Book

When China Rules the World

The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order

Martin Jacques

Penguin Group (USA), 2012

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Editorial Rating

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Innovative

Recommendation

Martin Jacques’ detailed, scholarly and thorough exploration of Chinese history, culture, business methods and future possibilities proves as paradigm changing as he believes China to be. In one volume, Jacques offers a full menu: An entrée of an overview and subtle insights followed by a main course of historical roots and futurist predictions. Perhaps most valuably, he grounds China’s business policy, theory and practices – and their likely future forms – in its history, culture and politics. His Western interpretations of China’s motives are poetic when poetry helps readers understand and hard-nosed when plain talk serves best. Jacques’ years in China and East Asia, and his life-long reporting about business and policy, make him uniquely suited to illuminate this mammoth subject. getAbstract strongly recommends this book to anyone who is intrigued by China or is doing business in East Asia, and to anyone interested in the cyclical nature of world power throughout history, particularly those who seek to mine that cycle for profit.

Summary

Deficits and Surpluses

China is leading an historic change as world power shifts from the West to the developing nations. Just contrast the deficit-ridden financial empires of the West with “an East Asia” that is “cash-rich from decades of surpluses.” The US no longer dominates manufacturing or exporting. East Asian nations, with China foremost, have taken that role. Western nations seem to assume that China will become more westernized as it rises and that it will allow the West to dominate as it has done for the last three centuries. Such assumptions are incorrect.

Modernization

Westerners may think of Japan’s economic history as a prism through which to study China’s growth, but the two nations share little commonality on their disparate paths to modernization. In the 1860s, Japan’s “existing elite made a voluntary and calculated decision to westernize in order to preserve...the national essence” and to become more industrialized. After World War II, Japan experienced an exponential growth rate. In barely two decades, it shifted from a pastoral farming economy to a “fully industrialized” system. As Japan’s economy grew, it turned its back on Asian markets...

About the Author

Martin Jacques is the co-author of The Forward March of Labor Halted? and The Politics of Thatcherism. He cofounded the UK think tank Demos.

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