opening-up process began in 1978 has not only been an economic miracle for the nation, but it has also offered a new development model for other emerging economies, said Martin Jacques, author of the global bestseller When China Rules the World.

In doing so, China has proved the inaccuracy of the previous consensus that the Western model of development was the only path to success.

Effectively, Jacques said, China has inspired other emerging countries to explore development paths that are suitable for their own situations.

“The achievements of China’s reform and opening-up are very simple: one, the transformation of China; two, the transformation of the world,” said the 73-year-old from his apartment in London’s Hampstead, where piles of books and notes on China lay scattered across his desk, bookshelves and the floor.

Jacques is one of Britain’s best-known Sinologists. Born in 1945 in Coventry, he had a decadeslong distinguished career in journalism before becoming an author.

He first rose to prominence as editor of Marxism Today, a position he held for 14 years from the late 1970s. He turned the publication from an obscure left-wing political magazine to one containing views from across the political spectrum.

Jacques then went on to be deputy editor of The Independent in the mid-1990s and now combines being a high-profile columnist with lecturing around the world.

But what really made him world famous was his 2009 book When China Rules the World, which has been translated into 15 languages and has sold 350,000 copies. His 2010 TED Salon speech in London on understanding the rise of China has received more than 2.7 million views on YouTube.

His book correctly predicted China’s ascent to global leadership, at a time when the trend was not so obvious. More precisely, it predicted that by 2027, China’s economy would be bigger than that of the United States. His book also argued that China’s governance system was an effective alternative to Western liberal democracy and represented a new form of modernity.

Jacques argued against the prevailing consensus that China’s development model would become more like that of the West as it grew economically. Time has proved him right – China has cemented its economic strength internationally without becoming a mirror image of the West.

Martin Jacques stays in a hotel located in a siheyuan, or traditional Chinese courtyard residence, while visiting Beijing in the summer of 2010. [Photo provided to China Daily]

In addition, China is now using its international influence to lead on multilateral issues, such as globalization, climate change and global governance, in its own unique way. In order to share its development experiences with other emerging economies and improve global trade links, China has championed the Belt and Road Initiative and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

“China is going to be a very different kind of great power,” he said. “The Belt and Road is a powerful example of China trying to find a new relationship (that can benefit both China and other countries). This notion is very different from Western colonial thinking.”

The AIIB, which focuses on financing infrastructure projects in Asia, represents the interests of more than 80 member countries through a pluralistic approach. The BRI, which aims to improve trade and connectivity between Asia, Africa and Europe through infrastructure investment, has also attracted keen participation from public-and private-sector players globally.

In Jacques’ view, these exciting initiatives, supported by China’s economic strength, challenge the post-Cold War mentality that divided the world into the West and the rest.

For many, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 proved that socialist countries could not make sufficient economic progress without adopting the development model of the West.

“That was the great and final victory of the West,” Jacques said. “It’s strange now to think that. And if you look back now, it’s obvious, in my view, that 1978 was a far more important year in world history than 1989 or 1991.”

But China’s economic success proved that such progress can be made while the government maintains an important role in guiding the country’s direction.

“We must always remember that only about 15 percent of the world’s population lives in the developed world, which is essentially the West plus Japan,” he said. “Eighty-five percent of the world’s population lives in the developing world. Until quite recently, the world was still a Western world. China’s rise gave the developing world an alternative place to look, for development, for inspiration.”

Jacques and his son Ravi on the Great Wall in Beijing in 2005. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Additionally, the fact China grew from being a poor, developing country to a strong economic power means it has accumulated significant lessons and experiences that could be applicable to other developing countries today.

“China is a developing country and can understand the problems of development in a totally different way,” he said. “The United States cannot relate to (the developing world) in the way that China can.”

Although Jacques is now a firm advocate of China’s incredible potential, he admits to having been somewhat ignorant of the East until 1993, when he visited China, Singapore, and Malaysia for a holiday.

In China, he saw construction cranes working round the clock, roads streaming with trucks and carts, and women balancing goods on the ends of bamboo poles.

“It absolutely seized my mind,” he said. “Guangdong province was a sort of huge building site with land being cleared as far as you could see. So many people were in motion along the road. It was so obvious this was a huge, important historical moment I was watching.”

From there, Jacques has watched China transform on his subsequent trips.

“When you go to any city in China now, you see a modern city,” he said. “Living standards have clearly been transformed.”

While on holiday in 1993, he met his wife, Malaysian-Indian lawyer Harinder Veriah, on the island of Tioman, off the east coast of Malaysia. Veriah, who died in 2000, inspired Jacques to understand more about Asia, and made him more determined to write a book that explained his discoveries to the world.

“She taught me to see the world from a non-Western perspective,” he said. “If you are always with someone of the same culture you are an insider and never looking from the outside. She helped me see my country from an outsider’s perspective.”

In the years that followed, Jacques frequently traveled to China and other East Asian countries to research his book. When he started, the book’s working title was “The End of the Western World”. But gradually, as he worked on it, he realized that the book had to be primarily about China, which led to its new title, When China Rules the World.

Looking back, he stressed the crucial role of China’s reform and opening-up policies in shaping the country’s economic achievements and its global influence. In particular, he marvels at pioneering leader Deng Xiaoping, who is credited with turning China’s planned economy into a market-driven one and for strengthening China’s exchange efforts with the world.

He praised Deng’s courage in the way he “fired the starting gun” for China’s transformation at a moment of significant change in Chinese society.

In particular, Deng transformed the world’s understanding of a socialist country. Instead of following the inward-looking model of the Soviet Union, Deng advocated an unprecedented outward approach.

“Deng Xiaoping said, ‘We want to be a part of the world, we have to learn from the rest of the world, we must be open to the rest of the world,'” Jacques said. “That is fantastic. Now, we can see how important Deng is as a socialist thinker, who is also a global thinker, a leader for everyone.”

For Jacques, Deng’s remarks exhibit tremendous confidence, something that is impressive, considering China was then a poor country.

“The idea that you can measure against the rest of the world, and be willing to learn straight away, it’s a confident attitude,” he said.

Jacques poses with professor Yan Xuetong, dean of the Institute of International Relations, Tsinghua University, in 2011. [Photo provided to China Daily]

China’s recent history details a success story. In 1978, the size of China’s economy was just one-40th of that of the US, but during the past 40 years, China’s GDP has grown by an average of about 9.5 percent a year. By 2017, the size of China’s economy had grown to more than three-fifths that of the US, according to International Monetary Fund estimates.

During the past four decades, China has also succeeded in lifting more than 740 million people out of poverty.

Jacques said he feels confident that China will continue to develop. He said its GDP growth rate may drop to a more sustainable level over the long term, but its development will increasingly focus on innovation and quality growth.

He recalled that when he first published When China Rules the World, one question he was often asked at author talks was how China could break free from the need to imitate advanced economies’ technology, and what would happen if the country reached the point where it was inventing its own technology.

“I never hear that question anymore, because the answer is clear with the transformation of the technology companies in China,” Jacques said.

For instance, in the second quarter of this year, China’s Huawei overtook Apple to become the world’s second-largest smartphone seller.

In the pioneering sector of mobile payments, China has emerged as the biggest market, worth 40.36 trillion yuan ($5.90 trillion) in the first quarter of this year. Its two biggest payment companies, WeChat Pay and Alipay, now have 900 million and 500 million active users respectively. These numbers eclipse Apple Pay’s 127 million active users.

Accompanying these technology innovations is China’s rapidly strengthening intellectual property system and its soaring number of patent registrations. Chinese companies’ filings with the European Patent Office in 2017 were up 16.6 percent year-on-year, compared with the global average of 3.9 percent. This year, for the first time, Huawei topped the EPO’s league table by number of patents filed by a single company, ahead of Siemens and LG.

While China’s development path shows a rosy picture full of excitement, Jacques also warns that one challenge China will encounter in the future is the antagonism it will attract from Western countries fearful of being challenged.

Equally, the novelty of China-proposed initiatives such as the BRI could lead to questions and doubts. US President Donald Trump’s moves to instigate a large-scale trade confrontation with China this year is evidence of the sort of external pressure China must learn to face, he said.

The trade dispute, which started this year, has seen the US slap tariffs on billions of dollars of Chinese imports, and China doing the same in retaliation. Many companies have already been negatively impacted, including US companies that rely on the supply chain in China.

Jacques said he feels that the attitude in the US under Trump is based on a recognition that China has been successful, and that the antagonism US administration has expressed toward China has, in a sense, spoken of the success of China.

“As China has risen, its relationship with the US has become more difficult,” Jacques said. “For the US, it’s one thing to look relatively benignly on China when it’s well behind, but when China is not well behind, but is a competitor who has an alternative view of the world, then that’s a different game.”

He said that as China experiences rapid transformation and gains global influence, it must find its own new position in the world and ensure that other countries are comfortable with it.

“China has got to find a way of dealing with it,” he said. “By and large, I think it’s succeeding in doing it, but it’s not a simple matter.”

In this interview with Global Times, Martin Jacques, on the 40th anniversary of “reform and  opening up”, reviews the significance of Deng Xiaoping’s historic initiative and China’s prospects in the light of the deteriorating relationship with the US in the era of Trump.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of China’s reform and opening up. what do you think of the role the reform and opening up has played in china’s extraordinary changes?

China’s transformation started in 1949, but only in 1978 did China’s economy start to take off in an extraordinary way. It was only then that the Chinese worked out what the appropriate economy strategy was for the country. This was the stroke of genius of Deng Xiaoping.What he proposed was very radical and represented a major shift in the communist tradition. Basically he said two things: firstly, socialism is not synonymous with the state and state planning,but that socialism had to combine both the state and the market. And secondly, he argued that China needed to see itself as part of the whole world, including the capitalist world. China had to live with and compete with and learn from the capitalist world, and not just the socialist world.

This was an intellectual revolution which required a complete rethink and unleashed enormous intellectual energy. This ignited a long process of transformation in China.1978 is one of the most important dates in the 20th century, it prefigured the 21st century: the transformation of China and later the world.

China vows to continue opening up. Some people see this as an opportunity, but some say it’s a threat. How do you evaluate these contradictory views?

One of the great things since 1978 is that China is always thinking, always experimenting, always learning, always trying to work out what is the best way in the situation, in the circumstances that it faces, which are constantly shifting. There’s a general idea of where to go and how to do it. But there’s not a tablet of stone about how to do it; instead of a tablet of stone, you “cross the river by feeling for the stones.” The Chinese combine a general set of principles with a very strong dose of pragmatism.

Itis obviously a lot more complex because China’s economy is many, many  times larger now than it was, and China’s impact on the world is now also huge: there are so many more factors China has to consider both internally and globally. China is very interestingly different and distinctive from both the old Soviet mentality and also the West. It has learnt from the West, but it is also very distinctive from the West. It is very important to maintain that. I think one of the reasons for the success of China is its capacity to draw different elements together from different places, different experiences, different traditions, and then combine them in a very unique Chinese way.

Of course, some people think China should be more like America. Now? Really?America is in big trouble, it is in serious long-term decline, which is part of the reason why we got Trump. No, China has to be distinctive. It has to combine those elements which it needs to learn from the West with its socialist and Chinese traditions.

Earlier this year, you wrote an article arguing that the fortieth anniversary of the beginning of the reform period is a cause for celebration and reflection not only in China, but around the world. Can you specify what are the issues that the world, including the Western countries, should reflect on most?

1978 led to the the most extraordinary economic transformation in the modern era. This is much more remarkable than America’s transformation between the 1860s and 1914. It’s a very important event to study. But the West doesn’t think in these terms about 1978, because they don’t really understand any of this.The West is very ignorant about China.

But I would say look, reform and opening up has transformed China. Then,during the 1990s, China began to transform the world and, as a result, the world is now very different from what it was before because of China’s impact. Since 1978 China has been the most important engine of global change. So every country should study China and the Chinese experience.That doesn’t mean that China is a model, but it does mean China is an interesting and important example from which to learn. Many developing countries understand this but the West is still in partial, sometimes total, denial.

On  October 4th, the US Vice President Michael Pence made a speech at the Hudson Institute, claiming that US has rebuilt China over the last twenty five years. The US President Trump also mentioned this many times on different occasions. Are you surprised by Pence’s speech?

Not really. You have got to say that the Trump administration,including the Vice President, is many ways remarkably ignorant. Their reaction to American decline is to reassert American nationalism and to try and bully the rest of the world.It’s nonsense to say America is the major reason for China’s transformation over the last 25 years. That tells me that they know nothing about China’s transformation. What planet are they living on to make that kind of remark? It’s obviously just cheap self-serving propaganda. Has America made a contribution to Chinese rise? Yes. It has. As China itself has frequently said, China has been the beneficiary of the era of globalisation which the US played a key role in shaping.

Some American scholars believe that the US has adopted an engagement policy toward China, which has greatly benefited China. But now believe that China has “betrayed” the US and does not intend to follow the US way in terms of its political system. What do you think?

I think a very big political shift has taken place in America. It is not just the Republicans. The Democrats have also shifted to a more anti-Chinese position. Now the question is why, and this is a question that the Chinese themselves need to reflect on.

Until about 2010, America was generally relatively benign towards China.The period after 1972, following the Nixon Mao accord,was characterised by relative stability in the US-China relationship. There were two assumptions that underpinned American attitudes towards China. The first was that China’s economic rise would never challenge America’s economic hegemony. And the second assumption was that China would, in time, become like the West, because they assumed that unless China became like America it could never succeed, its transformation would fail. It would be unsustainable both economically and politically. From 1972 until the Western financial crisis, the relationship remained very unequal, though less so over time.America was the major power. China was the junior partner.

From around 2010, it became increasingly clear that these two positions were wrong. Firstly, because China’s economic transformation continued very successfully and in 2014 overtook the US economy according to GDP measured by ppp. And secondly, it became clear that China was not going to be like America. The political system was not going to become like America’s. Furthermore, China would not accept American global leadership and do whatever America wanted it to do. Two things served to dramatize the situation: one was the Western financial crisis of 2008, the worst in the West since 1931. Suddenly the West was in deep trouble. And, on the other hand, China was not in trouble and China’s rise continued.It shook the confidence of the West. Until this point,America did not believe it was in decline. It had, of course, been in decline for some time, but it was in denial about it. Trump was the product of, and gave expression to, this new uncertainty, angst, disappointment and a growing mood of anger and frustration. This historically explains the shift in the American attitude towards China.

