When China Rules The World

by Martin Jacques

imperial powers in decline are almost invariably in denial of the fact. That was the case with Britain from 1918 onwards and, to judge by the behaviour of the Bush administration – which singularly failed to read the runes, preferring to believe that the US was about to rule the world in a new American century when the country was actually in decline and on the eve of a world in which it would find its authority considerably diminished – the US may well make the same mistake, perhaps on a much grander scale.

The identity of the Chinese was overwhelmingly formed before China assumed the status of a nation-state, unlike in the West, where the identity of people, in both Europe and the United States, is largely expressed in terms of the nation-state. The Chinese, in constantly making reference to what they describe as their 5,000-year history, are aware that what defines them is not a sense of nationhood but of civilization. In this context, China should not primarily be seen as a nation-state but rather as a civilization-state. The implications of this are far-reaching: it is simply not possible to regard China as like, or equivalent to, any other state.

four points – civilization-state, race, tributary state, and unity

The role played by colonization, in this context, is a reminder that European industrialization was far from an endogenous process.18 The New World – together with the discovery of large quantities of coal in Britain – removed the growing pressure on land that was endangering Britain’s economic development. China was to enjoy no such good fortune.

the explanation for the rise of Europe was in large part to do with relatively short-term factors rather than preordained by its slow but steady transformation over previous centuries;

the development of Roman-inspired law – essentially through Christianity in the eleventh and twelfth centuries – helped to establish the concept and reality of an independent legal system, which played a significant role in the subsequent entrenchment of property rights.

It was the sheer weight of industrial society that was to lend modern Europe many of its most distinctive characteristics, notably the centrality of class conflict and importance of trade unions.

India – by far Britain’s most important colony (it was colonized by the East India Company from the mid eighteenth century, and formally annexed by Britain in 1857)59 – had a per capita GDP of $550 in 1700, $533 in 1820, and $533 in 1870. In other words, it was lower in 1870 than it had been in 1700, or even 1600 (when it was also $550). It then rose to $673 in 1914 but fell back to $619 in 1950. Over a period of 250 years, most of it under some form of British rule, India’s per capita GDP increased by a mere 5.5 per cent. Compare that with India’s fortunes after independence: already by 1973 its per capita GDP had risen to $853 and by 2001 to $1,957.

Broadly speaking, cultures can be divided into those that are based on guilt, like the Christian-derived West, and those that are based on shame. The sense of guilt in the former stems from the idea of original sin and the belief that left to their own devices – and inevitable base instincts – people are inherently sinful. Shame, on the other hand, is the product of monitoring one’s actions by viewing one’s self from the standpoint of others. Japanese society is rooted in shame: it is how one is regarded by others, rather than one’s own individual conscience, which is critical. A sense of guilt can be salved by an act of apology; shame, in contrast, is not nearly as easily assuaged. The consequence is very different patterns of behaviour. While in the West, for example, suicide is frowned upon as a selfish act, in Japan it is seen as the ultimate way of settling one’s giri and, therefore, as a noble act. As a result, it is far more common:31 there are 35.6 male suicides per 100,000 population in Japan, in contrast to 17.9 for the US, 10.8 for the UK and 19.7 for Germany.

Japan’s colonial expansion, which started within six years of the Meiji Restoration, also owed much to a desire to emulate Europe: to be a modern power, Japan believed that it needed to have its own complement of colonies. These territorial ambitions eventually brought Japan to its knees in the Second World War, culminating in its defeat and surrender.

One of the major problems facing the reformers was that modernization became intimately associated with the West at a time when the latter was colonizing and humiliating the country: far from being seen as patriots, they were regarded as tainted by the West or, worse, as traitors. As a result, the growing hostility amongst the Chinese towards the West was to work against the process of reform.

The absence of a civil society and an autonomous public realm in Communist China is not a new phenomenon: China has never had either.

‘an enormous amount of circumstantial evidence suggests that culturally transmitted traits are stable over time and in the face of changing environments.’

it would be well-nigh impossible to create an alphabetic language which could act as the writing system of so many different Chinese languages

With the growing appetite for things Chinese, it seems likely that Chinese tea-houses will become a common sight in many Western cities before too long.

the power of identity, the rejection of outsiders and the strength of native racism is primarily a consequence of the nature of the indigenous process of socialization.

