Media Archive

Martin Jacques isn’t just convinced about something that a lot of people believe but would rather not voice — that China will soon be the most powerful nation in the world — but he is also courageous enough to have written a book on the subject.

On Friday, The Bengal Club in association with The Telegraph and the Aspen Institute presented, as part of Bengal Club Library Talk, a discussion with Jacques on his book,When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order. The talk and the ensuing interactive session was moderated by the retired major general Arun Roy.

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Most authors have written bestsellers while on a trip to a different country or an exotic holiday destination. Whatever it takes to get inspired. For popular columnist and author Martin Jacques, a trip to East Asian countries did the trick. It gave the author a push to write a book.

“In 1993, I went on a big holiday and life changed thereafter. I met my wife, Hari, during this two-and-a-half week trip and was charmed by East Asia,” says Martin Jacques, who was here in the city to address a gathering on China and world politics at IIT Madras.

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“India would be making a big mistake if it allowed itself to get dragged into a Western anti-China alliance,” warns Martin Jacques, author of the international bestseller When China Rules the World.

The 67-year-old British author, broadcaster and speaker whose association with China began nearly two decades ago, is considered one of the world’s leading authorities on that country. His book, rated as by far the best on China to have been published in many years, has already sold more than a quarter of a million copies worldwide, a rare achievement for a scholarly 800 page work of non-fiction.

Mr Jacques has examined the remarkable rise of China and has predicted that “China will soon rule the world (and) as China’s powerful civilisation reasserts itself, it will signal the end of the global dominance of the Western nation-state, and a future of ‘contested modernity’”. In these circumstances, he argues that it would be better for India to make a grand rapprochement with China on entirely new terms rather than to treat it as an enemy.

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New Delhi, July 20 (IANS) India’s role in a future world order in which China is likely to lead from the front depends a lot on what happens on this country’s growth front, says Martin Jacques, the best-selling author of “When China Rules the World”.

“A lot has been happening to China’s economic growth. It does not matter if India is behind China by 1 or 2 per cent; the main thing is India must carry on growing at a reasonably fast rate. India has to find ways to sustain the growth rate. It will open possibilities for India,” Jacques told IANS in an interview.

Jacques said the great advantage of China is that “it is a competent state and is endlessly reforming”. The Chinese state has “great legitimacy among the Chinese people” as an embodiment of Chinese civilization, the writer said.

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The emergence of China as an economic super-power, holding its own with, and surpassing, the US, is now taken for granted. However, both admirers and detractors of China have been viewing it in the conventional setting, implying some sort of a deviation from the commonly touted notions of politics and economics. They pine for the prospect of China somehow righting itself and conforming to political theories, economic dogmas and social mores familiar to them.

The success of the West in imposing its model so far was largely for want of a spirited effort by the countries of the Orient to contest its basic assumptions. China’s pre-eminence threatens the postulates that the West has long cherished. That is what explains both its fascination for, and fear of, China. What if the political, social and functional paradigm that it represents becomes universal and China, in effect, sets out to rule the world?

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Dr Odera Outa’s article “DO NOT WRITE OFF AMERICA JUST YET”[Star May 22,2012] is indeed dogmatic and oblivious current development in Asia and Kipling’s warning against British imperial hubris seen relevant to America to-day.

As Paul Kennedy a professor of History at Yale University has observed in Newsweek of February 2003,”the U.S. Military budget will soon be equal to that of all countries in the world combined.” Yet hawkish policy makers in Washington are concerned that the U.S. defense forces are dangerously thin and overstretched. How can both facts be true?

A book by Martin Jacques, “When China Rules the World” provides adequate and sacinet answers to economic rise in Asia. The book is a compelling and thought provocative analysis of global economic trends that defies the common western assumptions that to be fully modern, a nation must become democratic, financially transparent and legally accountable. Jacques argues persuasively that China is on track to take over as the World’s dominant power and that when it does, it will make the rules on its own terms, with little regard for what existed before.

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Dr Odera Outa’s article “DO NOT WRITE OFF AMERICA JUST YET”[Star May 22,2012] is indeed dogmatic and oblivious current development in Asia and Kipling’s warning against British imperial hubris seen relevant to America to-day.

As Paul Kennedy a professor of History at Yale University has observed in Newsweek of February 2003,”the U.S. Military budget will soon be equal to that of all countries in the world combined.” Yet hawkish policy makers in Washington are concerned that the U.S. defense forces are dangerously thin and overstretched. How can both facts be true?

A book by Martin Jacques, “When China Rules the World” provides adequate and sacinet answers to economic rise in Asia. The book is a compelling and thought provocative analysis of global economic trends that defies the common western assumptions that to be fully modern, a nation must become democratic, financially transparent and legally accountable. Jacques argues persuasively that China is on track to take over as the World’s dominant power and that when it does, it will make the rules on its own terms, with little regard for what existed before.

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When the world continues to discuss China’s impact even when there are other issues to consider, China has clearly ‘arrived’.

CHINA’S unrelenting growth is continuing to fuel speculation about the implications of its spectacular rise for the rest of the world.

Its irrepressive re-emergence as a major world power shapes and colours private discourses, academic analyses and bilateral and multilateral discussions, whether or not intended originally to discuss China.

It permeates strategic discourses behind closed doors, casual coffeeshop talk and everything in between. The recent Germany-Malaysia Security Forum in Kuala Lumpur, sponsored by Konrad Adenaur Stiftung (KAS) and organised by ISIS Malaysia, was an example.

Germany’s political foundations like the KAS are affiliated with their respective political parties, and with the KAS it is with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s rightwing Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

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This is my last entry as editor of The Diplomat. As many readers will have spotted from the notice on our website a few weeks ago, I will be leaving to take up a broadcast media role in New York, and so I’ll be handing over the reins at the end of today to Joel Whitney. I wish Joel the best of luck and hope he finds working with The Diplomat as exciting as I have done.

I’ve been involved with The Diplomat for a few years now, first as a freelance contributor when The Diplomat was a print publication based in Sydney, then as part-time web editor, and since September 2009 as full-time editor when the magazine relaunched and moved completely online.

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