In his well-known book, When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order, Martin Jacques claims China’s impact on the world will be profound and, in the long term, China will seek “to transform that system while at the same time, in effect, sponsoring a new China-centric international system which will exist alongside the present system and probably slowly begin to usurp it”.
Jacques’ bullish statement raises the expectation that China may come to dominate the world in the not-too-distant future. However, David Shambaugh, a leading expert in the field of contemporary China studies in the United States, pours cold water on such an upbeat sentiment.
In his newly released book, China Goes Global: the Partial Power, Shambaugh systematically examines China’s global impact in economic, political, military and cultural fields.
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Sinologist’s views unleash debate about the country’s place in the world and how far it will finally advance
Is China emerging as a potential global superpower or just a partial one? The leading American Sinologist David Shambaugh makes the case in his new book, China Goes Global: The Partial Power, that despite being the world’s second-largest economy, the country has along way to go before it begins to shape the world in its own image.
Even in the economic sphere, where China arguably had its most significant influence —accounting for 40 percent of global growth over the past two decades as well as being the largest exporter and holder of foreign exchange reserves — its global reach is overstated, according to Shambaugh.
The American academic argues that while the image is of Chinese companies taking over businesses throughout Europe and the United States, China has only the fifth largest overseas direct investment in the world, behind even the Netherlands and a fifth of the size of that of the United States.
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Leading Sinologist argues that China is only a partial superpower but many acknowledge that it has had the greatest impact on the continent
China has perhaps had more impact on Africa in the past decade than any other region in the world.
Trade alone has risen from $18.54 billion in 2003 to more than $200 billion today alongside the stock of overseas direct investment increasing eightfold from just $1.6 billion in 2005 to $13.04 billion at the end of 2010, according to the China’s National Bureau of Statistics.
But does this major economic interaction in Africa or elsewhere give China real influence and also make it a global role model?
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China may have the planet’s second largest economy. But the Chinese are not going to rule the world
There is a lot of money to be made writing books warning that we are all about to succumb to China’s thrall. The best seller in this genre is Martin Jacques’ “When China Rules the World.”
But China is nowhere near to ruling the world, has shown no signs of wanting to rule the world, and would not know what to do with the world if it did rule it (which it never will.) It is a shame that for pointing this out in his new book China Goes Global, David Shambaugh will likely earn only a fraction of Jacques’ royalties.
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No schedule was set for territorial dispute talks between Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said it was unclear when such a widely anticipated meeting would take place. Last week tension ran high as China entered the airspace and naval zone of disputed islands. The Voice of Russia asked to comment this dispute to Martin Jaques, author of the best-seller “When China Rules the World” and a visiting professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
The Senkaku Islands have been controlled by Japan since 1895, aside from a 1945 to 1972 period of administration by the United States. The People’s Republic of China and Taiwan disputed the US handover of authority back to Japan in 1971. And both countries have defended its claims to the territory since then.
Japan argues that it found the Islands to be the land belonging to no one back in 19th century.
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LONDON — I like being in this city because I am able to read articles with different points of view on an issue that matters: China as a rising power in Asia.
China experts who have written books recently are David Shambaugh, “China Goes Global: the Partial Power,” Edward N. Luttwak, The Rise of China vs. the Logic of Strategy, and Timothy Beardson’sStumbling Giant: the Threats to China’s Future.
These books can be said to be a reaction to Martin Jacques, the author of the international bestseller, “When China Rules the World.” Since I am in London, I asked Martin Jacques what he thought of the article that reviewed the three books in Prospect Magazine. I ask him to comment specifically on a question posed by the author, Jonathan Mirsky.
“What should we do about a regime that prides itself on a mythical past on the continuing assumption that all other countries are its cultural inferiors?”
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It’s the second day of the annual US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Washington. The meetings are high-level: Secretaries of State and Treasury on the U.S. side, State Councilor and Vice Premier for the Chinese. Economic issues — from trade barriers and investment opportunities, to alleged currency manipulation and cyber-espionage — are on the agenda between the two economic superpowers.
Vice President Joe Biden had this to say at the opening of the talks on Wednesday:
“One of the most important things that we need to continue to establish and deepen between our peoples and between our governments is trust. We don’t have to agree on everything, but we have to trust.”
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THE landmark summit between US President Barack Obama and China’s President Xi Jinping may well be described as “a qualified success” because it went smoothly on friendly terms, not an insignificant feat considering the number of simmering issues that divided their two countries.
This was the collective view of most China watchers and analysts who discussed the results of the first face-to-face meeting of the two leaders in California last June 7 to 8. They noted that Obama and Xi spoke at length about those issues, such as cyber security, North Korea and the rising friction between China and US ally Japan in the East China Sea, but they didn’t discuss China’s territorial disputes with its Southeast Asian neighbors over some islands, islets, shoals in the South China Sea.
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Chinese President Xi Jinping didn’t talk about his dream during the two-day summit with U.S. President Barack Obama last weekend, but China watchers and analysts have tried to unravel its meaning.
China’s President Xi may not have talked about his dream — what he calls the “China Dream”— during his first “face-to-face” talks with U.S. President Obama, but some perceptive China watchers and analysts have written about its meaning and implications for all countries of the world.
President Xi’s dream, in the view of Damian Grammaticos, China correspondent of BBC News, “is to lead a Chinese renaissance so China can resume its rightful place in the world. As one of the most powerful leaders on the planet, “he can, if he wishes, influence the destiny of hundreds of millions of people, inside and outside China. He can shape history. So will he? And if so, how? What does his dream mean?”
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Proportion of people earning between $17,000 and $35,000 a year set to soar
Chinese consumption, largely driven by the middle class, will account for $6.2 trillion, just under a quarter of the $26 trillion of additional global consumption in the years up to 2025, according to McKinsey & Co.
This is more than the three next BRICS countries combined with India contributing an extra $2.5 trillion, Brazil $1.4 trillion and Russia $770 billion.
Karl Gerth, author of As China Goes, So Goes The World: How Chinese Consumers are Transforming Everything and lecturer in Modern Chinese History at Oxford University, said every company in the world now has to have a strategy for the Chinese middle class.
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