The Chinese state has never been regarded in a narrowly political way, but more broadly as a source of meaning, moral behaviour and order. That it should be accorded such a universal role is a consequence of the fact that it is so deeply rooted in the culture that it is seen as part of the natural order of things.

Their greater all-round authority, rooted in the symbiotic relationship between paternalism and dependency, can also enable them to take a longer-term attitude towards society and its needs.

suggesting, in a famous passage, that there was nothing wrong in allowing the rich to get richer (and then eventually paying higher taxes to help the poor).

In 2006 the share of GDP accounted for by R&D in the European Union was 1.76 per cent, the US 2.62 per cent, and Japan 3.39 per cent, compared with 1.42 per cent in China.

China’s provinces are far more diverse than Europe’s nation-states, even when Eastern Europe and the Balkans are included.

It is not insignificant that the Chinese term for nation-state is ‘nation-family’. As Huang Ping suggests, in China ‘many would take for granted that the nation-state is an extended family’.

While Beijingers are every bit as tall as Caucasians, those from Guangzhou tend to be rather shorter.

If Europe provided the narrative and concepts that have informed not just Western but world history over the past two centuries, so China may do rather similarly for the next century or so, and thereby furnish the world with an entirely different story and set of concepts: namely the idea of unity rather than fragmentation, that of the civilization-state rather than the nation-state, that of the tributary system rather than the Westphalian system and colonialism, a distinctive Chinese notion of race, and an organizing political dynamic of centralization/decentralization rather than modernization/conservatism.

New York’s global status is, however, largely a post-1945 phenomenon. In 1900, during the first wave of globalization, the world’s capital was London. And in 1500, arguably Florence was the most important city in the world (though in that era it could hardly have been described as the global capital). In 1000 perhaps Kaifeng in China enjoyed a similar status, albeit unknown to most of the world, while in AD 1 it was probably Rome.19 Looking forward once again, it seems likely that in fifty years’ time, if not earlier, Beijing will have assumed the status of de facto global capital.

The Western world order has – in its post-1945 idiom – placed a high premium on democracy within nation-states while attaching zero importance to democracy at the global level. As a global order, it has been anti-democratic and highly authoritarian. The emergence of China as the globally dominant nation is very unlikely to usher in a new kind of democratic global governance, but the rise of developing nations like India, Brazil and Russia, along with China, will bring, in a rough and ready way, a far more democratic global economy.

In some Western countries, notably Australia and also in Milan in Italy, where there have been clashes between the increasingly prosperous Chinese community and the local police, there has been evidence of strong resentment towards the local Chinese.

This relative restraint touches on another dimension of the Chinese mentality, namely a willingness to be patient, to operate according to timescales which are alien to the Western political mind. This is eloquently summed up by former Chinese premier Zhou Enlai’s reported response to Henry Kissinger’s question in 1972 about the consequences of the French Revolution: ‘It is too early to say.’

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 this attitude is likely to strengthen as China becomes a major global power. As a consequence, it may prove to be rather less overtly aggressive than the West has been, but that does not mean that it will be less assertive or less determined to impose its will and leave its imprint. But it will tend to do this in a different way,

Its underlying characteristics, as discussed in Chapter 7, can be summed up as follows: an overriding preoccupation with unity as the dominant imperative of Chinese politics; the huge diversity of the country; a continental size which means that the normal feedback loops of a conventional nation-state do not generally apply; a political sphere that has never shared power with other institutions like the Church or business; the state as the apogee of society, above and beyond all other institutions; the absence of any tradition of popular sovereignty; and the centrality of moral suasion and ethical example.

Europe’s decline, furthermore, will certainly continue into the indefinite future. Its remarkable role over the last 400 years will never be repeated and will become an historical curiosity in the manner of the Greek and Roman Empires, whose present-day incarnations as Greece and Italy reflect the grandeur of their imperial past in little more than the survival of some of their historic buildings.

The fact that China’s true European counterpart, the European Union, is similarly without democracy only serves to reinforce the point.

The use of the renminbi in the settlement of trade will enable Chinese firms to buy their imports and sell their exports in their own currency, rather than dollars (or, to a much lesser, euros) as is the present norm, thereby avoiding the not inconsiderable transactional costs of moving between different currencies, a privilege until now largely reserved for American firms.

For a pessimistic view of China, see ibid., Chapter 21; Eric L. Jones, The European Miracle: Environments, Economics, and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).