US President Trump frequently summed up his approach to foreign policy with two words: America First. The US has withdrawn from various international mechanisms and is creating barriers for trade, technical exchange, and personal exchanges with a lot of countries. Do you think this will reverse the globalization process and maybe make the world more differentiated or more difficult to access?

I definitely think the era of neo-liberalism has come to an end.There are lots of elements and dimensions to this. Clearly, there’s a reaction to the globalization era in the West. And the ideology of that period in the West, namely neo-liberalism,is in crisis;Trump is a reaction against it. The uber or extreme globalization, which was the western ideology of this period, has hit the wall.

I also think that the whole American view of itself and its role since the end of the second world war has come to an end. I don’t see any simple reversion to the previous era of American multilateralism and leadership. I think that era is over and is unlikely to be revived in its old form. I don’t think we should be so surprised by this because if you look at American history over a much longer period, for example from the War of Independence against Britain until 1939, it was largely dominated by American nationalism and isolationism. The period after 1945 until the election of Trump in 2016, during which America saw itself in terms of multilateral institutions, broad alliances and leadership, was the exception rather than the rule.

Before the second world war, America was always for itself. It was very nationalistic, for long it existed in splendid isolation on its continent. It thought of itself in its own terms. Historically it was very aggressive.It was built on violence, built on slavery, built on wars. Wars against the Amerindians, against Britain, against Spain, against Mexico. That’s how it expanded. So this latest period of American development has been an exceptional period. And Trump lies within the old tradition. He’s reacting against the post-1945 period, he is reverting to the past, by so doing he wants to make America great again, making America as it used to be. Of course, he cannot succeed. Times have changed profoundly.

I don’t think we should expect the Trumpian era to be short lived. There will be no easy or simple return to the status quo ante before Trump.This period could last twenty years, thirty years; a reaction against western-style extreme globalisation. In the long-run, of course, globalization will continue but in the next decade, perhaps much longer, it will suffer setbacks and could even be reversed in certain respects.

Meanwhile, there’s a different globalization taking place, which is what I’ll call Chinese-style globalization with Belt and Road being its most prominent feature. We are moving into a much more complex period, with a much more divided and fragmented world. In this context I think the Pence speech was quite ominous. It was a speech that could have been given in the cold war, it was a very broad attach on China, an attempt to demonize it.It’s not going to be the same as the cold war, but there will be some similarities.

For decades, China has benefited a lot from globalization and the multilateral trading mechanism. What challenges will the current situation bring for China? And what’s your advice on China’s next step on reform and opening up?

I think that what is now deeply preoccupying the Chinese leadership is how to respond to the shift in America, how to understand it and how to deal with it. I think the fortieth anniversary is a reminder of things we should not forget. The wisdom of Deng Xiaoping: keeping your lines of communication open, keeping your curiosity about the world and making as many friends as possible. And I think that those are still good advice.

Read the full article in Chinese here.

The following article was published on CGTN.com on August 1 2018

British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt visited Beijing on July 30 in his first major overseas trip since taking office. The occasion, the 9th China-UK Strategic Dialogue, is an event that has served to reinforce the ties between the two countries.

An extensive range of topics was discussed during the meeting, including the reaffirmation of the “Golden Era” raised by the previous British prime minister, the agreement to defend free trade and multilateralism, and the expectation from China’s side of the UK’s ambitious participation in the Belt and Road Initiative.

Both countries have apparent drives to deepen bilateral partnership. For the UK, the Brexit has raised many concerns about its economic growth potential, which largely depends on its future relations with the European Union.

“Brexit is hanging over everything,” said Nathan King, a CGTN correspondent based in Washington, DC. “The UK was attractive to China before Brexit because it was the door to the EU market. Now it’s less attractive.”

Other experts expressed similar concerns. Martin Jacques, a senior fellow at the Department of Politics and International Studies at Cambridge University, said that no one knows where the UK is heading to in this post-Brexit period.

In the middle of this uncertainty, the British leaders are being much more cautious towards China, whose attitude he thinks should actually be reversed.

From a Chinese perspective, the trade friction with the US has inevitably influenced its economic performance, making it important to strengthen financial cooperation with other major countries.

However, there are also concerns from experts that the UK is not as an ideal partner for China as it seems to be. “China should not rely on the UK for anything,” said Philippe Le Corre, a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.

While China wants to use WTO as the platform for globalization, Washington thinks otherwise. The Trump administration has spoken against WTO, and is in favor of bilateral deals with the EU.

Martin Jacques disagreed, saying that the EU-US deal is just a conversation, which is not finalized.

Looking forward, the UK could largely benefit from China’s strategy of reform and opening up. King suggested that the biggest export of the UK is essentially financial services like insurance, gamut, and health, which will benefit most once China opens up.

