Attention last-minute holiday shoppers! We have an easy-to-purchase gift to recommend. And we guarantee that it will fit all sizes, shapes and tastes.
This is assuming your intended recipients are intelligent, literate and eager to learn about the world. For as your intellectually slothful friends (if any), we recommend you just keep off your list entirely. Why waste your (presumably) hard-earned money on them? Let them spend their holiday watching football or something.
Martin Jacques, a British news columnist, became fascinated by the manic modernization underway in China when he visited there in 1993. He saw construction cranes working round the clock, roads streaming with trucks and carts, and peasant women balancing wares on either end of a bamboo pole. The vibrant energy and evident willpower got Jacques musing: Would the economic boom follow the Western model? Or would China pursue modernity in its own way?
Jacques went for a holiday in Malaysia. One day, while he was out for a run on the beach, his eye chanced upon a dark and attractive woman. A 26-year-old lawyer, she was not an obvious match for a pink-skinned, pointy-headed, chronically unmarried Brit who was nearing 50. But the woman, Hari Veriah, who was born in Malaysia to Indian parents, was fearless and modern-minded, and her Asian perspective was like tinder to his spark.
Despite his breathless title, Martin Jacques is not so sure. On the one hand, “China… is destined to become… ultimately the major global power.” On the other hand, “the challenge posed by the rise of China is far more likely to be cultural in nature” than political or military. But on further consideration, “As China becomes a global power, and ultimately a superpower, probably in time the dominant superpower, then it, like every other previous major power, will view the world through the prism of its own history and will seek, subject to the prevailing constraints, to reshape that world in its own image.” But then again, “For perhaps the next half-century, it seems unlikely that China will be particularly aggressive”; “for the next twenty years or so . . . it will remain an essentially status-quo power.” But after all, yes: “China’s mass will oblige the rest of the world largely to acquiesce in China’s way of doing things.”
With its provocative title, this well-written and timely book by the well-known British journalist Martin Jacques is something of a publisher’s dream. A cut above the annual crop of run-of-the-mill “China threat” books, Jacques’ thoughtful analysis is selling well and deservedly so. It combines an excellent introduction to Chinese history and culture with an exposition of the main arguments surrounding the 21st century “rise of China”, albeit heavily weighted in favor of the author’s own views. It even throws in an excellent chapter on Japan that, taken on its own, would be a good enough reason for buying the book.
But what of the massive assumption contained in the book’s title? Does Jacques manage to make his case that China is set to rule the world? Talk of the emergence of a G2 of America and China in the wake of the crash of 2008 appears, if not to confirm, then at least prefigure China’s rise to preeminence. None of the great issues facing the world can be solved without reference to and without the agreement of the “big two.” All eyes are on the U.S. and China as the world gathers in Copenhagen to address the existential threat of global warming. But counting as one of the world’s biggest problems does not translate to occupancy of the top seat, and would in any case be an unhappy way to ascend the throne.
The first impression of China when you fly out of the lurid slums of Mumbai and land in Shanghai is frankly, even if you have read about it, stunning. You’d never think this is a “developing” country, like India clearly is. You’d think you are in a rich, cosmopolitan city like New York, only ten times bigger and a lot cleaner.
Regarding China, there are two main camps in the West. What I call the “American Camp”, which claims China is becoming just like America, and it must continue to converge onto American values and policies to become really successful. This camp feeds its delusions through ignorance and provincialism, as is typical in the US. The second camp, which I will call the “European Camp”, maintains China will fail, because their culture and systems are intrinsically inferior to those of the European masters. This camp feeds its delusions on racism and arrogance, which are common European vices. Now Martin Jacques, a reputed British journalist who has lived and worked extensively in China, demonstrates that in 15-20 years China will overtake the US as the richest country in the world; in less than 40 years it will be the undisputed world leader, its GDP at least double that of the distant second, possibly the US or India. This 500 page very thorough analysis of the Chinese reality is easily the best I have read this year (out of 6 books on the topic).
The title of Martin Jacques’s new book, “When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order” has a willfully alarmist ring to it, signaling the rise of China as the new global superpower and the coming fall of America and the rest of the West. Mr. Jacques, a columnist for The Guardian of London, argues that “we stand on the eve of a different kind of world,” and that common assumptions in the West — China will become increasingly like us, and the international system “will remain broadly as it now is with China acquiescing in the status quo” — are symptoms of Americans’ state of denial.
This book says we can expect, in the near future, the loss of American preeminence, the fall of the West, and the global dominance of a Chinese civilization-state. China will not just take its place at the top of the international order, it will fundamentally change it. “We stand on the eve of a different kind of world,” author Martin Jacques asserts.
And what is the motor of this epochal change? Rapid economic growth that will continue for decades. Following cousins and neighbors, hundreds of millions of Chinese peasants will leave farms, migrate to cities, and become prosperous. This inexorable process could see the industrious Chinese develop the world’s largest economy, probably by 2027 (Goldman Sachs’s latest prediction). And the recent global downturn, now barely a year old, will hasten the erosion of America’s strength and accelerate China’s rise.
TWO THOUSAND AND NINE has been a momentous year for the world, but especially for China. Late last year, with the Olympics barely over, the global financial crisis delivered a body blow to its economy. Facing the disastrous decline of export markets and the jobs they supported, the government engineered a major stimulus package, and the country now seems to have staged a miraculous recovery. And while economists continue to debate the dimensions and downstream costs of the policies behind the upturn, China has been taking a great propaganda windfall from the financial embarrassment of many western states, not least the United States. Even Australia, which suffered less than most, has owed its resilience primarily to China and – if you believe the media – has found itself on the back foot in a whole series of its dealings with that country.
Even before the financial collapse, the old order was crumbling. A new order, dominated by China, was emerging. So argues journalist Martin Jacques, author of “When China Rules the World.”
Mr. Jacques believes the People’s Republic of China will be a great power, and soon. More significantly, he predicts that the PRC will supplant rather than accommodate the West.
It’s a radical message. Mr. Jacques observes: “Even now, with signs of a growing challenge from China, the West remains the dominant geopolitical and cultural force. Such has been the extent of Western influence that it is impossible to think of the world without it, or imagine what the world would have been like if it had never happened.”
Books about China’s ascendancy to a leading world power are often prefaced by the word “if,” but author Martin Jacques has defied the formula by giving his book the eye-catching title, When China Rules the World: The Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the End of the Western World. The British writer, broadcaster and former visiting professor at Renmin University of China, is currently promoting his thought-provoking and somewhat controversial work.
Published by Penguin in June, Jacques’ latest book is a comprehensive and richly detailed analysis of China’s ascendancy and influence he believes it will have on East Asia and the rest of the world – including the West.