This is a recorded version of a live interview CGTN, to discuss China’s reform and opening-up policies, and the China-US relationship, during a special Town Hall program recorded at the George Washington University on December 11 2018.
CGTN America presented a special town hall filmed at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. on China’s dramatic transformation, and the path forward towards the 21st century.
Speakers on the panel were:
– Zhou Jingxing, minister-counselor and chief of Political Section, Chinese Embassy in U.S.
– Martin Jacques, senior fellow at the Department of Politics and International Studies at Cambridge University. He is also author of “When China Rules the World”.
– Yukon Huang, Senior Fellow with the Asia program at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is also the author of “The China Conundrum”.
– Robert Hormats, former U.S. Under Secretary of State and Vice-Chairman at the Kissinger Associates.
In this interview with Global Times, Martin Jacques, on the 40th anniversary of “reform and opening up”, reviews the significance of Deng Xiaoping’s historic initiative and China’s prospects in the light of the deteriorating relationship with the US in the era of Trump.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of China’s reform and opening up. what do you think of the role the reform and opening up has played in china’s extraordinary changes?
China’s transformation started in 1949, but only in 1978 did China’s economy start to take off in an extraordinary way. It was only then that the Chinese worked out what the appropriate economy strategy was for the country. This was the stroke of genius of Deng Xiaoping.What he proposed was very radical and represented a major shift in the communist tradition. Basically he said two things: firstly, socialism is not synonymous with the state and state planning,but that socialism had to combine both the state and the market. And secondly, he argued that China needed to see itself as part of the whole world, including the capitalist world. China had to live with and compete with and learn from the capitalist world, and not just the socialist world.
This was an intellectual revolution which required a complete rethink and unleashed enormous intellectual energy. This ignited a long process of transformation in China.1978 is one of the most important dates in the 20th century, it prefigured the 21st century: the transformation of China and later the world.
China vows to continue opening up. Some people see this as an opportunity, but some say it’s a threat. How do you evaluate these contradictory views?
One of the great things since 1978 is that China is always thinking, always experimenting, always learning, always trying to work out what is the best way in the situation, in the circumstances that it faces, which are constantly shifting. There’s a general idea of where to go and how to do it. But there’s not a tablet of stone about how to do it; instead of a tablet of stone, you “cross the river by feeling for the stones.” The Chinese combine a general set of principles with a very strong dose of pragmatism.
Itis obviously a lot more complex because China’s economy is many, many times larger now than it was, and China’s impact on the world is now also huge: there are so many more factors China has to consider both internally and globally. China is very interestingly different and distinctive from both the old Soviet mentality and also the West. It has learnt from the West, but it is also very distinctive from the West. It is very important to maintain that. I think one of the reasons for the success of China is its capacity to draw different elements together from different places, different experiences, different traditions, and then combine them in a very unique Chinese way.
Of course, some people think China should be more like America. Now? Really?America is in big trouble, it is in serious long-term decline, which is part of the reason why we got Trump. No, China has to be distinctive. It has to combine those elements which it needs to learn from the West with its socialist and Chinese traditions.
Earlier this year, you wrote an article arguing that the fortieth anniversary of the beginning of the reform period is a cause for celebration and reflection not only in China, but around the world. Can you specify what are the issues that the world, including the Western countries, should reflect on most?
1978 led to the the most extraordinary economic transformation in the modern era. This is much more remarkable than America’s transformation between the 1860s and 1914. It’s a very important event to study. But the West doesn’t think in these terms about 1978, because they don’t really understand any of this.The West is very ignorant about China.
But I would say look, reform and opening up has transformed China. Then,during the 1990s, China began to transform the world and, as a result, the world is now very different from what it was before because of China’s impact. Since 1978 China has been the most important engine of global change. So every country should study China and the Chinese experience.That doesn’t mean that China is a model, but it does mean China is an interesting and important example from which to learn. Many developing countries understand this but the West is still in partial, sometimes total, denial.
On October 4th, the US Vice President Michael Pence made a speech at the Hudson Institute, claiming that US has rebuilt China over the last twenty five years. The US President Trump also mentioned this many times on different occasions. Are you surprised by Pence’s speech?