According to Peter Ho, economist and research fellow at the London School of Economics, the UK is now the second largest platform for RMB. Therefore, if the UK is able to sustain its global financial impact, it will play an important role in the internationalization of RMB.

Moreover, being the first major Western country to join the Belt and Road Initiative, the UK could act as an endorser of the initiative.

“The UK is a country with a long history of trading across a different continent, and this could help to explain to the rest of the world what the Belt and Road Initiative is and calm people’s nervousness about the rising Chinese power,” King said.

The following article by Tim Robertson appeared in the Diplomat on August 7 2018.

On July 6, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, celebrated his 83rd birthday in Ladakh, the Himalayan region in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. On the other side of the world’s highest mountain range sits Lhasa, the Tibetan capital that he fled in 1959 during the Tibetan Uprising. The Dalai Lama has never been allowed to return. His has been a life lived in exile. But even Lhasa, home to the Jokhang Temple and Potala Palace, was a world away from the place where Tenzin Gyato was born.

Takster is a small village in the far northeast of the Tibetan plateau, in the region of Amdo (these days, it’s part of the Chinese province of Qinghai). In his biography, Freedom in Exile, the Dalai Lama writes of Takster:

It was a small and poor settlement which stood on a hill overlooking a broad valley. Its pastures had not been settled or farmed for long, only grazed by nomads. The reason for this was the unpredictability of the weather in that area. During my early childhood, my family was one of twenty or so making a precarious living from the land there.

When Thupten Gyatso, the 13th Dalai Lama, died in 1933 a search party was appointed to find his reincarnation; they first reached Takster just before Tenzin Gyatso’s third birthday. Shortly thereafter, they sent word to the Regent in Lhasa that they’d found the new Dalai Lama; they then waited several months to receive official confirmation.

At the time, control of China was divided among former military cliques. Ma Bufang, the Hui Muslim warload who ruled over Qinghai, “began to make trouble,” in the words of the Dalai Lama; thus, the boy destined to become the religious and political leader of Tibet was taken with his family to Kumbum monastery, “several hours away by horse.” Two years of diplomatic toing and froing followed and eventually, with the payment of a ransom, Ma Bufang allowed the party to leave Kumbum monastery and travel onwards to Lhasa.

***

Takster is a footnote in the long history of Tibet; it would be all but unremarkable if it were not the birthplace of the 14th Dalai Lama.

Today, it’s still a small, isolated village. For tourists visiting China – taking in the sights of Beijing, Shanghai, Xi’an, Chengdu, etc. – this side of the country’s extraordinary rise often remains invisible: away from the big cities, there is still widespread impoverishment. In places like Takster it’s clear that China’s growth has disproportionately benefitted wealthy urbanities; today’s reality is the very opposite of the peasant-led revolution Mao Zedong hoped would remake China.

But Takster also tells another story of modern China, with its resurgent Han nationalism and persecution of religious and ethnic minorities.

It’s seven kilometers from Takster to the next closest village. The roads leading up the mountain from Ping’an are all relatively new up until the final village, after which they’re pot-holed and often unsealed. The villages scattered up the mountain, where the majority of people are Hui Muslims, are fairly typical of the region: there’s a small middle school, and stores where shopkeepers stare at their phones while waiting for customers. I spot a large government building with the requisite Chinese Communist Party (CCP) insignia and men work in a small square, laying pavers and planting trees.

Takster is somehow different, though. At first sight, it looks like the other villages. Vegetation is sparse, there are old cars and decrepit motorcycles parked haphazardly, and all the homes are small, one-story dwellings with large courtyards. But all the gates are closed and locked, which is unusual in a village where everyone knows one another and many people are related. It’s around 10:30 a.m. when we arrive, but there is no one around. Even the police are nowhere to be seen. We park in front of a requisitioned school desk with two police shields leaning against it, but the comically small chairs are empty.

The Dalai Lama’s former home isn’t exactly inconspicuous; the CCP have “renovated” it and you can see the gold roof as you drive toward Takster. But that’s the best view we get; the house is behind a four-meter high grey brick wall and, on the day we’re there, the wooden gate, draped in Tibetan khatags, is locked.

In lieu of people, the house is watched over by a lone security camera, aimed at the entrance. One hundred meters down the road a dog emerges from a house, then the sound of someone hammering metal begins to ring out over the village. As we make our way toward the only sign of life we’ve seen or heard since arriving, a Chinese-speaking Tibetan man emerges from a dwelling attached the former home of the Dalai Lama. Looking at me, he asks: “Where are you from?” But before I can answer he turns to my driver and, more alarmed, asks, “Are you Tibetan?” When the driver answers in the affirmative, the villager – with an obvious sense of urgency – tells us to leave quickly because the place is heavily surveilled. His voice is foreboding and his jerky, hurried gestures make it clear that this isn’t a place to loiter.

