Martin Jacques's Blog, page 2

Why do we continue to ignore China's rise? Arrogance

Martin Jacques, author of a bestseller on China, asks why the west continues to approach the rise of the new global powerhouse with a closed mind. We obsess over details of the race for the White House, yet give scant regard to the battle to replace China's current leadership. If we fail to pay heed to the political and economic shift of gravity, we will be sidelined by history

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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China's path to reform | Martin Jacques

The west presumes there is little discussion and argument in Beijing over policy. This is wrong

Last week's dismissal of Bo Xilai, the party secretary of Chongqing province, casts this autumn's Chinese Communist party congress, with the anticipated replacement of President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao by Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang, in a dramatic new light.

Bo Xilai, son of a former Communist party leader and veteran of the Long March, has been exploiting his office for a thinly veiled campaign for a place on the party's nine-member standing committee that runs China. His fall was triggered when his righthand man in Chongqing, the police chief Wang Lijun, sought refuge in the American consulate in Chengdu, claiming that his life was under threat from Bo.

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