Not really. You have got to say that the Trump administration,including the Vice President, is many ways remarkably ignorant. Their reaction to American decline is to reassert American nationalism and to try and bully the rest of the world.It’s nonsense to say America is the major reason for China’s transformation over the last 25 years. That tells me that they know nothing about China’s transformation. What planet are they living on to make that kind of remark? It’s obviously just cheap self-serving propaganda. Has America made a contribution to Chinese rise? Yes. It has. As China itself has frequently said, China has been the beneficiary of the era of globalisation which the US played a key role in shaping.
Some American scholars believe that the US has adopted an engagement policy toward China, which has greatly benefited China. But now believe that China has “betrayed” the US and does not intend to follow the US way in terms of its political system. What do you think?
I think a very big political shift has taken place in America. It is not just the Republicans. The Democrats have also shifted to a more anti-Chinese position. Now the question is why, and this is a question that the Chinese themselves need to reflect on.
Until about 2010, America was generally relatively benign towards China.The period after 1972, following the Nixon Mao accord,was characterised by relative stability in the US-China relationship. There were two assumptions that underpinned American attitudes towards China. The first was that China’s economic rise would never challenge America’s economic hegemony. And the second assumption was that China would, in time, become like the West, because they assumed that unless China became like America it could never succeed, its transformation would fail. It would be unsustainable both economically and politically. From 1972 until the Western financial crisis, the relationship remained very unequal, though less so over time.America was the major power. China was the junior partner.
From around 2010, it became increasingly clear that these two positions were wrong. Firstly, because China’s economic transformation continued very successfully and in 2014 overtook the US economy according to GDP measured by ppp. And secondly, it became clear that China was not going to be like America. The political system was not going to become like America’s. Furthermore, China would not accept American global leadership and do whatever America wanted it to do. Two things served to dramatize the situation: one was the Western financial crisis of 2008, the worst in the West since 1931. Suddenly the West was in deep trouble. And, on the other hand, China was not in trouble and China’s rise continued.It shook the confidence of the West. Until this point,America did not believe it was in decline. It had, of course, been in decline for some time, but it was in denial about it. Trump was the product of, and gave expression to, this new uncertainty, angst, disappointment and a growing mood of anger and frustration. This historically explains the shift in the American attitude towards China.
US President Trump frequently summed up his approach to foreign policy with two words: America First. The US has withdrawn from various international mechanisms and is creating barriers for trade, technical exchange, and personal exchanges with a lot of countries. Do you think this will reverse the globalization process and maybe make the world more differentiated or more difficult to access?
I definitely think the era of neo-liberalism has come to an end.There are lots of elements and dimensions to this. Clearly, there’s a reaction to the globalization era in the West. And the ideology of that period in the West, namely neo-liberalism,is in crisis;Trump is a reaction against it. The uber or extreme globalization, which was the western ideology of this period, has hit the wall.
I also think that the whole American view of itself and its role since the end of the second world war has come to an end. I don’t see any simple reversion to the previous era of American multilateralism and leadership. I think that era is over and is unlikely to be revived in its old form. I don’t think we should be so surprised by this because if you look at American history over a much longer period, for example from the War of Independence against Britain until 1939, it was largely dominated by American nationalism and isolationism. The period after 1945 until the election of Trump in 2016, during which America saw itself in terms of multilateral institutions, broad alliances and leadership, was the exception rather than the rule.
Before the second world war, America was always for itself. It was very nationalistic, for long it existed in splendid isolation on its continent. It thought of itself in its own terms. Historically it was very aggressive.It was built on violence, built on slavery, built on wars. Wars against the Amerindians, against Britain, against Spain, against Mexico. That’s how it expanded. So this latest period of American development has been an exceptional period. And Trump lies within the old tradition. He’s reacting against the post-1945 period, he is reverting to the past, by so doing he wants to make America great again, making America as it used to be. Of course, he cannot succeed. Times have changed profoundly.
I don’t think we should expect the Trumpian era to be short lived. There will be no easy or simple return to the status quo ante before Trump.This period could last twenty years, thirty years; a reaction against western-style extreme globalisation. In the long-run, of course, globalization will continue but in the next decade, perhaps much longer, it will suffer setbacks and could even be reversed in certain respects.
Meanwhile, there’s a different globalization taking place, which is what I’ll call Chinese-style globalization with Belt and Road being its most prominent feature. We are moving into a much more complex period, with a much more divided and fragmented world. In this context I think the Pence speech was quite ominous. It was a speech that could have been given in the cold war, it was a very broad attach on China, an attempt to demonize it.It’s not going to be the same as the cold war, but there will be some similarities.
