Martin Jacques has a simple and sobering thesis. The West is in terminal decline and the 21st century will belong to China. More significantly, it will not be simply a rerun of western democracy, with all its obvious positives and glaring limitations. No, this will be a competing modernity complete with eight distinct Chinese characteristics. It’s all change at the head of the table so we damn well better get used to it.
Jacques is clearly a more than competent scholar of Asian and in particular, Chinese affairs, but it is this academic competency that may well be his undoing, for in concentrating as he does on the historical dimensions of China’s staggering rate of industrialisation and modernisation, he may well be in danger of blinding himself and his readers to what is really taking place on planet Earth. Yes, there clearly is some sort of a changing of the guard at the top table, and no one but the most reactionary neo-cons in the US can now doubt the inexorable decline of western power relative to the equally inexorable rise of Asian economic and political power. But all this only serves to obscure the more profound fact that so called free-market, neo-liberal capitalism has run its course, and only those nations that apply rational state planning to their economies are going to prosper.
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– Maike Curry
I’m halfway reading Martin Jacques’ book “When China Rules the World.” It predicts that by 2025, China’s economy will outrun all others (Japan, EU, etc.) and will be a close second to the United States. But by 2050, China will be way ahead with her economy doubly bigger than the US. India will be close behind while Indonesia will contend. All of today’s advanced countries will lag behind. Interesting reading.
At the beginning of this year, Chinese premier Hu Jintao wrote an essay in which he pronounced: “The international culture of the West is strong while we are weak.”
Hu was referring to ‘soft power,’ a term coined by Harvard professor Joseph Nye to describe the value of attractiveness. US soft power sees the world gobble up Hollywood films and pop culture, generating a positive view of the country. Now China is engaged in a multi-billion dollar push to increase its own soft power.
Global events such as the Beijing Olympics and the Shanghai Expo have provided an opportunity for China to show to the world a new face, and big investments in the developing world have seen China’s image improve among the Africans and South Americans.
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There has been a steady stream of books about how Western primacy has been fading in a more pluralist and structurally transformed world. Many of these have intensified the ongoing foreign policy debate in the United States about ‘declinism’ – the relative diminution in America’s power and place in a changing global landscape.
Some works focused more on whether America’s hour of power had passed. Others surveyed a wider canvas to examine what the rise of the rest means for managing a more complex and uncertain world. Many writers have contributed to our understanding of how power shifts are reshaping the world. They include Kishore Mahbubani, Fareed Zakaria, Joseph Nye, Martin Jacques, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Richard Haas.
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Will China rule the world? Many have expressed doubt, but Martin Jacques, author of a bestseller on China issues, is firmly on the side of “yes.”
At a recent Beijing book reading to celebrate his release, the second edition of When China Rules the World, Jacques said he wondered why people are ignoring the rise of the new global powerhouse with a closed mind.
Although three years have passed since the book’s release, Jacques said he still believes China will shape the world as it continues to grow.
“I don’t see any reason to change (my conclusions) because as I finished the book, its development was speeding up,” he said.
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‘Schools can kill creativity because they do not allow certain topics to be discussed, certain books to be read, certain ideas to be aired.’
EVER since Roby Alampay briefed me about TED –which began in 1984 as a conference on Technology, Entertainment and Design and is now a network of conferences and talks about “ideas worth spreading” – I’ve been hooked and almost every night end my day by clicking on one of the thousands of TEDTalks so that I could go to bed more enlightened, informed, amazed, and even amused.
There are a number of speakers and subject matters I particularly like, and a few that I watch again and again. I have a preference for the funny ones, many of which are informative and inspiring as well. I particularly like two talks of Julia Sweeney (check out her May 2010 remarks on having “The Talk” with her daughter, and her July 2006 remarks on “letting go of God”). I also like the 2006 and 2010 talks of Sir Ken Robinson on creativity and education; in fact I liked them so much I picked up a copy of Sir Ken’s book “Out of Our Minds” and am dying to breeze through it as soon as I finish with Fukuyama’s “Origins of Political Order” and Martin Jacques’ “When China Rules The World”.
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The way of the West is going south, according to author Martin Jacques.
Author of When China Rules the World, Jacques predicts China will usurp the United States as the dominant world power in a matter of years.
Jacques shared his findings this past week at LSU as part of the E.J. Ourso College of Business Dean’s Seminar on Global Research, Education, and Practice.
“The impact of China on the world, the global footprint, is accelerating all the time,” Jacques said.
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01/06/12 - Alan Macfarlane
Nosso Maurício, shared values and the need to innovate. Business between Brazil and the Netherlands: past, present and future.’
Speech by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Uri Rosenthal, at the University of São Paulo on 28 May 2012
Professor Basso, Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,
I am pleased to have the honour of addressing you. And I’m delighted to be meeting with the future political, economic and moral leaders of this great country. But before we look ahead, I would like to go back in time for a moment.
In the course of history there have been many men called Maurits. But for the Dutch and Brazilians, only one of them is their Maurits. In Brazil, Dutchman Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen is known as nosso Maurício: our Maurits. In the 17th century he was governor of Pernambuco, where his tolerant attitude, his spirit of enterprise and his faith in science endeared him to all. Your ancestors called him the ‘humanist Prince’. He is still one of the best-known Dutchmen in Brazil.
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