China is the main show

Martin Jacques shares his views on the growing clout of the world’s second largest economy.

AUTHOR and academic Dr Martin Jacques released an updated and expanded second edition of his widely acclaimed book, When China Rules The World: The End Of The Western World And The Birth Of A New Global Order, earlier this year.

During a recent visit to Kuala Lumpur when he attended an Asian Centre for Media Studies event, Jacques (pic) spoke to The Star about his book and its approach to the subject. Some excerpts:

How is the second edition different from the first?

Time. Because China is growing so quickly, China time is fast. There’s been a lot of updating throughout the second edition.

When I wrote the first edition, the 2008 (US-centred) financial crisis had just happened. The last chapter is about the crisis, which was little commented on before.

The second edition looks at the beginnings of a Chinese economic world order.

How far is the second edition a response to critics of the first?

I don’t think what I’ve done is a response to the critics. The inaccuracies in the first edition were very few, and I’ve certainly responded to those.

There was a bit of a jump in the argument between the rise of China and its relations with other countries.

Here I look at not just China-US relations, but the rise of developing countries generally, of which China is a part.

I use the phrase “rule the world” as a metaphor. I’ve learned a lot from meetings and discussions.

There was never much in the first edition I wanted to change. The structure of the book is basically the same.

Do you see China’s rise as continuing into the future?

Yes, definitely. Along the lines of the book, without any doubt whatsoever.

How might a new China-centred tributary system emerge in East Asia?

There are echoes of a tributary system. The most obvious return to that is the rise of China.

East Asian economies today are much more China-centric. There’s the fact we’re now moving to a new China-centric system.

China is probably the most important market for countries in the region, for trade and investment, with its high-speed rail links, and so on. Getting on with China will be absolutely crucial for countries in this region.

Can economic dominance translate into clout in other spheres?

If China is economically dominant, that gives it a great deal of influence over other countries.

The draw of China will be that much greater. China will be a huge cultural presence in the region.

Lots of people in this region will study in Chinese universities. Beijing will be a tremendous draw.

You can see that in the flight patterns of Malaysia Airlines, for example. Previously, Malaysians travelled to Britain, not so much to other East Asian countries; it would be interesting to see the changes.

The attraction of Shanghai will be that of a big city like New York. People are attracted to power.

We’ll be much more familiar with Chinese governance and institutions. From being a mystery, they’ll be familiar; we were used to the United States before, but much more with China (in future).

What of Greater China, the mainland, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan?

All the ties will get stronger.

Hong Kong will remain very much as now, I don’t expect it to change. It will become increasingly integrated (with the mainland) and Sinicised, and (still) in many senses not very Chinese.

I would expect Taiwan to move ever closer to China. Taipei feels it has nowhere to go except closer to China.

There are already a large number of Taiwanese working in China. There has been growing economic integration.

Over the next 20 years, Taiwan will probably accept Chinese sovereignty. It will come because it is absolutely the logical step.

What of the prospects of China’s collapse, as some predict?

There are gradations on the scale. China isn’t going to sail into the sunset without problems. But what I’m extremely sceptical about are predictions about the problems leading to economic meltdown and Armageddon.

Some day China may see a multi-party system, although unlikely. China may be more open, but it will still be very much Chinese.

A collapse is not impossible, but extremely unlikely.

Can China’s economic power translate into cultural influence?

It will take a long time. China is still a poor country.

Rich countries don’t aspire to be like a poor country; economic power is the basis (of cultural influence).

The Beijing Olympics is an example: China was unable to stage it 10 years before.

Since the rest of the world is not familiar with Chinese culture, the process of feeling comfortable with China culturally and politically will take a long time.

Because Chinese culture is so different from Western culture, it will take a century for the West to be familiar with it. I’m sceptical that it won’t happen.

How is China’s rise regarded by India?

India has a big problem with China, as it has a very strong view of China. India is a long, long way behind (in growth).

Indians are traumatised by China; their relationship with China is erratic, fickle and fearful. Because of the border wars, China looms very large in the Indian imagination.

The issue doesn’t disturb the Chinese, but for Indians it’s an issue. India is so far behind that the thought of overtaking China (economically) is the talk of fantasists in dreamland.

India needs to learn as much as possible from China and pursue a strong relationship with it. It needs a clear strategy in dealing with China.

India should stop this petty rivalry. At the moment there’s not much of that happening.