For decades, China has benefited a lot from globalization and the multilateral trading mechanism. What challenges will the current situation bring for China? And what’s your advice on China’s next step on reform and opening up?
I think that what is now deeply preoccupying the Chinese leadership is how to respond to the shift in America, how to understand it and how to deal with it. I think the fortieth anniversary is a reminder of things we should not forget. The wisdom of Deng Xiaoping: keeping your lines of communication open, keeping your curiosity about the world and making as many friends as possible. And I think that those are still good advice.
The following article by Modesto P. Sa-onoy appeared in the Daily Guardian on August 21st 2018.
A RECENT report by the Pentagon says that China is “likely training for strikes against the United States and its allies” but China debunked this report as “pure guesswork”.
As the late US President John Kennedy said in his inaugural address in 1963, “sincerity is subject to proof”. And proof is in what one sees or hears from credible sources. Studies can be guesswork if seen from the eyes of the suspect, as China is in this case. Surely we cannot expect China to admit it is conducting training exercises for a military strike.
In 1927, a study by the US military strategists claimed a possible conflict in the Pacific. There were two countries with the possible intent of striking – the Russia and Japan. The US preparations for a likelihood of war with Japan was code-named War Plan 5 with an orange ribbon covering, thus the plan became popularly known as WP Orange. The study projected possible hostilities within 10 years. Well, as we know the
Japanese struck in 1941 although it already began invasion in China in 1938; the Americans considered that as a “training” exercise.
Indeed, Martin Jacques in his book, When China Rules the World (2009) considered the Chinese capable of becoming the dominant military force in Asia after it has gained a phenomenal economic growth. He asked,
“How will the impact of China’s economic rise be felt and perceived in ten years’ time? How will China behave twenty years hence when it has established itself as second only to the United States and effectively dominate East Asia? Will China continue to operate within the terms of the established international system…?”
We know that China has already refused to accept the jurisdiction of the International Tribunal in the issue of the West Philippine Sea. The tribunal said the islands belong to the Philippines; instead China defied the tribunal by constructing military installations there with capabilities for a bombing strike against the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. Despite our complaints, China continued its constructions at the same time befriending the Philippine government and courting it with offers of financial aid that have not materialized. China nurtured the anti-American sentiment of President Duterte and it got its way.
The Philippine government, small and putty at China’s hands, can only complain a situation that the Philippines created for itself because it has no more powerful friends to come by its side. Worse the Philippine is courting Russia, China’s ideological ally and too far away to help us. The US has issued a warning of the risks of this shift but the Philippine government refuses to listen. Historically, we might be a rehearsal for military conflict due to Chinese incursions.
Jacques likened the situation in 2009 with those years prior to WW II. “International relations experts are fond of citing the rise of Germany and Japan in the early twentieth century as examples of nations whose new-found powers could not be contained within the existing international system and whose ambitions eventually culminated in war. The rise of China will not necessarily result in military conflict -and for the sake of humanity, we must fervently hope it does not – but it is a sobering thought that the ramifications of China’s rise for the world will be incomparably greater than those of Germany and Japan, even accounting for the differences in historical times.”
The United States is a deterrent to China’s ambition for an East Asian hegemony with it as the dominant power, a realization of its belief as the center of the Universe.
Comparatively, the US has more fixed-wing aircraft, surface combatant ships and submarines and can draw allied forces from its allies (Japan, Taiwan and South Korea). The US can no longer depend on us.
The US has more nuclear weapons but the Pentagon says China is building fast with nuclear missiles striking capabilities against the US mainland and its military facilities including those of US allies. To the Pentagon these are dangerous developments.
Jacques quoted the warning of the Chief of Malayan navy: there exist uncertainties in the form of China’s behavior once she attained her great power status.
This article, by Modesto P. Sa-Onoy, was published in the Daily Guardian, 16th May 2018
CHINA has reportedly installed facilities for a missile strike in the Philippine’s side of the disputed South China Sea. The Philippine Navy estimates that the facilities can be operational in three months. Pro-Chinese Filipino officials claim that the missiles are not pointed at the Philippines as if the missile launching pads are stuck to one direction. The Philippine Navy said they have interceptors, but how many? Are they enough to prevent missiles from devastating the country?
For years China has set its eyes on the Philippine Sea that had been proven in the international court to be Philippine territory but China refuses to accept that decision and uses its military might to bully the Philippines from enforcing its rights.
