UN at 80: Still Vital Amid U.S. Friction and China’s Push for Reform

06/09/25, APT

Martin Jacques argues that the UN remains the most representative platform for global dialogue but must be reformed to reflect today’s realities. He warns that any retreat by the US by the UN would harm global cooperation. He welcomed China’s consistent support for UN agencies and multilateralism.

Martin Jacques on China’s military parade

06/09/25, CGTN

Martin Jacques discusses what role the military parade play in helping societies remember the past.

Produced by CGTN Europe.

Neglecting China’s contributions: Western interpretation of WWII is frozen in the past

06/09/2025, Global Times

The World War II and the Chinese People’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression are an integral part of the same historical phenomenon. In the West they may be treated as separate entities, but they became inextricably intertwined as a part of the same global conflict against fascism, one based in Europe, the other in East Asia. We should think of both of them as part of the Second World War (1931-45). They resulted in a huge loss of life, both civilian and military, especially in China and the Soviet Union, but the world that emerged from it, with the benefit of hindsight, was vastly better than the world of the many decades that preceded it.

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Europe’s Failure of Initiative in the Tariff War

21/07/2025, Global Times

When the US administration seeks to redefine America’s relationship with the world, including Europe, the latter’s response has been one of damage limitation. It has desperately sought to persuade the US to continue supporting the war against Russia in Ukraine, while, in order to mollify Washington, the European members of NATO have unanimously agreed to increase their defence expenditure to 5 percent of GDP by 2035. The EU has failed to take any serious initiative on tariffs, despite having had over three months to do so. Meanwhile the US administration is once more on the warpath, threatening a tariff increase of 30 percent on August 1.

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Understanding the Trump phenomenon

12/06/2025

The first Trump administration signalled the birth of a powerful new movement in US politics, albeit one that was often incoherent and divided. With the second Trump administration, the MAGA movement has come of age, its project is now much clearer. It represents a fundamental rupture in US politics, and Western politics more generally. What are its key characteristics?

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Martin Jacques on China’s military parade

06/09/25, CGTN

Martin Jacques discusses what role the military parade play in helping societies remember the past.

Produced by CGTN Europe.

Civilization state versus nation-state

This article was the most read article in April 2020. The original copy was published on the 15th January, 2011. The embedded video is extracted from an interview with Fu Xiaotian on Talk with World Leaders (Phoenix TV) on the 18th June, 2020

China confronts Europe with an enormous problem: we do not understand it

China confronts Europe with an enormous problem: we do not understand it. Worse, we are not even conscious of the fact. We insist on seeing the world through our Western prism. No other tradition or history or culture can compare. Ours is superior to all and others, in deviating from ours, are diminished as a consequence. This speaks not of our wisdom but our ignorance, an expression not of our cosmopolitanism but our insularity and provincialism. It is a consequence of being in the ascendant for at least two centuries, if not rather longer. Eurocentrism – or perhaps we should say western-centrism – has become our universal yardstick against which, in varying degrees, all others fail. (more…)

Hong Kong: The crisis that needs an end

23/12/19, CGTN

Martin Jacques speaks forthrightly on the crisis in Hong Kong and what needs to be done.

Produced by T-House for CGTN.

China, The Philippines and a New World Order

Martin Jacques delivered the Keynote Speech, titled ‘China, The Philippines and a New World Order’, at a special conference organised by the Chamber of Mines of the Philippines to a specially invited audience of leading government, media, business figures, and ambassadors, in Manila on 10 September 2019.

Watch the interview below:

Beginnings of a New World Order: The Rise of China

Martin Jacques delivered the Keynote Speech, titled ‘Beginnings of a New World Order: The Rise of China’, at This is Tomorrow, a Symposium organised by the University of Bath Institute for Policy Research (IPR).

The session was chaired by Professor Nick Pearce, and held 12 September 2019 at Arts Lecture Theatre, The Edge, University of Bath.

Video copyright held by the University of Bath.

Duterte’s ‘pivot to China’

Martin Jacques joins Karen Davila on ANC Headstart to talk about the ongoing US-China trade war, China’s handling of the situation in Hong Kong and why he thinks President Duterte’s pivot to China is the right decision.

Watch the interview below:

Chinese governance highly distinctive, remarkably effective

Martin Jacques discusses Chinese governance with People’s Daily Online on 5 July 2019.

Watch the interview below:

Why is the US moving toward a new Cold War against China?

Martin Jacques discusses the West’s fear of China’s progress, its transformed position on the world stage, and what kind of great power it will become. One-to-one interview with Liu Xin on The Point (CGTN) on 22 May 2019.

Watch the interview below:

TED Talk: Understanding the Rise of China

This hugely successful TED talk in London has now had over 4 million views. Martin Jacques asks: How do we in the West make sense of China and its phenomenal rise?

Can the West’s democracy survive China’s rise to dominance?

The following article by Martin Jacques was a contribution to the debate on the Economist website on the theme ‘Should the West worry about the threat to liberal values posed by China’s rise?’

For long the West has thought that history is on its side, that the global future would and should be in its own image. With the end of the cold war and the implosion of the Soviet Union, this conviction became stronger than ever. The future was Western; nothing else was imaginable. Of course, already, well before the end of the cold war, in 1978 to be exact, China had started its epic modernisation such that, in the annals of history, 1978 will surely prove to be a far more significant year than 1989. During China’s rise, hubris continued to shape the West’s perception and understanding of China. As the latter modernised it would become increasingly Western, it was supposed: Deng’s reforms marked the beginning of the privatisation and marketisation of the Chinese economy—its political system would in time become Western, otherwise China would inevitably fail.

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Let’s celebrate reform’s 40th anniversary

The following article by Martin Jacques appeared in China Daily, 20th January 2018.

As momentous historic events go, China’s reform period was relatively unheralded. Little did anyone realise at the time – probably no one, in fact – that 1978 would enter the history books as one of the most important years in modern history.

We should not be surprised. At the time, the Chinese economy was a mere one-twentieth of the size of the US economy, with a per capita GDP roughly on a par with that of Zambia, lower than half of the Asian average and lower than two-thirds of the African average. China’s impact on the world was very limited, even in East Asia. (more…)

‘The man of the moment in China’

(Double click on video for full screen)

Martin Jacques on China: 8 part video series

Part 1: How does China’s global outlook differ from the West’s?

‘The idea of a common future, or a sense of shared destiny, has become a very powerful theme of Chinese foreign policy’

In Part 1 of Martin Jacques on China (presented by CGTN), Martin Jacques explains China’s growing influence on the world stage, and considers why its global outlook is so different to that of Western countries. (more…)

Prescient author now rules the roost

17/11/17, China Daily, all editions worldwide
1/12/17, Daily Telegraph

Martin Jacques, the journalist and academic, is now seen by many as the man of the moment in China.

Click here to access PDF of the full article, published in China Daily on 17th November 2017. The article was written by Andrew Moody.

One to One Interview with Martin Jacques

On October 19^th, Martin Jacques did this one-to-one interview on China in Washington DC with Anand Naidoo, the host of The Heat, CGTN America’s flagship current affairs programme.

Part One:

Part Two: