Product Description

For well over two hundred years we have lived in a western-made world, one where the very notion of being modern is inextricably bound up with being western. The twenty-first century will be different. The rise of China, India and the Asian tigers means that, for the first time, modernity will no longer be exclusively western. The west will be confronted with the fact that its systems, institutions and values are no longer the only ones on offer. The key idea of Martin Jacques's ground-breaking new book is that we are moving into an era of contested modernity. The central player in this new world will be China. Continental in size and mentality, China is a 'civilisation-state' whose characteristics, attitudes and values long predate its existence as a nation-state. Although clearly influenced by the west, its extraordinary size and history mean that it will remain highly distinct, and as it exercises its rapidly growing power it will change much more than the world's geo-politics. The nation-state as we understand it will no longer be globally dominant, and the Westphalian state-system will be transformed; ideas of race will be redrawn. This profound and far-sighted book explains for the first time the deeper meaning of the rise of China.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5064 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-25
• Binding: Hardcover
• 576 pages

About the Author
Martin Jacques is currently a visiting research fellow at the London School of Economics Asia Research Centre. He has recently been a visiting professor at Remnin University, Beijing, the International Centre for Chinese Studies, Aichi University and at Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, and was a senior visiting research fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. He was editor of the highly respected journal Marxism Today until its closure in 1991. He was founder of the UK think-tank Demos, has been a columnist for The Times and the Sunday Times and was deputy editor of the Independent. He currently writes a regular column for the Guardian. He is the co-editor and co-author of The Forward March of Labour Halted? (1981), The Politics of Thatcherism (1983) and New Times (1989).

Customer Reviews

Essential reading for those with a keen interest in China and its current development
This book comprises an extended and comprehensive overview of the ascendancy of the modern Chinese state and the impact that ascendancy will have for East Asia in particular, and the rest of the world in general - including the West. The discussion focuses attention on eight central themes. First, China is characteristically a civilisation-state rather than a conventional nation-state as defined by the Westphalian system, although it possesses the characteristics of both. Second, China is most likely to conceive of itself, and be recognised by others, as a tributary-state - particularly in East Asia. It will then probably revert to the kind of relationship, with its East Asian periphery, that obtained prior to the end of the nineteenth century. Third, as the twenty-first century matures we will become more clearly aware of the distinctive Chinese attitude to race and ethnicity, which does not harmonise or fit comfortably with current Western concepts and praxis. Fourth, due to its massive land mass, China operates on a vast continental scale: when that is taken into consideration, together with its equally massive population, this fact alone differentiates China from any other nation-state. Fifth, the nature of the Chinese polity is highly distinctive, because the erstwhile imperial dynasty did not desire and was not obliged or required to share power with any other institutions or interest groups. Sixth, Chinese modernity is characterised by the rapidity of the country's economic transformation, and its recently acquired financial importance now has significant global influence. Seventh, since 1949 China has been ruled by a `communist' regime, which has been influenced by a detectable Confucian syncretism. Eighth, China will for the next several decades, probably until the middle of the twenty-first century, combine the characteristics of both a developed and a developing country.

This book is of essential reading for those who take a keen interest in the progressive and rapid development of the Chinese state and its economy, which already has had far reaching consequences, particularly as it progressively displaces the United States of America a the world's hegemonic power: an event that is likely to occur during this century. I can well remember an `amusing' recommendation made during the early years of the Cold War: "Optimists should learn to speak Russian, while pessimists should learn to speak Chinese." It would now appear that the pessimists would have made the right choice, although there are no obvious signs that the Chinese ascendancy will necessarily have a malign effect on the West, or on those nations which embrace the prevailing Western ideology. Stuart E Hopkins

When China Rules the World
The fact that China will "overtake" the US in 2027 or thereabouts is clearly a topic of great importance to which we pay too little attention. Martin Jacques is very well-informed, and presents an impressive array of facts - many of which are no doubt already out-of-date in view of China's rapid pace of development. I was interested by his clear exposition of some key points to show how Westerners tend to underestimate the Chinese - the irrelevance to China of the Western-style "nation state" of fairly recent origin, the fact that China is a "civilisation state" which takes the tolerant view of "one civilisation, many systems", the influence of Confucius - even in a nominally communist state - the patient, long-term approach of its wiser leaders, and so on. However, it seemed to me that the same points were reiterated to the point of tedium, although this had the benefit that one could dip into the book at any chapter and get the gist of the whole, plus the repetition helped to fix points in one's mind.