Now it is using its economic clout to entice the Philippines not to outright demand the removal of its missiles but to just keep on making statements against them. In return it has befriended President Duterte with offers of economic aid, loans and investments. But as one commentator warned, “don’t trust China with those financial offers.” But Duterte wants to be close to China as a counter-balance to the US that he accuses of unfriendly acts for the US criticisms of Duterte’s human rights record.
China needs to expand to survive and the Philippines is an easy target – close, weak and “friendly”. Martin Jacques whose 2009 book, “When China Rules the World” I had quoted before, has a grim assessment of China’s rapid development that bears on this subject of expansionism.
“China is increasingly dependent on the rest of the world for the huge quantities of raw materials that it needs for its economic growth. It is already the world’s largest buyer of copper, the second biggest buyer of iron ore, the third largest buyer of alumina. It absorbs close to a third of global supply of coal, steel and cotton, and almost half of its cement. It is the second largest energy consumer after the US, with nearly 70 per cent produced from burning coal. In 2005, China used more coal than the US, India and Russian combined. In 2004 it accounted for nearly 40 per cent of the increase in the world demand for oil. If the Chinese was to continue to expand at 8 per cent a year in the future, its income per head would reach the current US level in 2031, at which it would consume the equivalent of two-thirds of current world grain harvest and its demand for paper would double the world’s current production. If it were to enjoy the same level of per capita car ownership as the US does today, it would have 1.1 billion cars compared with the worldwide total of 800 million; and it would use 99 million barrels of oil a day compared with a worldwide total of production of 84 million barrels per day in 2006. Of course, such a level of demand would be unsustainable in terms of the world’s available resources, not to mention its global environmental impact, which is dire.”
These are not just estimates but projections and we are already feeling the impact of China’s needs. The Western countries were able to expand their economies without harming or exhausting their natural resources because they had colonies to provide the raw materials and absorb their outputs. Japan had the same idea at the turn of the 20th century and embarked on expansionism in 1936 with its slogan, “East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”, its euphemism for Japanese colonies like the Philippines.
Martin’s book was published nine years ago and we are now seeing the movement of China to expand and secure a new kind of colonies, dissimilar to the concept and methods as the Western colonizers but colonization nevertheless.
A few years ago a report said that China wanted to lease one million hectares in the Philippines that it will cultivate for food production. That is not for local consumption but to help feed the billions of Chinese. Although China has large tracts of land not all are suitable for agriculture and their water source for agriculture is limited. It must expand.
A report said that real estate prices in the Philippines are rising fast; one reason is that Chinese investors are buying land. Caveat emptor is still an excellent policy.
Original article by Arif Nizami in Pakistan Today can be found here.
The China that I saw last week is a far cry from the country that I had first visited with Prime Minister Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto in May 1976. At the time one of the few hotels in town was the Peking hotel where the Pakistani delegation accompanying the prime minister was put up.
Men and women, both were attired in Mao suits plying mostly on bicycles. There were only a few cars on the roads belonging mostly to communist party officials. The first premier of China, Zhou Enlai had died back in January the same year, while Mao Zedong the chairman and founder of modern China was gravely ill.
Bhutto was the last head of state or government who got an audience with Mao when he was suddenly whisked away from an opera performance in his honour to meet the Great Leader. A few months later Mao died and with that an era ended.
In a New Year’s address, Chinese President Xi Jinping lauded the country’s accomplishments in 2017 and gave a road map for China’s priorities in 2018.
2017 has been a big year for China – from President Xi’s travels to Davos to hosting the first Belt and Road Initiative Forum to the 19th CPC Meeting. China is taking the lead across the world and at home. So what’s the outlook for the country this year?
To discuss President Xi’s speech and the future of China in 2018: Victor Gao, a Chinese international relations expert Dan Wang, a China analyst with The Economist Intelligence Unit; Martin Jacques, author of “When China Rules the World” and a senior fellow in politics and international studies at Cambridge University; Jacques deLisle, a professor and director of the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
We are ecstatic that the Filipino crowd has finally found its strength and the way to express it. For the moment Duterte supporters are full of hope that Rodrigo Roa Duterte, an obscure mayor from Mindanao is the answer. He has come forward with his program and he has a party to implement it – the PDP Laban. He is serious about constitutional change that will transform the Philippines into a parliamentary system with a federal structure. He will have many enemies but he will also have friends and a multitude of supporters to carry out the difficult task.
