A way out of a global dead-end: A reading of When China Rules the World by Martin Jacques

Abstract

Discussing the topics and assumptions in When China Rules the World, this paper argues for three points. Firstly, there are three modernity modes: the Western modernity represented by European countries and the US and depending on colonization, the autonomous modernity related with the former USSR and China, and the dependent modernity of East Asian tigers characterized by joining the Western industrial division and offering laboring force. Secondly, the hotly-debated Chinese model is actually the combination if not culmination of the East Asian modernity. It will not be sustainable due to a series of economic and political problems and needs to be transformed. Thirdly, the world is currently on the eve of fundamental change. The decline of the world hegemony may reshape the way of human development and modernization in last 100 years. A state of ‘equilibrium’ must be reached, by means of a global socialism having divorced Stalinism.

Keywords:

• Martin Jacques
• modernity
• China model
• Asian tigers
• Mao

Notes

Data cited in the present essay comes from the following sources: Stavrianos (1992), Zhou et al. (2002), Su and Li (2002), Maddison (2003), and the National Bureau of Statistics of China website: http://www.stats.gov.cn/.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zhu Dongli*

Translated by Qin Xiqing