WEEKLY LISTENING - Week 1 Feb

Understanding the rise of China | Martin Jacques

      

A Ted talk by Martin Jacques

Martin Jacques who is a British journalist, academic, editor, political commentator and an author of "When China rules the world" talks about understanding the rise of china, he believes we can't understand the rise of china using western concepts.China is on track to become the world's largest economy, and by 2050 India's economy could also rival the US. This is a unique situation as we have not had for 200 years a developing country as the world's dominant country. Secondly, for the first time in the modern era, dominant country in the world - which according to him is what China will become will be not from the West and from very different civilizational roots. In other words, China, unlike the Western states and most countries in the world, is shaped by its sense of civilization, rather than as a nation-state.There are three building blocks for trying to understand what China is.The concept of china and its culture came from over 2000’s of years in the periods of the civilization state. The most important political value for china is unity and maintenance of Chinese civilization.China doesn’t run a civilization on the basis of one system. Most of the Chinese think they belong to one ran, that is the Hans, unlike rest of the developed countries, these countries are multiracial without the Han identity china wouldn’t be united.The power of Chinese states have never been challenged, it has no religious rivals. Chinese view the state as an intimate; they treat people as a family. The West, which has ruled the world for 200 years, thinks of itself as cosmopolitan. But in reality, the West is conservative.Today, America still rules the world, despite its economic and other problems. It can do this in part because it has a wide system of alliances and partnerships with other countries. In contrast, China's only real allies are countries, mainly African, which are dependent on China and even Burma, another China dependency, is now distancing itself from China because it does not like being dominated by China.