What of China’s relations with South-East Asia?

In historical terms for this region, 100 years (since the end of China’s dynastic rule in 1912) is not such a long time.

There is a familiarity with China in this region that is not found in other parts of the world.

This marks out relations with China as different here. Countries in this region relate with China in a multifarious process.

Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar are dealing (economically) with China mostly through Chinese provinces closest to them.

It’s a situation most nation states don’t allow in their regions. But Chinese provinces close to these countries will deal more with them in future.

As for relations with the United States?

It will take the US at least 10, maybe 20 years from now to treat China as an equal.

It will happen in a series of baby steps here and there, for example by treating China as a partner in the region, rather than as a problem like now.

But it won’t happen within 10 years. In certain circumstances it may happen quicker, such as a (Western) financial crisis, or it would take longer.

And Europe?

There’s been poor coverage of China in the rest of the world, mainly from ignorance. Coverage tends to be Eurocentric.

Soviet reforms under Gorbachev with glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) were well received in Western Europe. But the Soviet system could not be reformed.

China’s communist revolution had better historical roots than the Soviet’s.

What remains of the ‘Washington Consensus’ (ie, US-style economic doctrine)?

It’s dead. In the developing world, China is the main show. Why look at America?

China is actively doing (the alternative): there are general lessons in its emphasis on infrastructure, the importance of the state, of political stability, and so on.

Will there be a third edition?

I probably won’t do a third edition. It was hard work with the (second edition), being governed by the framework of the existing book.

I’d probably work on something fresh. More on the lines of “understanding China,” so that people can understand the conceptual thinking.

By BUNN NAGARA The Star/Asia News Network

 Related posts:
When China Rules The World: The End Of The Western World And The Birth Of A New Global Order   
Fearful of China's rise? Sep 28, 2012
Dawn of a new superpower Jul 08, 2012

When China Rules The World: The End Of The Western World And The Birth Of A New Global Order

Book review: China is still ascendant

Author: Marc Jacques
Publisher: Penguin, 848 pages

SKEWED as they may be, reactionary Orientalist perspectives of East Asian realities remain the norm in Western punditry and news reports. The problem has become prevalent in both conservative and liberal circles.

The problem for the West itself is that such a persistent misperception of modern China may undermine Western interests further. Martin Jacques’ When China Rules The World: The End Of The Western World And The Birth Of A New Global Order is intended largely as a corrective, looking at the historic phenomenon of China’s grand return to the global stage in China’s own terms.

My review of the first edition of Jacques’ book appeared earlier in China awakens (Star Bizweek, Oct 3, 2009). The present consideration is of the second edition published by Penguin earlier this year.

The first edition was subtitled The Rise Of The Middle Kingdom And The End Of The Western World. The second edition, suggesting an evolution, is subtitled The End Of The Western World And The Birth Of A New World Order.

Jacques and Penguin are just as grandiose now as before. The titling remains as presumptuous and alarmist, at least to Western conservatives, and no apologies are tendered in that regard.

The title itself can be a problem for those who judge a book by its cover. Jacques does not believe that China or any other country can “rule” the world today, only that China and things Chinese would predominate globally.

The second edition contains new data and a new section in the Afterword. For Jacques, international developments in the three years between the two editions only confirm and strengthen his central themes.

His chief arguments remain intact: that China will be dominant economically and culturally, it will not essentially be Westernised, and China will be ascendant despite multiple challenges.

This rise, mainly economic but also in other spheres later, is of epochal proportions. China’s ascendancy would result from both its own efforts and the decline of the West simultaneously.

The 2008 recession in the United States, followed by economic doldrums there and the European sovereign debt crisis underline the situation impeccably. In contrast, China’s GDP growth continues, affected only minimally.

Like many others, Jacques believes that China’s current growth model based on cheap labour and global raw materials is unsustainable. For example, China would need to stimulate more domestic demand to compensate for a slackening of overseas markets.

The latest data show that more and more countries have now made China their main trading partner. And as with trade, increasingly so with investment.

Thus, China’s economic gravitational “pull” is becoming unerring and compelling. Not only has China swiftly replaced Japan as the world’s second-largest economy, its relationship with the United States has replaced Japan’s as the most important bilateral relationship across the Pacific and in the world.

Analysts impressed with China’s economic growth once expected it to surpass the US economy in a couple of decades. But that timeframe has shrunk.

