With the prospect of China’s economy surpassing the United States’ in less than 20 years, the great debate today is over whether China will integrate into the existing world order or seek to transform it. Invoking the grand logic of the rise and fall of great powers, Jacques, a journalist, makes the case that China will dominate and reshape the global system. He argues that although China’s first steps toward global preeminence are economic, eventually its political and cultural influence will be even greater — and that, overall, “China’s impact on the world will be at least as great as that of the United States over the last century, probably far greater.” Jacques also claims that Beijing appears to offer the world an alternative route to modernity — and therefore a different vision of world order.
Having adopted the trappings of Western capitalism while embracing a more illiberal conception of social order, China is modernizing, not westernizing. Therefore, Jacques argues, its coming hegemony will reorient politics and society. But the book is better at describing differences between the East and the West — their cities, customs, values — than alternative logics of global order. It does not explore in any depth what it will mean for China to become a global hegemon. Hegemony involves building a system of institutions that other states seek to join, overseeing an extensive system of alliances, and providing public goods. The United States’ liberal orientation has facilitated its leadership. It remains to be seen whether China can build a Pax Sinica without an open, rule-based world order.
– G. John Ikenberry
While many are already talking about the notion of a shift in power from West to East, a thought-provoking book by author Martin Jacques called When China Rules the World takes this even further by proclaiming that China will not only thrive in the 21st century, but will do so at the expense of the United States.
“I would expect, and I think we’re witnessing, the beginnings of the decline of America, America as the nation that exercises economic hegemony in the world. I think that the origins of the present crisis actually lie in the inability of the US any longer to be able to sustain and underwrite the international economic system of which it is the architect and patron. That is a deep problem. The indebtedness means it cannot do it any more – the multiple indebtedness.”
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Martin Jacques’ When China Rules The World: The End of The Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order (Penguin Press/ Nov 2009) carries a provocative title, but it should not be a surprise. Anyone can see this outcome coming by simply projecting economic growth in the U.S. and China at roughly their current rates; Goldman Sachs gave such conclusions credibility in 2007 when it concluded that China would surpass U.S. GDP in 2027, and double it by 2050. Jacques’ book suffers not from an overly wild imagination, but from taking entirely too long to get this already obvious conclusion, and then not exploring enough about what that means for either Britain (his nation) or the U.S.A.
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While the decades since the Vietnam War may be most known for their startling technological developments, they have also spawned a chic genre of literature: the ‘America is in Decline’ tract. What started most prominently with the work of Paul Kennedy has turned into a veritable cottage industry. Tomes in this category have included Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West, Bruce Horton’s Decline and Fall, and, most recently, Fareed Zakaria’s The End of America, which Barack Obama was famously photographed holding last summer. Some of these books argue that the decline is inevitable as a result of “cultural decadence,” others argue decline is a result of “environmental devastation,” and others still attribute the supposed decline to falling birthrates. In the 1980s and early 1990s, many of the more-economically oriented books of the genre argued that the West’s decline was partially a result of the rise of Japan. Today, many are devoted to the proposition that western decline is linked to the rise of another Asian tiger: the People’s Republic of China.
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Barack Obama’s visit to China comes at an interesting time. I am engrossed in Martin Jacques’ book, When China Rules the World, bought because of its compelling title.
Jacques reckons that by 2027 China’s economy will have overtaken the US. China will dominate, but not in ways Westerners understand.
“China’s rise signals the end of the global dominance of the West and the emergence of a world which (China) will come to shape in a host of different ways and which will become increasingly disconcerting and unfamiliar to those living in the West.”
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A British journalist with experience reporting from China and Japan, Jacques explores the increasing influence of a strengthening China on international relations. Citing economic statistics in abundance, Jacques depicts China’s booming economy in relative ascendance over those of Europe, Japan, and the U.S. The author argues, however, that China’s civilization rather than its GDP will be the crucial impact on the international system, which he sees as Western-created, U.S.-dominated, and—given Jacques’ certainty that the U.S. is a declining power—destined to be modified by China.
Essentially, Jacques refutes that Western theories of modernization and democratization apply to China and predicts a Chinese style of modernity characterized by a revival of a Chinese historical sense of civilizational superiority. Delivering a tour d’horizon of China’s relations with foreign countries, Jacques envisions their future development as comparable to a comeback of imperial China’s tributary system. Jacques’ views will be discussion starters for trend-spotting students of the world scene.
– Gilbert Taylor
It should not take a political economist to see how the scores of books being published on China’s “rise” vary in quality and outlook, reflecting as much the standpoint of their respective authors as the subject itself.
Doomsayers insist modern China will break down or collapse, Cold Warriors persistently condemn Beijing for whatever it does, alarmists panic at the thought of “communist” China succeeding at anything, pragmatists take a balanced view of the big picture, and incurable optimists see only the positive side.
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Regardless of how you feel about China, one thing is clear- that it has captured the imagination of much of the world for good and bad. With its surging economy and growing global importance, there has certainly not been a dearth of writers, academics and journalists who believe China will be the next superpower. Leading UK intellectual, Asia expert and journalist Martin Jacques’ latest book boldly proclaims that not only will China become a superpower that may lead the world, but its rise will signify the end of the dominance of the West (the U.S. and Western Europe) in global affairs.
With When China Rules the World, he has written an ambitious, insightful and wide-ranging piece of work that argues that China’s rise will shake up the world order, due to its unique sense of identity and culture.
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This is a formidable book which is also provocative. At its Kuala Lumpur launch, the author Martin Jacques asked that its title not be read literally, but its subtitle The Rise of The Middle Kingdom and The End of The Western World will not sit easy even among those who might not mourn the passing of that Western World.
The narrative is relentless, with remorseless, somewhat scary, conclusions. The central thesis is clear-headed: China will come to be the dominant power in the world and will bring to it its own hegemonic system based on its long history, civilization and culture which have special embedded characteristics different from those in the global system we know today. It will not be the same world simply with China at the top. It will be a world re-formed in China’s image where these special characteristics will determine the values, standards and practices of the international system.
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China is rising, and we don’t know what kind of world its ascendancy will bring. This new work by Martin Jacques, former editor of Marxism Today, takes the debate a step forward with an argument about China’s impact, in terms of not only hard power but especially the soft power that emanates from its vast economy. In translation, this book may do extremely well in China, but in the West it is likely to become a reference point in a mainly negative sense.
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