My now visibly anxious driver and I hurry back to the car, hoping that the makeshift police checkpoint is still unoccupied. Although few words are spoken in our brief encounter with the local villager, much is conveyed: Tibetans understand the reach, power, and unjustness of the CCP. They’ve spent their whole lives being persecuted because they’re Tibetans.

Beijing obviously doesn’t want Takster becoming a pilgrimage site for Tibetans; the Dalai Lama represents a challenge not to Chinese power per se, but to its national(ist) narrative. Martin Jacques, author and scholar of modern China, has argued that China is different from other nation states and is better understood as a “civilization-state.” The CCP’s claims to legitimacy are closely linked to its ability to foster an image of itself as the guardian of China’s 6,000 year old civilization. The claim, therefore, that Tibet is culturally, linguistically, and geographically distinct from China and its civilization undermines the CCP’s claims to legitimacy.

Yet, if, as Beijing claims, Tibet is an intrinsic part of China and if the emerging superpower is, as it claims, a benign force (unlike Western imperial powers), then it doesn’t make sense to ban people from visiting sites like Takster. If Takster is part of China in the same way that, say, Shanghai is, then all Chinese people (including Tibetans) should be free to go there. But, of course, Takster is not the same as Shanghai, nor are Tibetans, in the eyes of the CCP, the same as Han Chinese. There is a tension, in other words, between the myth-making that passes for official Chinese history, the national narrative that’s the basis for so much state propaganda, and the lived reality for China’s minorities.

China today is unrecognizable as the socialist utopia envisioned by Mao. Since his death in 1976, the CCP has shown itself to be flexible on matters that were once ideological imperatives. Thus, the once nominally atheist state has, in recent years, seen a resurgence in religiosity amongst its citizens. The CCP has allowed this – even encouraged it in some instances – to the extent that it remains apolitical. But if religious belief is accompanied by or becomes the basis for calls for independence or autonomy or greater freedom, then it’s ruthlessly repressed.

***

With each passing year, as the Dalai Lama grows older, there are whispers about what will happen when he dies: it’s unthinkable that Beijing would allow a Tibetan search party to carry out the task of finding his reincarnation unimpeded.  The Dalai Lama has made some vague comments that he may be the last reincarnation or that his reincarnation may be found outside Tibet in, say, India or Nepal. But until he passes and Beijing reveals its hand, this all remains hypothetical.

When we are a few kilometers out of Takster, my driver relaxes a bit, puts on some Tibetan rap music and we resume the conversation we’d been having earlier. “What do you think will happen,” I ask, “when the Dalai Lama dies?”

“Maybe I will have a bit more freedom,” he replies unconvincingly. He qualifies it with, “But I don’t really know, though.” He thinks it’s inevitable that the CCP will try to install their own pliant “Dalai Lama” (like it did when the Panchen Lama, the second highest ranking lama in the Gelug tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, died in 1989); a figurehead the CCP can point to as evidence of its acceptance and respect for minorities, but someone who’s just an extension of its authority.

A few weeks later I am in Dharamshala, India with a Tibetan friend who’s spent most of his life in exile. When I tell him about my visit to the Dalai Lama’s birthplace and relate the conversation I had with my driver, he is dismissive of that prediction. It is impossible, he says, that Tibetans living in Chinese-occupied Tibet would stand for such an affront to their faith. If the CCP interferes with the search for the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation, he warns, it could be the fire that sparks a revolution.

These two responses are not necessarily reflective of the views of the majority living in occupied-Tibet and those in exile, but they are emblematic of the gulf between the lived experiences of the two communities. Both suffer because of China’s occupation, but they suffer in very different ways and this shapes their hopes, aspirations and expectations.

All Tibetans share a culture and history, but China, in addition to occupying Tibetan land, has driven a wedge between its people. Many of those living in Chinese-administered territory can’t leave, while many of those living in exile have never set foot in Tibet.

The on-going Chinese-Tibetan conflict is not generally treated as an urgent matter by the international community. Beijing restricts access to Tibet, so the flow of information is tightly controlled, and China is an increasingly powerful force in the world. But the longer China is allowed to remain unaccountable for its occupation of Tibet and the oppression of its people, the harder it will be to bridge the divide between a people whose lived experience of isolation, occupation, and exclusion have been so different.

Tim Robertson

The following article by Prof. N. A. de S. Amaratunga appeared on Lankaweb on July 27 2018. 