In 2009 Jacques cited the Goldman Sachs prediction that China’s economy would overtake the US’ by 2027. Sceptics scoffed.

In this second edition, he cites The Economist’s projection that the Chinese economy will become the world’s biggest by 2018. Now the International Monetary Fund predicts the year will be 2016.

But even when that happens, China will still be a developing country with vast human resources yet to reach peak productivity. That means when China’s standard of living approaches that of the US, with a comparable GDP per capita, its economy will be two to four times that of the US today.

Unlike many China pundits, particularly critics, Jacques believes China will not succumb to the weight of its own promise. He does not accept that China has to Westernise or democratise before it can fully develop and prosper.

Jacques also rejects the alarmist Western notion that today’s China is re-arming aggressively. He finds Chinese defence expenditure as a proportion of GDP falling between the 1970s and 1990s, and since then only keeping pace with GDP growth.

As expected, the very people he seeks to inform are often those who spurn his information. Jacques attributes this Western stubbornness to a mixture of unfamiliarity, ignorance, prejudice, denial, stereotyping, racism and Cold War ideology against a non-Western country that is communist, at least in name.

With such unwieldy baggage, the nuances and subtleties about China are naturally lost on the bigots. For Jacques, China is a continent-sized civilisational state whose history has seen upheavals and expansion on its Asiatic land mass, but not military adventurism in a littoral and archipelagic East Asia.

In response to critics of an increasingly powerful China, Jacques does not see China as a global superpower. He finds China historically absorbed in its own internal governance as it is a very difficult country to govern, its trajectory will continue to be tempestuous, but it is still a complex and sophisticated state and the home of statecraft, so it cannot simply be dismissed with an epithet like “authoritarian”.

For example, while critics fret over the People’s Liberation Army and the PLA Navy, it is China’s Coast Guard rather than the military that is a key player in the disputed island claims. Jacques finds no less than seven uncoordinated Chinese agencies involved over these claims.

A key question in the book is whether the United States will allow China the space to be a major player in Beijing’s own regional backyard. Jacques finds that unlikely, while also convinced that US efforts, such as its “pivot” to contain China, will ultimately fail.

This book still has major gaps that need filling. A central theme is that China’s coming predominance will be different from that of Western colonialism, but how different and in what ways?

Jacques also envisages an updated revival of the tributary system in East Asia, in which all the smaller countries acknowledge their junior status with regard to China. But what form will a revised tributary system take?

Another key point is China essentially being a civilisational state rather than just a nation state like other countries. But what can this mean in practical policy terms, particularly in China’s relations with other countries?

Such answers are essential to an intelligent understanding of a rising modern China. But we may have to wait for a new book by the author for further illumination, because any answers are unlikely to be accommodated by the structure of the present work, notwithstanding its already intriguing insights.

The first edition was already a vast interdisciplinary work of far-reaching implications, and the second version even more so. Few analysts as authors have achieved what Jacques has: combining the depth and rigour of academia with the readability and vigour of journalism in a single volume on a subject of great topicality.

The result is a serious and interesting textbook which, despite its 800+ pages, has sold a quarter of a million copies (and counting) in a dozen languages in its first edition alone. His critics have yet to match that kind of appeal in whatever they have to say.

Review by BUNN NAGARA
star2@thestar.com.my

> Bunn Nagara is an associate editor at The Star.

Related posts:
Fearful of China's rise? Sep 28, 2012
Dawn of a new superpower Jul 08, 2012

Unlocking potential for penal tourism

Malaysia can attract white-collar criminals seeking to do community service

WHEN he sentenced Rajat Gupta, the former McKinsey & Co boss, on Wednesday to two years in prison for insider trading-related offences, Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the Federal District Court in Manhattan spurned the chance to be the midwife at the birth of penal tourism.



We've heard of ecotourism, medical tourism, religious tourism, sports tourism, agritourism, education tourism and even sex tourism. So why not a type of tourism that caters for people convicted of crimes, offering these people a chance to atone for their wrongdoings through community service away from home?

Gupta's lawyers suggested precisely this in a sentencing memorandum submitted on Oct 17. In requesting that the court impose a sentence of probation with the condition that Gupta perform “a rigorous full-time programme of community service”, the lawyers proposed two options.

The first is that he's assigned full-time for a few years to Covenant House, which provides emergency shelter and other services for homeless, runaway and at-risk youth.