I am not qualified to comment as an expert, but did feel that Jacques dismissed western values, particularly those of the US, in too simplistic a way - yes, it was the country which elected George Bush Junior, but it also gave refuge to Tom Paine, who wrote and debated ideas with Americans of the day in compelling language which still has the power to inspire. I know Jacques has been attacked in the press for glossing over the lack of democracy and neglect of human rights in China. He raises some valid arguments - the fact that the Chinese leadership has made the pragmatic decision to put economic development first, the fact that most western countries achieved development before they instituted democracy, and the fact that the extent of democracy in the west is debatable, particularly when practised on a large scale (as China would need to do) as in the EU. However, I think Jacques could have been more wide-ranging and reflective in his assessment of China. I recall no mention of corruption or brutality (unchecked by democracy!) or suppression of dissent - apart from brief reference to a threat to withdraw investment from Zambia if an election candidate persisted in suggesting that the country was being "colonised" by the Chinese.

On a brief visit to China, I was struck by the ugliness of much of what I saw - it seemed that much of the rich culture and beautiful artifacts of the past had been destroyed in the Cultural Revolution - I formed the impression that there is more beauty in Italy than the whole of China. This brings me to criticise Jacques' casual dismissal of the fall of the Roman and Greek empires, and what little they left, when I would have thought that their abiding influence on language, philosophy, architecture and so on was considerable. He kept referring, uncritically, to the sense of superiority of the Chinese. I would ask whether, even if in "reduced circumstances", western culture would not retain its own justified sense of the value of some things which Jacques seems to dismiss too briefly, such as the concept of the rule of law, or the ideas of the Enlightenment.

It also seemed to me that, by harping on differences, Jacques failed to acknowledge the sympathy which can arise between "thinking" members of different societies.

This potentially excellent book would have gained from a more even-handed approach.....

When China Rules The World
It is my belief that future generations will look back on the 20'th Century wars in Europe the way we today look back on the Peloponnesian War fought by the ancient Greeks. An Homeric tragedy played out on an epic scale; amidst which Western civilization destroyed itself, in a series of bitter civil wars lasting some seventy years. Even today, millions exult in the Phyrric victories over Germany, and the later Cold War 'victory' over Soviet Russia; whilst remaining blissfully unaware of the phenomenal rise in the population and industrial power of China, the course and possible effects of which, this prophetic book attempts to chart.

Napoleon was the first western leader to realize the potential of China, whilst in the 1930's Adolf Hitler gave strident warning of the 'Asiatic threat to European civilization'. Regarding himself as the chosen saviour of "a world on the brink of disaster!" he laid out a drastic programme, which if acted upon then; might have enabled Europe not only to maintain her world domination, but to establish "the Aryan millennium".

History has made her judgement on that issue, and it now seems inevitable that "the Asiatic millennium" will have begun by 2030. By then China's billion strong workforce and surging economy, with India, Japan and the Asian Tigers close behind; will have wrested economic world mastery from America's ailing hands. With an ageing, dwindling population, riven by divisions of class, race and religion; there appears little the declining power of the West can now do to prevent this momentous event, but what will the effects of this New World Order be???

Unhampered by democracy; will China's Leaders want to follow the West's example? Will China use her increasing economic base to expand her military muscle and dominate the world? Will China's increasing buying power on the World Markets reduce the rest of us to impoverished unemployment and starvation? Anyone under fifty should live to see these, and many other questions answered by the reality, so you don't need to buy or read this book; but I strongly recommend that you do. When China Rules the World: The Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the End of the Western World