Dr. Gunadasa Amarasekera,  poet laureate, who has nothing but contempt for the politics and politicians of this country and who has been exploring our past civilization in an attempt to dig out a suitable remedy for our ills, as revealed in his many political analyses such as Ganadura Mediyama…”,  has authored another book on the subject titled Sabyathva Rajya Kara” which means Towards Civilisation State”. He has in his previous works attempted to show that Sri Lanka cannot continue to have an alien political system. He has argued in his works that only a political system based on our civilizational consciousness would succeed in governing this country and bring dignity and freedom to its people. The present system has the pretense of freedom, equality, independence and human dignity but in practice the people are denied of all this basic human rights. Instead they are blind folded by a façade of democracy, franchise, human rights, constitutions, judicial independence, freedom of expression etc. Moreover, it has produced a set of politicians who are corrupt to the core with involvement in crime and vice. The divisive nature of party politics and the ensuing violence has destroyed the unity in the village. What is worse is the failure of intellectual discourse to bring forth any meaningful and effective solution. Nobody has seriously challenged this fraud and attempted to see whether there is any plausible alternative.

Amarasekera’s contention had always been that if Sri Lanka is to find a home grown arrangement of government it has to be rooted in our civilization. Amarasekera is not without likeminded intellectuals of international repute. For instance, Martin Jacques a scholar on modern China who in 2009 has published the book titled When China Rules the World” in which he has put forward the concept of Civilisation State as against the Nation State. Then there was Samuel Huntington who published his book titled Clash of Civilisations” in 1996 where he dwelt on the lasting strength of civilization consciousness and its impact on politics. Before all this Amarasekera had put forward his theory of Jathika Chinthanaya” in his Ganadura Mediyama…” published in 1989 where he describes the characteristic features of the Bauddha Rajya” that existed in this country from the time of King Devanampiyatissa until 1815. He clearly shows that those features were rooted in our civilization. Unfortunately neither Huntington nor Jacques had realized that apart from China there had been civilisation states in other countries like Burma,Cambodia and Sri Lanka. Martin Jacques’ conceptualization of the state in China as a Civilisation State has prompted Amarasekera to take his arguments further and show us that his ideas are not farfetched and are in fact already in practice and most successfully at that in China. He does this eminently well in his little book Sabyathwa Rajyak Kara”.

What is the nature of a Civilisation State as against a Nation State?  The former, says Jacques, is well integrated with the people while the latter by its very nature is not, as it advocates less government control over affairs that eventually impact on everyday life. He distinguishes between civilization and civilization state. He says there have been  many civilisations but what is remarkable about the Chinese case is that civilization” and state” largely coincide not just over a relatively brief period but over an extraordinarily long one. And he says it is difficult to think of another similar example. This is where Jacques is wrong says Amarasekera. He shows that Sri Lanka has a longer history of a Civilisation State than China.  Further Sri Lanka’s system under the kings were more democratic than in China in the sense that the king did not have unlimited power. Perhaps ironically that ancient system may have been more democratic than the present presidential system! Trevor Ling had identified three pillars which supported that ancient state; the King, the people and the Sangha. If the king was not suitable to rule the country the people can get together with the Sangha and get rid of the king.

Definitions apart we could glean an idea about this matter by looking at the spectacular advances China has made in a comparatively short period in its history. In comparison India which had a similar history in relation to culture, science and technology has badly faltered.    In the nineteen forties China was an under developed isolated country and today it is the second most powerful country in the world. India, on the other hand, which was ahead of China in the nineteen forties is still struggling with its poverty. Different systems account for the extraordinary contrast between China and India. China’s economic transformation is said to be the best in human history. Jacques says those who look at China through the Western prism may say that China’s state is its Achilles’ heel but in fact it is its strongest asset.  There is wide spread belief that modernization implies Westernization which is not the case as seen in China.

It was Joseph Needham, scientist and historian, who first opened our eyes to the wonderful achievements of China. He spent several years in China in the nineteen forties studying its science and civilization. He published the first volume of his monumental work Science and Civilisation in China” in 1954 which catalogued the scientists and their work from early times. He has clearly shown that China was several centuries ahead of Europe in science and technology until the 15^th Century. He asked the pertinent question; how did the West overtake China and India which were ahead of them in science and technology. This so called Great Needham Question” has been answered by several Sinologists and the reasons given by them varied from too much state control to flawed scientific method. Needham’s own answer had been that Buddhism and Taoism had a restraining effect on scientific advancement. This point of view may not be correct particularly in relation to India where Buddhism was the catalyst for scientific enquiry and where the golden era of science coincided with the golden era of Buddhism. Leaving all this aside the fact of the matter is that China from the twentieth century onwards has risen out of the ashes like a Phoenix and advanced in leaps and bounds and may soon be the most powerful country in the world. According to Martin Jacques the reason for this stupendous transformation is the effectiveness of the Civilisation State. And failure of India to keep pace is due to the lack of such a state.

