BOOK REVIEW: Passing ‘baton of pre-eminence’

WHEN CHINA RULES THE WORLD: THE END OF THE WESTERN WORLD AND THE BIRTH OF A NEW GLOBAL ORDER

By Martin Jacques

Penguin Press, $29.95, 550 pages

Reviewed by Doug Bandow

Even before the financial collapse, the old order was crumbling. A new order, dominated by China, was emerging. So argues journalist Martin Jacques, author of “When China Rules the World.”

Mr. Jacques believes the People’s Republic of China will be a great power, and soon. More significantly, he predicts that the PRC will supplant rather than accommodate the West.

It’s a radical message. Mr. Jacques observes: “Even now, with signs of a growing challenge from China, the West remains the dominant geopolitical and cultural force. Such has been the extent of Western influence that it is impossible to think of the world without it, or imagine what the world would have been like if it had never happened.”

The gap between West and others is closing. The “baton of pre-eminence,” as Mr. Jacques calls it, will be passed yet again.

The most obvious contender for replacement global leader is China. However, will Beijing really “rule the world,” and if so, when?

China once was a great empire. The communist revolution reimposed a harsh unity and stability, leading Mr. Jacques to argue that the Maoist era laid “the foundations of China’s extraordinary transformation.”

Perhaps, but surely the same result could have been achieved without costing tens of millions of lives. Nevertheless, the PRC was ready to excel when it began experimenting with economic reform three decades ago.

The result has been what Mr. Jacques calls a “contested modernity.” He cites Japan as well as China in suggesting that the Asian model differs from that in the West. In fact, he argues: “The picture that emerges … is not the scale of Westernization but, for the most part, its surprisingly restricted extent.” Even so, the degree of Western influence remains significant in nations which once embraced xenophobia.

Mr. Jacques believes the West will be forced to rethink its role: “The bearer of this change will be China, partly because of it overwhelming size but also because of the nature of its culture and outlook. China, unlike Japan, has always regarded itself as universal, the center of the world, and even, for a millennium and more, believed that it actually constituted the world. The emergence of Chinese modernity immediately de-centers and relativizes the position of the West. That is why the rise of China has such far-reaching implications.”

Of course, merely thinking of oneself as the center of the world isn’t enough, as imperial China discovered. But today China’s potential is immense. Writes Mr. Jacques: “The combination of a huge population and an extremely high economic growth rate is providing the world with a completely new kind of experience.” Moreover, he contends, China is a “civilization-state,” which requires us to “understand not only China’s economic growth, but also its history, politics, culture and traditions.”

All true. Nevertheless, achieving its potential is not automatic. Mr. Jacques acknowledges that China remains a poor country. The PRC may have difficulty sustaining its growth, as well as solving serious environmental problems. Other challenges include ethnic divisions and vast economic differences between rural and urban populations and inland and coastal provinces.

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