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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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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EU-China relations have been tested recently, not least with regards to a controversial EU carbon tax on airlines flying through European airspace. The tax has been resisted by China and others (including India), who argue that the EU has exceeded its jurisdiction by applying the full tax on flights that are only partly in its airspace. For its part, EU leaders are frustrated with the slow progress being made internationally in terms of cutting aviation greenhouse emissions. Analysts warn that, if the EU does not back down, there is a risk of a trade war developing as China retaliates (see, for example, the recent suspension of orders for new European-manufactured airplanes by China). If, as many predict, China’s rise heralds a new multipolar world order, do European policy-makers and citizens understand this new reality?
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My work email address attracts a lot of spam. Aside from the usual wire transfer requests, offers of performance enhancers and other comic smuttery that sneaks through the filters, there’s a fair amount of unsolicited sales pitches for professional services.
Recently, one of the latter surprised me. Rather than the usual scanning and accounting services from Bombay or Chennai, this was different. It was offering ‘advanced editorial services’. Pretty much exactly what I do, except not in that expensive first world place, London.
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In both Turkey and China, the political and normative value given to economic development and transformation is greater than, and takes priority over, democracy
Nihat Berker, the president of Sabancı University, does great service to community by hosting engaging book discussions on campus. These remarkable gatherings offer a gateway to students, faculty members and employees into the world of notable books on current affairs. The vision-based books that expand horizons in understanding Turkey and the world are chosen, read, and sometimes the author of the book is invited for a discussion. This time, we read Martin Jacques’ When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order (Penguin, 2009). As I read this book, whose expanded second edition will be in print soon, I could not help but notice the striking similarities between the Justice and Development Party (AKP) experience in Turkey and that of the Chinese regime. In this respect, I believe there is benefit to be gained by reading the present and the future of Turkey from the Chinese perspective as much as with European and American references, and that this reading is best done by the left and social democracy, which have been the main themes of my articles lately.
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When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order (out in paperback next January) is the provocative the title of Martin Jacques’ assessment of China’s future role as the dominant global power.
For more than a decade Jacques was editor of “Marxism Today” – having first transformed it from an obscure ideological organ of the Marxist Left into a broad platform for wide ranging political and social debate. Not long after the collapse of the Soviet Union “Marxism Today” was also wound up and Jacques went on to become deputy editor of The Independent, an engaging newspaper columnist and author.
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In less than a decade China could be the world’s largest economy. But its continued economic success is under threat from a resurgence of the state and resistance to further reform.
AT THE HEIGHT of the Qing dynasty, back in the 1700s, China enjoyed a golden age. Barbarians were in awe of the empire and rapacious foreigners had not yet begun hammering at the door. It was a shengshi, an age of prosperity. Now some Chinese nationalists say that, thanks to the Communist Party and its economic prowess, another shengshi has arrived. Last year China became the world’s biggest manufacturer, displacing America from a position it had held for more than a century. In less than a decade it could become the world’s largest economy. Foreigners are again agape.
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As China becomes the world’s second-largest economy, Zambian economist and author Dambisa Moyo says there is much Ireland can learn from the east about rebuilding our country
YESTERDAY’S REPORT that China has finally overtaken Japan to become the world’s second largest economy created a small flurry among western diplomats and economists who have watched China’s rapid emergence from poverty with a mixture of envy, fascination and alarm. On current trends, China could replace the United States as the global economic leader within a decade.
Beijing already has the world’s deepest reserves of foreign currency, which bring China political as well as economic clout with western powers, notably the US.
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As another Chinese New Year dawns this week, Jonathan Fenby assesses the world’s second-biggest economic power – and charts the risks ahead
China enters its lunar new year on Thursday in anything but rabbit fashion. Having overtaken Japan to become the world’s second biggest economy late in 2010, it has just unveiled economic figures that underline its continuing ability to deliver high levels of growth (10.3 per cent) accompanied by a string of superlatives – from having the world’s biggest car market (13.8 million sales) to holding the largest cache of foreign reserves ($2.85trn). Goldman Sachs forecasts that the last major power ruled by a Communist Party will surpass the United States by 2027. Others see this happening earlier.
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China’s growth has spawned an anxiety industry to rival the infamous ‘Yellow Peril’ panic of a hundred years ago
China was at last awake… She was the colossus of the nations, and swiftly her voice was heard in no uncertain tones in the affairs and councils of the nations… China’s swift and remarkable rise was due, perhaps more than to anything else, to the superlative quality of her labour. The Chinese was the perfect type of industry. He had always been that. For sheer ability to work, no worker in the world could compare with him. Work was the breath of his nostrils. It was to him what wandering and fighting in far lands and spiritual adventure had been to other peoples. Liberty, to him, epitomized itself in access to the means of toil… China rejuvenescent! It was but a step to China rampant.
– The Unparalleled Invasion (1910), Jack London
Look out, because the Chinese are the masters now – or shortly will be. At least, that’s the impression that can be drawn from recent media headlines and new books. “Buying up the world – the coming wave of Chinese takeovers,” blared the cover of The Economist last month, followed up a few weeks later with a front page devoted to “the dangers of a rising China”. Martin Jacques’ When China Rules the World: The Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the End of the Western World was published last year and will come out in paperback in 2011. Last week, in The Financial Times, the headline on an article by Philip Stephens informed us that “a risen China reaches for power”. Unsettled yet?
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