The idea is that he will be based in New York to work directly with the children at Covenant House's facility in Manhattan, and to help Covenant House come up with strategic initiatives for expansion and improvement. There's no tourism element here because New York is one of several places where Gupta maintains a residence.

The second option, in the words of the lawyers, is “less orthodox but innovative”.

No kidding. The plan is for Gupta to go to Rwanda to contribute towards improving the delivery of health care (focusing on HIV/AIDS and malaria) and agricultural development.

The Rwandan government has agreed that if the judge accepted the proposal, Gupta would be under its direction and supervision, along with Care USA, a humanitarian and development organisation. He would live and work with government officials in the African nation's rural districts.

In the sentencing memorandum, Gupta's lawyers explained: “We recognise this is an unusual community service proposal, but one that could potentially provide great benefits to large numbers of Rwandans desperately in need of help, and which Mr Gupta is uniquely situated to perform.

“Moreover, it would require Mr Gupta to confront significant hardships and would thus constitute punishment commensurate with the seriousness of the offence, as Gupta would be thousands of miles from his family and friends, and would be living in basic accommodations in rural areas of the country.”

However, Rakoff rejected both proposals, labelling them as “Peace Corps for insider traders”. He instead stuck to the conventional, sending Gupta to jail, slapping him with a US$5mil fine and ordering him to be placed under a year of supervised release after the prison term ends.

But the idea of penal tourism is now out there. There's rich potential in welcoming white-collar criminals who are made to do community service in faraway places.

Besides the direct impact of their work, these wealthy law-breakers will draw the international spotlight, thus raising the profile of the host countries. The criminals are likely to function as magnets that attract family members, friends and associates to come over. All this attention can translate into cash inflows for penal tourism destinations.

Malaysia should seize this opportunity to claim the first-mover advantage in penal tourism. As outlined by Gupta's lawyers, the key is to have plenty of community service projects that involve “significant hardships” so that the criminals (or penal tourists, to use the politically correct term) are indeed doing work that can be widely accepted as punishment that fits the crimes.

Here are some projects that can be used to promote Malaysia as a hotspot for penal tourism:

Stick no bills: The problem with the Ah Longs is not only their frighteningly high interest rates and intimidating debt collection tactics. Their annoying advertising strategy is to plaster signs, walls, lamp posts, phone booths and other surfaces with stickers bearing their contact numbers. Penal tourists can pay their debt to society by painstakingly removing these stickers and doing restoration work if there's damage.

Setting the record straight: When somebody attempts to break a trivial record or establish a new one for example, the longest popiah, largest group of people doing Gangnam Style moves, most Facebook “likes” in 24 hours penal tourists will be present to verify the feat.

Gaydar duty: Penal tourists will be tasked with compiling statistics on the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. They will rely on a leaflet recently issued by the Yayasan Guru Malaysia Bhd and Putrajaya Consultative Council of Parent-Teacher Associations to spot those with LGBT tendencies.

Pointing in the right direction: Armed with laser pointers, penal tourists will be stationed at concerts, plays and cinemas to shame the inconsiderate people who use mobile phones, or who talk too much and loudly.

The scoop on food: Penal tourists will be put in charge of crowd control and apportioning of food at government open houses during festivals, AGMs of listed companies and popular hotel buffets. Their job is to ensure there's queuing and that there's no wastage of food. Now that's true hardship.

Garbage or generosity?: There's often a lot of unusable stuff among items given away to welfare homes and charitable organisations. The penal tourists can be deployed to sift through the piles of things.

Smoking wardens: This is strictly for penal tourists who relish a tough challenge with a dash of danger. They will patrol smoke-free zones to tick off smokers who insist on having a puff. The tourists will be required to sign indemnity forms before starting work.

Compelling courtesy: Instead of air marshals, we have bus and train marshals. The penal tourists will ride buses and trains to zero in on passengers who refuse to give up seats for the elderly and the disabled, pregnant women, and mothers with young children. Boarding passengers who don't wait for others to disembark will be targeted as well.

To delete or not to delete: Online political forums can get wild and woolly if they aren't moderated vigilantly. Penal tourists will be entrusted with the gruelling job of monitoring forums to ensure there's no flaming and spamming, use of inappropriate language, and seditious or defamatory content. If that sounds punishing, Malaysia is on track to becoming a top penal tourism destination.

By The Star Executive editor Errol Oh is happy to be just a plain tourist.

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