History is passing our country and our continent by. Once we were the centre of the world, the place from where power, ideas and the future emanated. If we drew a map of the world, Europe was at its centre. That was how it was for 200 years. No more. The world is tilting on its axis in even more dramatic style than when Europe was on the rise. We are witnessing the greatest changes the world has seen for more than two centuries. We are barely aware of the fact. And therein lies the problem.
I vividly recall when the first edition of my book When China Rules the World was published almost three years ago. At the many talks I gave, I showed a Goldman Sachs chart that projected that the Chinese economy would overtake the US economy in size in 2027. Invariably someone would point out this was only a projection, that the future was never an extrapolation of the past, that it was most unlikely the forecast would come to pass and certainly not in this time frame. No one suggested that the projection underestimated the date, even though the western financial crisis was already almost a year old.
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Martin Jacques defied the odds to expose racial prejudice and medical negligence in a Hong Kong hospital. Here he tells of his feelings on learning that his 10-year struggle was over
The settlement approved by the Hong Kong high court last Wednesday in the legal action brought by me and my 11-year-old son, Ravi, against the Hospital Authority over the death of Harinder Veriah, my wife and Ravi’s mother, represents a major victory. It has taken 10 years and a huge commitment of emotion, time and resources. We have faced monumental obstacles. From the outset the Hospital Authority denied any responsibility and it has used its limitless funds to try to bludgeon us into submission.
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The first problem with this book is its title. There is no prospect of China ruling the world. This is a country whose uncertainties of identity and economic frailties prevent it from ever projecting hegemonic hard and soft power. Its authoritarian institutions, far from being a source of strength, are a source of weakness. China is simultaneously big but poor, powerful but weak. And there, until wholesale political change occurs, it will stay, notwithstanding its considerable growth rates and economic achievement. Indeed, its current economic model, dependent on high exports and mountainous savings, is disintegrating, as both insiders and close observers recognise.
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Hamilton is an inspiration to black Britain – but his sport will remain white, writes Martin Jacques
There is little doubt, even at this early stage of his first season in Formula One, that Lewis Hamilton is a special talent, far eclipsing recent British drivers such as Jenson Button and David Coulthard. He has the great advantage of driving for one of F1’s most successful teams in a sport where equipment counts for far more than in any other. Michael Schumacher in a Toro Rosso would have made for great entertainment, but even his genius would still have been reduced to life in mid-field. Even with the advantage of driving for McLaren, though, Hamilton still looks exceptional – extremely fast, cool, mature beyond his years, and not in the least fazed by having the world champion, Fernando Alonso, as his team-mate. From his very first race, it felt as if Hamilton was born to be at the front of the grid, displaying, like Schumacher in 1991, an extraordinary self-confidence, an inner-belief that he was inferior to no driver. Yet this has been combined with a humility that is at once endearing and disarming.
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The torrent of racial abuse at Spanish matches is the product of a society that is in flux and is also uneasy with immigration. But don’t be complacent, warns Martin Jacques. This is an enemy that English football has yet to defeat
Getafe is a small industrial satellite town on the southern edge of Madrid. Its football ground is modest in the extreme, all-seated but covered on just one side, with a capacity of a mere 13,000. The ground is lined on two sides by soulless, multi-lane roads, on another by a building site and on the fourth by five-storey public housing. Getafe hardly seems the appropriate place to take the temperature of Spanish football. But on a Sunday evening in March, the club, lingering in the lower reaches of the Primera Liga, played Real Madrid . It may only be 15 kilometres from the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu, Real’s temple to football in central Madrid, to the Coliseum Alfonso Pérez, Getafe’s humble home on its outskirts, but the clubs occupy two entirely different worlds.
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Football has conquered the world. Some of the brightest stars in Portugal this summer will have been born in Africa and Latin America, and top European clubs increasingly sign players from every continent. Martin Jacques talks to players, fans, businessmen and the head of Fifa to discover how globalisation is changing football – for better and worse – and why international competitions may yet save the game from rampant greed
The European Championship was once a lily-white occasion. No longer. The teams of the former great imperial powers, such as England, France and Holland, are today kaleidoscopes of colour, mirrors image of the people who populate their great urban centres. Their sides are ethnically diverse – breathtakingly so in the case of France – a tribute to Africa and the Caribbean as much as Europe itself. When England play France on 13 June, up to half the players on the pitch will be black or brown. The tournament may be called the European Championship, but it is also, at the same time, a global occasion, invigorated and inspired by the rhythms and athleticism of other continents.
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When Harinder Veriah had an epileptic fit more than a year ago, no one realised it would trigger a chain of events that have helped expose Hong Kong’s great ‘dirty secret’.
On 2 January 2000 Veriah, known to her friends as Hari, died. Shortly before, she told her husband, the British journalist Martin Jacques, that she was at the ‘bottom of the pile’ at the hospital where she was being treated. She meant her skin colour and Indian race were responsible for a lack of attention.
Today an unusually large coalition of 12 organisations, including Indian, Filipino, Thai and Nepalese groups, is holding a memorial for Veriah and meeting to campaign for anti-racial discrimination legislation. Vandana Rajwani, a lawyer who is one of the meeting’s organisers, says they have been inundated with people wanting to participate.
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The Chinese newspapers in Hong Kong reported last week’s inquest on Harinder Veriah, wife of former editor of Marxism Today Martin Jacques, in bold characters.
‘Indian lawyer suspects colour discrimination, then loses life in local hospital.’ They headlined the tears shed in court by Jacques, described as a ‘famous English voice’, as he made the charge.
‘I am at the bottom of the pile,’ she had said to him in the Ruttonjee Hospital where she was under observation after suffering an epileptic fit. ‘I am the only Indian here, everyone else is Chinese.’
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