I don’t think he needs to be told about the treachery of evil. He has lived with it when he was mayor of Davao. But caveat emptor (avoid danger) the famous Latin quotation is relevant to him as well as to us. Evil is a constant in reality. The danger is to think that it can be destroyed with a magic wand. No matter how much he may wish it, it will not happen overnight. Nation building is a slow process of creating effective institutions that should last long after he is gone. And most of all he must keep in mind that as leader of the Filipino crowds that waited for him to remember always that he must not make “the perfect come in the way of the good.” That I believe is the temptation for a man with a heroic bent like Duterte. He wants to do good, he lives humbly and speaks in the language the masses understand. Never mind the critics who tell him that he needs to speak with the Arrneow accent.
His role in history is to begin the process of change. We were subjected to an imperialist constitution from the Americans in favor of a presidential system. That ensured the rule of oligarchy as its new channel to imperialist rule. The all powerful Philippine President would act like the all powerful American governor general.
The recent slowdown has called previous narratives about China’s rise into question for some. How should we view this economic slowdown? What role will the US play? Global Times (GT) London-based correspondent Sun Wei interviewed Martin Jacques (Jacques), a senior fellow at the Department of Politics and International Studies, Cambridge University, and a visiting professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing, about these questions.
GT: Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz claims in an article that the “Chinese century” has begun and that Americans should take China’s new status as the No.1 economy as a wake-up call. Professor Joseph Nye of Harvard University explains in an essay why the “American century” is far from over. Obama said last year the US will lead the world for the next 100 years. What do you think of these debates?
Jacques: The US is still the dominant power in the world in probably every sense. China is only challenging it economically by virtue of having a huge population. China’s rapid transformation is clearly already having profound economic consequences, and beginning to have serious political, cultural, intellectual, moral, ethical, and military consequences as well. That’s in a way what President Xi Jinping‘s government represents. The Chinese dream imagines a different place in the world and a different future for China.
John Harris’ ‘Long Read’ piece for The Guardian (29 September 2015) includes an interview with Martin Jacques and an assessment of his editorship of Marxism Today from 1977 – 1991.
John Harris
In May 1988, a group of around 20 writers and academics spent a weekend at Wortley Hall, a country house north of Sheffield, loudly debating British politics and the state of the world. All drawn from the political left, by that point they were long used to defeat, chiefly at the hands of Margaret Thatcher. Now, they were set on figuring out not just how to reverse the political tide, but something much more ambitious: in essence, how to leave the 20th century.
Over the previous decade, some of these people had shone light on why Britain had moved so far to the right, and why the left had become so weak. But as one of them later put it, they now wanted to focus on “how society was changing, what globalisation was about – where things were moving in a much, much deeper sense”. The conversations were not always easy; there were raised voices, and sometimes awkward silences. Everything was taped, and voluminous notes were taken. A couple of months on, one of the organisers wrote that proceedings had been “part coherent, part incoherent, exciting and frustrating in just about equal measure”.
What emerged from the debates and discussions was an array of amazingly prescient insights, published in a visionary magazine called Marxism Today. In the early 21st century, that title might look comically old-fashioned, but the people clustered around the magazine anticipated the future we now inhabit, and diagnosed how the left could steer it in a more progressive direction. Soon enough, in fact, some of Marxism Today’s inner circle would bring their insights to the Labour party led by Tony Blair, as advisers and policy specialists. But most of their ideas were lost, thanks partly to the frantic realities of power, but also because in important respects, Blair and Gordon Brown – both of whom had written for the magazine when they were shadow ministers – were more old-fashioned politicians than they liked to think.
At the core of Marxism Today’s most prophetic ideas was a brilliant conception of modern capitalism. In contrast to an increasingly dated vision of a world of mass production and standardisation, the magazine’s writers described the changes wrought by a new reality of small economic units, franchising, outsourcing, self-employment and part-time work – most of it driven by companies and corporations with a global reach – which they called “Post-Fordism”. Computers, they pointed out, were now being built from components produced in diverse locations all over the world; iconic companies had stripped down their focus to sales, strategy and what we would now call branding, outsourcing production to an ever-changing array of third parties. As a result, economies were becoming more fragmented and unpredictable, as the bureaucratic, top-down structures that had defined the first two-thirds of the 20th century were pushed aside.
