Thirty-six years after “Great Helmsman” Mao Zedong died of a heart attack, leaving his country briefly rudderless during a time of crisis and uncertainty, the Chinese ship of state is still sailing. But is it still seaworthy? Observers are energetically debating whether the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party, which has endured so much, can endure. After all, the government today bases its legitimacy on economic growth, which may well be slowing. We can’t predict the future, but we can examine the past, and Chinese history suggests that, even if the Communist Party does face a legitimacy crisis, it would not be out of character for it to survive this particular storm.
The China-watchers who insist the country faces a crippling legitimacy crisis include, perhaps most famously, Gordon G. Chang, author of The Coming Collapse of China, as well as political scientist Minxin Pei. As they see it, there are simply too many contradictions inherent in the Chinese model for it to survive.
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As Britain basks in the glow of its successful Olympics, the thought that comes to this China specialist’s mind is, what a difference four years makes. There is a striking contrast indeed, where China is concerned, between the largely positive international chatter about that country in mid-2008, as the Beijing Games concluded, and the largely negative buzz about it now.
The change in China’s fortunes has little to do with medal counts or world records. Still, a look back to the Beijing Games helps place then-and-now contrasts into sharp relief.
Plenty of criticisms were leveled at China’s leaders just before the 2008 Olympics over issues such as repression in Tibet, and the Games were hardly free of controversy either, thanks to complaints about everything from parts of the opening ceremonies being faked (for example, the fireworks that looked like footprints in the sky being doctored digital effects) to underage gymnasts competing on the Chinese team. And yet, overall, a lot of things went right for the Party four years ago. As a result, a good number of international observers came away from China’s first Olympics seeing the country much as its leaders desperately want it to be seen: as a country that is respectful of its past yet surging toward a prosperous future; that is no longer poor, chaotic, isolated, with leaders prone to ideological extremism, personality cult rule, and factional infighting.
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The Chinese economy is a source of wonder and fascination in the West, as well it might be. According to the World Bank, the People’s Republic clocked a cool 9.1% growth in 2011, while the United States languished at 1.7%. While the Chinese central bank is sitting on $3.24tn of reserves, the United States federal government is the most heavily-indebted entity in the history of humanity, with nearly $16tn in liabilities.[1] While the absolute figures are smaller, the debt problem in Europe is so acute that it may yet rip the Eurozone apart, and it will almost definitely be a drag on growth for a decade or more.[2] Increasingly, bewildered politicians in Europe are lashing out at each other, with few seeming to appreciate the magnitude of the debt problem and even fewer willing to level with the public about what it means.
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In a February 2003 edition of Newsweek, Professor of History at Yale University, Paul Kennedy, said, “the US military budget will soon be equal to that of all countries in the world combined.”
Yet even now, hawkish policy makers in Washington are concerned that the US defence forces are dangerously thin and overstretched. So how can both facts be true?
And, a book by Martin Jacques, When China Rules the World provides adequate and, precise answers to economic rise in Asia.
Even before Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection in September 2008, war, scandal, economics and politics had plunged Americans into sullen self-deprecation. Commentaries in newspapers and books announced the Post-American World. China was riding high on the success of the Beijing Olympics, its grand coming-out party. It came out relatively unscathed in the first phase of the global financial crisis that followed Lehman Brothers’ collapse. Sustained economic growth and rising prosperity in Asia were shifting the global balance of power eastwards.
It was around this time that Martin Jacques’ When China Rules the World first hit the bookstores, the certainty of its title confirming Americans’ fears. Four years on, an updated edition is out. The US is not fully out of the latest of its periodic bouts of declinist thinking, but, as I have argued in these pages, China finds itself in its most vulnerable moment in two decades (see “Dealing with a vulnerable China”, November 21, 2011).
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Martin Jacques, author of the well-received “When China Rules The World”, tells Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty why that country will outpace India and why it will not become more Western in the process
Reviews worldwide have called it “by far the best book on China”, “a forcefully written lively book that is full of provocations and predictions”, “offering deep knowledge and understanding” about “the end of the Western world and the birth of a new world order.”
Martin Jacques, the author of this celebrated book When China Rules the Worldis currently promoting it in India, China’s largest neighbour which is also viewed as its challenger in the region. Sitting at the New Delhi office of his publisher, Penguin, Jacques dishes out a genial smile, almost sage like, or is it that of a conqueror who knows what today holds and what tomorrow shall bring? With hands clasped together behind his head, he is all keen to reason out with you why he thinks China is the crown prince of the world economy, how it is inching closer to the throne. After all, he chased the subject for almost a decade to fill up a tome of a book at 800 pages.
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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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