Certain arrogant Westerners continue to ignore China’s rise and make negative predictions about China. Martin Jacques, a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics, wrote in an article recently published on the U.K.-based Observer newspaper. Based on abundant and accurate data, Jacques concluded that the Chinese economy still enjoys bright prospects.
China’s share of world economic output has risen from 2 percent to 10 percent over the past 30 years since the reform and opening-up, and the country has become the world’s second largest economy. The country’s annual foreign trade volume has surged from 500 billion U.S. dollars to 3.6 trillion U.S. dollars in merely 10 years since its accession to the World Trade Organization. As the world’s largest exporter, China has 1.5 trillion U.S. dollars of overseas assets and 18,000 enterprises abroad.
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Lau Guan Kim attempts to unravel why China has to have its own unique way of evolving to a nation that is based on its 5000-year unbroken history
Unless the West understands that the Chinese civilisation is an integral part of the nation and its mindset, it will never understand why its democracy and human rights can never supplant the quintessential philosophies and glue that bind China to be a behemoth civilisation-state, as distinct from the Western nation-state]
Martin Jacques, citing from various sources, writes in his book, “When China Rules the World” (Subtitle: The Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the End of the Western World), the difference the West’s nation-states as contrast to China’s colossal civilisation-state, albeit China, still for allaying West’s Sino phobia, behaves as a Westphalian system of nation-state. It is this moulting of its brilliant civilisation, refined and quintessential culture that she encounters alien Western coercion and diktat that obstruct her very latent and now surfaced rising power as a civilisation-state.
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The latest issue of Foreign Affairs magazine carries an article on the inevitability of China becoming the next superpower, one of a mounting cascade of articles on America’s decline and China’s rise. For many Chinese, it is high time for their country to regain its rightful place in the world, after a century and a half of humiliation, beginning with the Opium War of 1839-1842 and culminating with the invasion and occupation of much of China by Japan 100 years later.
As Martin Jacques explains in his bestselling “When China Rules the World:” “China had already begun to acquire its modern shape in the centuries leading up to the birth of Christ” and, a millennium ago, it was “the greatest maritime nation in the world.”
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Unlike many others, Economist George Magnus is not optimistic about China’s outlook.
George Magnus has the distinction – unlike many economic commentators – of being right, at least once.
Like Nouriel Roubini of “Dr Doom” fame, the 62-year-old senior economic adviser at Swiss bank UBS predicted the financial crisis.
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As the Communist Party of China celebrates its 90th anniversary, David Bartram explains how it has navigated political and economic twists and turns to reach its dominant position today.
Ninety years after its formation in a small building in Shanghai’s French concession, the Communist Party of China (CPC) presides over the world’s second largest economy and a country that will arguably have a greater impact on the 21st century than any other.
Only 13 delegates attended the first congress in Shanghai in July 1921; today the CPC is the world’s largest political party with around 80 million members. It is a transformation that few foresaw, only made possible by the CPC’s ability to adapt to changing circumstances.
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Few would have dared to predict the remarkable economic transformation China has undergone in the 30 or so years since Deng Xiaoping’s reforms opened the country to the world in 1978.
That the Communist Party of China (CPC) not only survived the process, but thrived as the driving force behind market reforms that turned a country reeling in the aftermath of the “cultural revolution” (1966-76) into the second largest economy in the world is a remarkable feat of adaptability.
Martin Jacques, British academic and author of When China Rules the World, appreciates more than most the impact China’s economic miracle has had – and is still having – on the world.
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China’s economic success has now become so clear that its relation to China’s overall position in the world has become a major topic of international discussion.
For example, the regular column of the Financial Times chief foreign affairs commentator, Gideon Rachman, was recently entitled rather sensationally “When China becomes No 1”. The recent announcement by United States Defence Secretary Robert Gates that the US would increase its military commitment in East Asia, simultaneously with running down its presence in other areas, was interpreted as “countering” China.
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The incongruous arguments held up by both proponents and opponents of the Western Model’s application have ignored the sequence of development in China.
Two years ago, a British author, Martin Jacques, published a book titled, “When China Rules the World,” which galvanized many to reconsider their notions of China’s strategic development. However, Chinese professor Zhang Weiwei’s recent best-seller, “China Shock” has not created the same shock and intrigue. China’s rise is an indisputable fact. Professor Zhang’s most important contribution in this work is his comprehensive overview of the China Model.
Raising the theme of “rejecting Western influence” to a new pitch, the book’s tone is optimistic. His ideas are part of a larger cavalcade of commentators in recent years, which have warned against the lure of the Western Model. But in all of this, the question of audience is worth asking: Who actually cares so much about the Western model?
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China’s rapid growth since reform and opening-up in 1978 has drawn worldwide attention, yet predictions about the country’s future vary greatly
While some observers predicted that China would follow the former Soviet Union’s path in five years, optimists have spoken louder and clearer.
In his recent work,China’s Megatrends: the Eight Pillars of a New Society, well-known US futurist John Naisbit predicted that the country would evolve into the world’s center by 2050 and challenge Western democracy with its development mode. British scholar Martin Jacques has gone a step further in his book When China Rules the World. He declares the inevitability of China’s ascendancy and the West’s simultaneous decline, thus announcing a nascent superpower in the making.
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Author looks ahead to the time when China will dominate the world
Martin Jacques finds himself in the unusual position of being something of a celebrity in China. His book When China Rules The World, which examines the implications of China overtaking the United States as the world’s largest economy, has sold 150,000 copies and has achieved the most success in the country whose rise he foretells.
“Not bad, is it?” he quips. “When I come to China people talk to me about the book; lots of people have read it. It is different from anywhere else I have been to in the West. People say to me: ‘You know you are famous in China.'”
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