We are now witnessing a historic change destined to transform the world. Not bad, that, for an attention-getting opening, and it is a foretaste of many provocative statements in this hand grenade of a book.
Such as the subtitle: The Rise Of The Middle Kingdom (China) And The End Of The Western World. The end? How soon? Oh, in a mere 20 or 30 years.
Economic forecasters at Goldman Sachs predict that China will overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest economy in 2027. By 2050, China’s economy will be twice the size of those of the U.S. and India, its only rivals. The only European economies in the top ten will be the UK (ninth) and Germany (10th).
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Recent books dealing with China’s unprecedented development over the last 30 years and its future have an annoyingly-repetitive habit of starting out by yelling the big facts: the country’s GDP growth, urban migration, education levels – and normally a concern or two about corruption, reforms and opacity. While these are all important issues to address, it does make the majority of these titles blend into one singular snapshot of the country.
At least journalist Martin Jacques tries a different and more anthropological tact. When China Rules the World leaves it until page 73 before it seriously starts to look at China and its current position. Until that point the book concentrates on exploring previous models of industrial revolution: Britain’s in the 1750s, the United States’ soon after, and Japan’s rise in the 19th and early 20th century following its adoption of many Western institutions and attitudes.
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“When you’re alone and life is making you lonely, you can always go: downtown.” So warbled the British singer, Petula Clark in the 1960s. However, today if solitude is your constant companion, I would suggest that you purchase a copy of this riveting book and read it on the bus and in airports – as I have been doing in recent days, with the dramatic words on the bright red cover of this weighty tome blaring insistently – and no doubt you will find, as I have, that your reading reverie will be constantly interrupted by a stream of anxious interlopers curious to know what the future may hold.
For like Petula Clark, the author too hails from London, though the startling message he brings decidedly differs from her melancholy intervention. For it is the author’s conclusion that sooner rather than later, China – a nation ruled by a Communist Party – will have the most sizeable and powerful economy in the world and that this will have manifold economic, cultural, psychological (and racial) consequences. Strangely enough, Jacques – one of the better respected intellectuals in the North Atlantic community – does not dwell upon how this monumental turn of events occurred. To be sure, he pays obeisance to the leadership of Comrade Deng Xiaoping, who in 1978, opened China’s economy to massive inward foreign direct investment, which set the stage for the 21st Century emergence of the planet’s most populous nation. Read more >
中國改革開放三十年，經濟上取得驕人成績。心存「恐慌」的西方國家每隔一段日子，就會拋出一套「中國威脅論」；權威的「神算子」更預測，中國經濟實力到2030年時會超越美國，成為世界中心。
有關「中國威脅論」的書籍，近年熱爆歐美書市。英國上月出版一書涉及類似的威脅論，書未寫完，已轟動全球。書中提到的中國威脅，非指經濟或軍事，而是文化威脅。
作者認為，中國將以文化統治世界。到時，周邊國家向中國朝貢；有更多人看中國電影和學習漢語。 文：余綺平 圖：網上圖片
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This long and repetitive book is exactly about what it says on the cover. Unlike Martin Jacques I hesitate to say the same thing again and again, but his point is that the Chinese have a very long, tenacious, unified, and enduring culture that is overtaking the ‘West’ – he means the United States, a country of recent origin compared to the 5,000-year-old Chinese civilisation-state. Some time in the mid-term future the Chinese will be global masters.
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MARTIN JACQUES’S MAMMOTH study of the rise of China begins well enough, emphasising the country’s otherness while insisting that otherness does not have to mean alien. He is frank, too, about China’s unembarrassed racial and hierarchic view of the world. He is also right to dismiss demands for instant democracy as impracticable, though perhaps an innate anti-Americanism prevents him adding that they usually come from the people who smirk at US naivety in seeking to impose it on Iraq.
Very soon, however, his zealotry in cutting the West down to size becomes tiresome. The rise of China is to be welcomed, and there might be something in his thesis that for the first time since the rise of the nation-state (China, he argues is a civilisation-state) modernity will not be an exclusively western concept.
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Without inner harmony, the world will see ‘Pax Sinica’ only as a symbol for an angry dragon rather than a gentle panda
It’s never easy to predict the future. There are so many variables that are beyond a man’s foresight. A “black swan” that is out of the norm can pop up anywhere, anytime. And yet, only a few people object to the forecast that the 21st century will be the era of China. Those who were buoyed by the neo-imperialistic fantasy of “Pax Americana” said the 21st century would be the era of the United States, but their voices were buried under the sandstorms of Iraq and the collapse of Wall Street. “Pax Sinica” is not a matter of supposition: It has become recognized as a matter of time.
Goldman Sachs’ 2007 forecast is often quoted in talks about the China’s economic future. According to the report, China will catch up with the United States’ gross domestic product by 2027 and become the world’s largest economy. By 2050, China’s GDP is expected to be two times larger than that of the United States.
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中国的崛起将改变的不仅仅是世界经济格局，还将彻底动摇我们的思维和生活方式
以前，谈论中国统治世界话题的书通常以“如果”开始。如今，开场白更多转向假设性的“当……时”。这就是我们所生活的时代。马丁·雅克关于中国崛起的著作长达550页，但对其飞速经济发展是否不可阻挡的问题却惜墨如金。该书几乎完全不理会有关对中央王国的另一种流行——且看似很合理的——假设：“当中国奇迹破灭时。”
雅克的书基于如下推断：到2050年，中国将成为世界最大经济体，超过美国和那时的第三大经济体印度。借助GDP“无情的手段”，中国将在政治和军事上成为全球最强大的国家。雅克认为，中国的崛起将推翻对何为现代的“西方式”看法。他说，有关全球化的想当然结论认为，其他国家现代化会打上西方烙印，“我们习惯于西方化甚至美国化的世界，不能想象若非如此世界将会怎样”。
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Watching Tim Geithner, the US treasury secretary, in Beijing last month, it was easy to be struck by how times have changed. Most visiting American dignitaries not long ago seized the opportunity to harangue the Chinese over human rights, or over their undervalued currency that was unfairly helping export sales at the expense of competitors. Geithner instead beseeched the Chinese to keep buying US government bonds, as they have done by the hundreds of billions, or else sink the US by impairing its ability to raise money. He went out of his way to reassure the Chinese that the steps taken by the Obama administration were going to work to restore growth.
The collapsed global economy stands as a damning criticism of unfettered capitalism and the light regulation that would seem to separate the West from countries such as China. As if that were not a big enough blow, the West has also taken to asking China for far greater assistance with a host of other problems, from North Korea to the environment. China isn’t on the ascent any more; it has risen.
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Martin Jacques has written movingly and angrily about the death of his Indian-Malaysian wife in a Hong Kong hospital, claiming that the tragedy arose from a deep Chinese prejudice against anyone with a dark skin. So it comes as quite a surprise to discover that, far from warning of the dangers of a world likely to be dominated by a racist superpower, the author admires the Chinese enormously and views China’s self-proclaimed “peaceful rise” with a remarkable degree of equanimity.
Jacques claims that “In an important sense, China does not aspire to run the world because it already believes itself to be the centre of the world, this being its natural role and position”, and discusses sensitively and in depth what it means to be the “middle kingdom”. He also argues that China is essentially a “civilisation state” rather than a western-style nation state. “The term civilisation normally suggests a rather distant and indirect influence and an inert and passive presence,” he notes. “In China’s case, however, it is not only history that lives but civilisation itself: the notion of a living civilisation provides the primary identity and context by which the Chinese think of their country and define themselves.”
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