Across the globe, China’s influence is increasing – most especially in Africa
Napoleon Bonaparte was a very quotable guy. He preferred lucky generals to smart ones, and he was convinced that an army marched on its stomach. But the French emperor would never have guessed that his most quoted bon mot would concern a country he never visited, let alone conquered. “Let China sleep; when she wakes she will shake the world,” he once observed. As The Economist points out “it has become the quote that launched a thousand articles”, including this one.
Not just articles, too. James Kynge’s award-winning book is titled China Shakes the World and Martin Jacques seems to have drawn on Napoleonic inspiration for his own 2009 effort When China Rules the World: The Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the End of the Western World.
Mark Leonard also penned a volume on a related theme. Hitherto an expert on European Union affairs, Leonard realised that the policy papers he was writing all had some type of China angle. As he put it in his book’s introduction: “Very few things that happen during my lifetime will be remembered after I am dead. Even 9/11 or the Iraq War – events which transfixed us, took innocent lives and decided elections – will gradually fade until they become mere footnotes in the history books. But China’s rise is different: it is the big story of our age and its after-effects could echo down generations to come.”
With so many pressing problems right here at home, it was nevertheless a very good decision for the Baton Rouge Area Chamber to bring a leading writer on China to town.
The British journalist Martin Jacques wrote a significant book, “When China Rules the World: The Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the End of the Western World.” Obviously, from his subtitle, he is bullish on the prospects for even greater growth.
In remarks to BRAC’s shareholder meeting and at LSU, Jacques talked about the projections that China’s economic output could exceed America’s as early as 2018. That enormous economic impact also is coupled with a considerable gap between China’s “civilization-state” that conceives sovereignty in a different way than does the West, with its notions of discrete nation-states, Jacques said.
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If one is to go by the opinions expressed in the English press quite a number is for implementation of the 13th Amendment, contained in the Geneva Resolution either fully or partially. Pieris who is sending out ‘a secret document’ to party leaders appears to be in the same frame of mind with a desire to implement the 13th amendment as far as possible. Those who want to make the district the unit of devolution are also working on the same premise. Furthermore most of these individuals see no wrong in their approach. After all what the Geneva Resolution demands is what we have proposed with our LLRC Report. Is there anything wrong in doing so?
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A revolutionary party learned to survive by wrapping itself in ‘stability’
A word used retrospectively to justify a bloody crackdown has become a commonsense platitude used to explain today’s China, accepted alike by American businessmen and politicians and China’s educated young people. The concept of “maintaining stability” legitimizes and even defines the rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), including its vast propaganda machine and the apparatus of physical repression that it has become infamous for.
But the idea is a relatively recent invention. None other than Deng Xiaoping—the Party leader who emerged to lead China out of the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, opened up its economy, then ordered the Tiananmen Square massacre—came up with it.
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Over the last few years, a number of reports and books have appeared making the case that the United States is in decline. All of these studies and books contain elements of truth, although we need to keep in mind the distinction between absolute and relative decline and to remember that relative decline, if it is in fact occurring, may not be such a bad thing.
At first glance, it seems clear that the U.S. economy is declining in relative terms. China has had an annual growth rate averaging 9 percent or 10 percent for more than 30 years and India 6 percent to 7 percent since the early 1990s, while the U.S. has averaged about 2 percent annually over the past decade.
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Books on China have never been more popular, but are they teaching us anything?
Few books have polarized opinion in recent years as much as When China Rules the World, but when it was published in 2009, author Martin Jacques was thinking less about kickstarting an international debate than he was simply relieved to have completed a 10-year project marred by personal tragedy.
“I’d moved to Hong Kong in 1998 with my wife Hari and our 9-week-old son Ravi. We were going to be there for three years and I had ambitious plans for the book as well as a television series lined up,” Jacques says. “But after we’d been there for 14 months, my wife died in terrible circumstances and the book went out of my mind. I was just struggling to survive and I didn’t touch the book for five years. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be capable of writing it, but it must have somehow stayed in the back of my mind because by 2005 I started to work on it again.”
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It’s been three weeks now since the start of the standoff with China at Scarborough Shoal, a group of mostly submerged rocks in the West Philippine Sea that the Philippines and China are claiming as part of their respective territories. While a diplomatic way out of the impasse is being sought, a complex signaling exercise involving the deployment and withdrawal of maritime vessels is also going on. What further complicates matters is that the standoff began just a few days before the start of the US-Philippine joint military exercises. The Philippines insists the two events are unrelated, but that is not how the situation looks from a geopolitical perspective.
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You don’t pick a fight with someone bigger than you. But if you must defend yourself, you need to find an ally as big as he is, or get the backing of other small entities that may feel similarly threatened. Such support has its own costs. It may mean giving up certain things in return, or going against some cherished ideals. That is what realpolitik is about. It may seek cover behind principles, but, in essence, it is political conduct based on a clear calculation of long-term interests and a sober recognition of the pragmatics of power. Realpolitik applies to persons as well as to states.
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LONDON – Several renowned experts from China and foreign countries gathered on Monday todiscuss China’s development model during the London Book Fair, exchanging views on itsfuture.
At the beginning of the forum, Liu Binjie, Director of the General Administration of Press andPublication, reviewed China’s path of development over the past century.
“China has considered about the way of western style, and also once followed the formerSoviet Union’s planned economy,” he said. “But during the course, it found out that only a waywhich complies to its culture and fits its real condition could lead the country to success.”
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