India from about the 5^th Century BC till about the 6^th Century AD was leading the world in science and technology. This was the Indian Buddhist era. The decline of Buddhism and the resurgence of Brahmanism heralded the end of science. Brahmanism was based on Vedic texts which exalted the virtues of sacrificial ritual, yaga homa”, super natural power and discouraged scientific enquiry. There was no scientism in the men who practiced Brahmanism. Whereas most of the scientists in India during this period were Buddhists. Indian science made radical, significant and lasting contributions to world science mainly in the fields of mathematics, medicine and astronomy. Kings who supported science and education were Buddhists. Indian mathematics is considered as the mother of all mathematics and its greatest mathematician, astronomer and philosopher Aryabhatha born in 476 AD was a Buddhist who lived in the centre of Buddhist heartland, capital of Magadha Empire, Pataliputhra. According to leading Indian scientist Dr.Neelantha Dhar progress of science in India was obstructed by the decline of Buddhism and nothing significant happened in science after the 6^th Century AD. Thus India perhaps had a Civilisation State during the Buddhist era from 5^th Century BC until 6^th Century AD and lost it thereafter. Kings of this period were enamoured by Buddhism and based their policies on the principles of Buddhism. Civilisation and State coincided. Brahmanism and later foreign invasions caused the collapse of this State. If one were to compare the present India with China one could understand what has happened for the two countries had a similar past. Today China exports six times more than India and is the number one exporter in the world. Its GDP is 3^rd in the world and is five times larger than that of India. There are only 13.4% below poverty line in China whereas the figure for India is 29.8%. Martin Jacques says comparing the economies of China and India is chalk and cheese and he says India must learn from China. With regard to poverty alleviation and employment China is doing better than USA.

In Sri Lanka too during the period of Buddhist influence science, medicine, agriculture, building of tanks, stupas and irrigation canals, architecture, metalogy etc.  developed in pace with India. The first hospital in the world was built in Mihinthala in the 4^th Century BCE. Buddhism which encouraged scientific enquiry was the life blood of this civilization. Thus developed the civilizational consciousness which is entrenched in the minds of people, which attaches them to their language, religion and country and make them strive for its advancement and protection. The Civilasation State, if it is to survive and succeed, must have this binding consciousness. It had been the case in China which enabled it to bounce back after every fall. And it was not so in India which seems to have lost its civilization consciousness and not found it yet.  Thus as Amarasekera cogently points out in his book Sri Lanka has the potential to find its consciousness and develop its Civilisation State.

In Amarasekera’s opinion Sri Lanka is caught up in the trap of democracy” designed by our colonial masters whose aim was to continue their hegemonic grip on the country. The slavish attitude of our leaders towards the Western powers and their life style no doubt had helped the imperialists to keep hold of that grip. This was evident soon after independence which made national leaders like Anagarika Dharmapala leave the country in disgust. It is evident at present also when our leaders seem to collude with the Western powers to subvert the independence and sovereignty of the country. The colonialists have left behind their legacy and their servants to ensure their hold on the country and pursue their agenda. It is a sad commentary on the intelligentsia of the country that we have failed to escape from this colonial yoke. Amarasekera attempts to address the intelligent people of this country and to make them understand the damage that has been done to the country due to the divisive nature of party politics which is an inherent feature of the Westminister system of parliamentary democracy. This system of democracy is divisive by design and a divided nation is an open field for the marauding imperialist.

Amarasekera asserts that we must find our own political system based on our civilization consciousness. Prof.Weiwei Zhang of Fudan University, China in his book titled The China Wave – Rise of a Civilisation State” says the story of China is not about the rise of an ordinary country but a different type of country. Therefore, we cannot emulate China just as much as we should not ape the West. But we could adopt the concept of Civilisation State. Our aspirations, believes, values, religion, morals, desires and attitudes are different. These are the factors that had moulded our consciousness over thousands of years. These factors provide the basis for the civilization the Sinhalese built in their history of more than 2500 years. The consciousness we harbour of these factors is our civilization consciousness. It is the guiding light and the driving force of our lives without which we are lost. Amarasekera shows us why the ruins in Anuradhapura are not ruins for us as they are etched in our consciousness. Amarasekera describes how we have lost our way and how we have arrived at our pathetic state and the peril the country faces today.

A governing State which is closely integrated with the civilization consciousness of its people and is designed to function on the basis of those factors and deliver on them could be termed a Civilisation State. Therefore, we have to develop our own system. According to Amarasekera we had ventured into such a project in 1956 when we elected the SLFP Government, not by accident but because we were driven by the civilization consciousness. That phenomenon was a political manifestation of that consciousness.  Mr.S.W.R.D.Bandaranayaka succeeded in tapping this consciousness so to speak but he could not develop a civilization state. Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranayaka perhaps did better in that regard. In this respect the most successful leader was Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa. Hence Amarasekera at the end of his monograph suggests that Mahinda Rajapaksa must jettison the SLFP which has seized to be the political arm of the civilization consciousness of the people and find a new party to fill this void and continue the effort to build a Civilisation State. The task of course is not easy given the complexities both inside and outside the country but to remain silent is to court disaster.

Prof. N. A. de S. Amaratunga

The following interview with Martin Jacques originally appeared in the New Internationalist.

Read the full interview here.