As China rises, so its relationship with the rest of the world becomes ever-closer. At the same time, it also grows more complex. There are bound to be setbacks as well as advances. Overall, however, one must conclude that 2014 has been a very good year as far as China’s global rise is concerned. More and more countries around the world want to build a closer economic relationship with China, which increasingly they see as crucial to their own future prosperity. China is pioneering a new paradigm in international relations in which military concerns are no longer paramount – as has been the case in the post-1945 American world order – and, in their place, economic relations, based on trade, investment and loans, are assuming primacy.
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The reforms that count tend to conform to the western model, writes Martin Jacques
In the west there is an underlying assumption that the Achilles heel of China is its political system. Since the country lacks western-style democracy, its system of governance is unsustainable. Ultimately, China will be obliged to adopt our kind of political system.
Yet China’s governance system has been remarkably successful for more than three decades. It has presided over the greatest economic transformation in modern history.
Hong Kong’s chief executive says he is willing to hold talks with the demonstrators who have camped out for days now in the city’s financial center. This came as a response to a request from the protesters.
Students are demanding more freedom on choosing the candidates for Hong Kong’s next leadership election in 2017. They also want the Chief Executive, CY Leung, to resign. Leung has said he will not resign. Beijing has called the protests illegal and has supported the Hong Kong leadership. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the protest was illegitimate when he met with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. Yi also urged protesters to withdraw.
Martin Jacques, a senior fellow at Cambridge University and author of “When China Rules the World: the End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order”, joins CCTV America to discuss the latest developments in the demonstrations.
“For 155 years, the British ruled Hong Kong but they never gave universal suffrage. So, Hong Kong under the British was never a democracy. It became an issue only during the handover of Hong Kong from the British to China. For the British it was not important to give universal suffrage when they ruled it,” Jacques said.
Protesters cry democracy but most are driven by dislocation and resentment at mainlanders’ success.
The upheaval sweeping Hong Kong is more complicated than on the surface it might appear. Protests have erupted over direct elections to be held in three years’ time; democracy activists claim that China’s plans will allow it to screen out the candidates it doesn’t want.
It should be remembered, however, that for 155 years until its handover to China in 1997, Hong Kong was a British colony, forcibly taken from China at the end of the first opium war. All its 28 subsequent governors were appointed by the British government. Although Hong Kong came, over time, to enjoy the rule of law and the right to protest, under the British it never enjoyed even a semblance of democracy. It was ruled from 6,000 miles away in London. The idea of any kind of democracy was first introduced by the Chinese government. In 1990 the latter adopted the Basic Law, which included the commitment that in 2017 the territory’s chief executive would be elected by universal suffrage; it also spelt out that the nomination of candidates would be a matter for a nominating committee.
Gaiko is the leading publication in Japan on foreign policy issues
Gaiko is the leading publication in Japan on foreign policy issues
In April this year the World Bank’s International Comparison Program projected that during the course of 2014 China’s GDP (measured by ppp) would exceed that of the United States. Although widely anticipated to happen in the next several years, hardly anyone expected it to be this year. But, it should be noted, the West has consistently underestimated the speed of China’s rise. As a result, it has been, and remains, consistently behind the curve of China’s rise, with the consequence that it constantly underestimates the extent to which the world has changed because of China’s transformation.
Of course, economic power does not translate immediately and directly into political power. On the contrary, if we look at the rise of previous hegemons, notably the UK in the nineteenth century and the US in the twentieth century, there has always been a significant time lag between their emergence as great economic powers and their subsequent arrival as major hegemonic powers enjoying broader political, cultural and military as well as economic influence. That said, however, economic power was the fundamental pre-condition for, and prelude to, their emergence as global hegemons. The same will be true of China.
Alas, we remain far too ignorant about the country, too often resorting to cliché
The visit of the Chinese prime minister, Li Keqiang, to London last week is the latest illustration of a huge shift that is taking place in Sino-British relations. On taking office, the Coalition government talked about the importance of emerging markets such as China but did little. Then David Cameron met the Dalai Lama in 2012 and the Chinese put us in the deep freeze for 18 months. But, to its great credit, once normal relations were resumed, the Government lost no time in seeking to place the relationship on a different footing. In Beijing last December, Cameron spoke of Britain and China becoming “great partners”.
中国是很多发展中国家最大的贸易伙伴，也是发展中国家的转型推动器。很多发展中国家都将中国视为学习的榜样和未来的目标
中国梦概念面世时，中国的发展正处于一个新的历史时刻。这是两个时期的分水岭，从这一刻开始，中国的经历将与过去大不相同。
改革开放的发展战略，使中国以新的姿态站在国际舞台上。中国贫困人口大幅减少，人民生活水平不断提高，经济总量占美国经济总量的比例大幅跃升至50%以上。此时的中国相对于许多发达国家来说仍然不够富裕，但是绝对不能用“弱小”来形容了。中国现在有能力憧憬并实现新的梦想，国际社会也对中国抱有同样的期待。
Stuart Hall was an utterly unique figure. Although he arrived at the age of 19 from Jamaica and spent the rest of his life here, he never felt at home in Britain. This juxtaposition was a crucial source of his strength and originality. Because of his colour and origin, he saw the country differently, not as a native but as an outsider. He observed this island through a different viewfinder and it enabled him to see things that those shaped and formatted by the culture could not. It took an outsider, a black person from a former colony, to understand what was happening to a post-imperial country seemingly locked in endless decline.
His impact was to be felt across many different fields. Perhaps best known is his pioneering work in cultural studies, but his influence was to be felt in many diverse fields. By the end of the 1970s, it was the connections that he started to make between culture and politics that was to redefine how we thought about politics.
This was how my own relationship with Stuart began in 1978. Soon after I became editor of Marxism Today, I commissioned an article from him on Thatcher. The result was one of the most important pieces of political writing of the past 40 years. Stuart, drawing on his cultural insights and the work of Antonio Gramsci, proceeded to rewrite the way in which we make sense of politics; and in the process, incidentally, he invented the term Thatcherism. For the next decade, it felt as if we lived in each other’s pockets. The way in which Stuart wrote was fascinating. Some, like Eric Hobsbawm, the other Marxism Today great, produced a perfect text first time out. Stuart’s first draft, in contrast, would arrive in an extremely incoherent and rambling form, as if trying to clear his throat. Over the next 10 days, one draft would follow another, in quick succession, like a game of ping-pong. His was a restless, inventive intellect, always pushing the envelope, at his best when working in some form of collaboration with others. His end result was always worth savouring, his articles hugely influential.
Tragically, Stuart’s ill health slowly but remorselessly curtailed and undermined his ferocious energy. But his mind remained as alert and involved as ever. The response to his death has served to demonstrate how much his work has influenced so many people in so many different ways: cultural studies, race and ethnicity, politics, the arts, the media, academe. Little has been left untouched by his intellectual power and insight.
Stuart’s extraordinary impact was not because he happened to be black and from Jamaica. It was because he was black and from Jamaica. It took an outsider, a black Jamaican, to help us understand and make sense of Britain’s continuing decline. He was in so many ways well ahead of his time. It is difficult to think of anyone else that has offered such a powerful insight into what has been happening to us over the past 70 years.