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The Observer, Sunday 25 March 2012 

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

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.

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guardian.co.uk, Sunday 18 March 2012 

China's path to reform

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.

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China will replace the United States as the world's dominant power. In so doing, it will not become more western but the world will become more Chinese.

Jacques argues that we cannot understand China in western terms but only through its own history and culture. To this end, he introduces a powerful set of ideas including China as a civilization-state, the tributary system, the Chinese idea of race, a very different concept of the state, and the principle of contested modernity.

First published in 2009 to widespread critical acclaim - and controversy - 'When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Rise of a New Global Order' has sold a quarter of a million copies, been translated into eleven languages, nominated for two major literary awards, and has been the subject of an immensely popular TED talk. In the three years since the first edition was published, the book has transformed the debate about China worldwide and proved remarkably prescient.

In this greatly expanded and fully updated paperback edition, with nearly three-hundred pages of new material backed up by the latest statistical data, Martin Jacques renews his assault on conventional thinking about China's ascendancy, showing how its impact will be as much political and cultural as economic, thereby transforming the world as we know it."

 


TedTalk -- London on 2 November 2010