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disarrayed, all their great theories and concept failed them at the lapse of the
USSR, yet the only group of acdamnics forsaw this was in fact the historians.
Whilst the next biggest issue is China, Jacques historians
Reading Martin Jacquess When China Rules the World contrives me with two
feelings
We are so used to the world being western even American, that we have little
idea what it would be like if it was not (p.32)
Jacques has utterly revitalised Chinas imagine in the global stage that [China]
cant and should not be judged
Martin Jacques epic endeavour telling the rise of China took readers on an epic
journey took place across the globe and unrestricted by time, for Chinese
readers, this
I think MJ as a non chinese understand China from a more unbasis and thorough
persepective which many Chinese thinkers today can rival, his empathsis on
Chinas history not just within its 100 year pass but ancient times is quite unique
Today China are portaited as a nation state and even the Chinese themselves
have this profound sense of nationalism, whilst many acknowledge Chinas
civilizational past, few can relate or indeed exert it in their daily lives.
MJ argues in against China been a hegemonic state rather it is very vastly
diverse and different, whilst he stress chinas political value lies in unity as
divided its population and demographics are.
He argues unity, order and stability are so important to china, it reflects why Mao
is more popular than Deng in china today despite Maos rampage during his
reign, its because that Mao ultimately been protrated as the unifier of China.
The handling back of Hong Kong to China, and its proclaimed idea one country
two system rejected by many western country has a hoc proven to be wrong
because western country judges China in a nation state mentality and logic.
(germeny unification, nation state) thus stating China is not a nation state
because it is capable to incooperate Hong Kong to have a different system. China
is always one country several system and boldly claim if Taiwan ever decide to
submit itself to China, China inevidably will be every lucid in terms of control. (MJ
claim china will allow Taiwan to keep its army, political system)
I agree MJs idea that China and essentially the chinese can be very flexable in
terms of negotiation when unity is at stake, and its very idea of sovereignty is
vastly different than western understanding of it.
For too long Chinas history has been undermined and its rise will
Chinas behaviour of major power, MJ aruge it will operate in a way different from
USA and UK, reflect by its history. Chinas past expansion has always being
Eourpe beg china to safe them in loan in the economic crisis, it has always look
down in china.
USA still rely on hard power to rally alliance in the east asia. Estable trade that
exclude China but MJ argues that it will be difficulties for china, but it will fail,
because china relies on its economic prowess and strength and influences far
superior than hard physical military presence.
The America fail to reconcile that their economic influence is dwelling in the east
asia countries.
Australia is a east asia economy, its no long a western economy. (its only western
country has not had a resscion since 2008, because of China) its stock exchange
is depended on shanghi than newyork.
Book
Take globalization as an example. The dominant Western view has been
that globalization is a process by which the rest of the world becomes and
should becomeincreasingly Westernized, with the adoption of free markets, the
import of Western capital, privatization, the rule of law, human rights regimes
and democratic norms.(p.32)
the last three decades has been informed by this belief. It has underpinned
Americas willingness to cooperate with China, open its markets to Chinese
exports, agree to its admission to the World Trade Organization
(WTO) and allow it to become an increasingly fully-fl edged member of the
international community
Political and cultural differences are seen as symptoms of
backwardness which will steadily disappear with economic modernization.
It is inconceivable, however, that China will become a Western-style nation
in the manner to which we are accustomed. China is the product of a history
and culture which has little or nothing in common with that of the West. It is
only by discounting the effects of history and culture and reducing the world
to a matter of economics and technology that it is possible to conclude that
China will become Western.
China should not primarily be seen as a nation-state but rather as a
civilization-state
Yet the Han Chinese, who account for around 92 per cent
of the population, believe that they comprise one race. The explanation for
this lies in the unique longevity of Chinese civilization, which has engendered
a strong sense of unity and common identity while also, over a period of
thousands of years, enabling a mixing and melding of a multitude of diverse
races
was organized on the basis of tributary relationships
which involved neighbouring states acknowledging Chinas cultural
superiority
and its overwhelming power by paying tribute to the Middle Kingdom
(which is the Mandarin Chinese name for China, namely Zhonggu) in
return for benevolence and protection. P.38
It is obvious from the profundity of these four points civilization-state,
race, tributary state, and unity let alone many others that I will consider
during the course of the book that China has enjoyed a quite different history
to that of the West. Countries invariably see the world in terms of their
own experience. As they become hegemonic powers as China will they
seek to shape the world in the light of their own values and priorities. It is
banal, therefore, to believe that Chinas infl uence on the world will be mainly
and overwhelmingly economic: on the contrary, its political and cultural
effects are likely to be at least as far-reaching. The underlying argument of
the book is that Chinas impact on the world will be as great as that of the
United States over the last century, probably far greater. P.39
The postwar Western order is historically unique. Any international order dominated
by a powerful state is based on a mix of coercion and consent, but the US-led
order is distinctive in that it has been more liberal than imperial and so unusually accessible,
legitimate, and durable. Its rules and institutions are rooted in, and
thus
reinforced by, the evolving global forces of democracy and capitalism. It is expansive,
with a wide and widening array of participants and stakeholders. It is capable of
generating tremendous economic growth and power while also signalling restraint all of
which make it hard to overturn and easy to join
p.39
modernatiy
But though modernity was conceived in Europe, there
is nothing intrinsically European about it: apart from an accident of birth it
had, and has, no special connection to that continent and its civilization.
Over the last half-century, as modernity has taken root in East Asia, it has
drawn on the experience of European or, more precisely, Western
modernity. However, rather than simply being clones of it, East Asian modernities
are highly distinctive, spawning institutions, customs, values and
ideologies shaped by their own histories and cultures.
century and the Manchu in the seventeenth all invaders, bar the
Mongols, once secure in power, sought to acquire the customs and values
of the Chinese and to rule according to their principles and their institutions:
a testament to the prestige enjoyed by the Chinese and the respect
accorded to their civilization by their northern adversaries. 99
With such a vast territory to govern, the Chinese state could not, and did
not, depend solely or even mainly on physical coercion for the exercise of
its
rule. the military
remained strikingly absent from Chinese life at least until the early twentieth
century. Instead, the power of the state has rested primarily on consent
reinforced by forms of coercion. The Chinese state went to great lengths, in
both the Ming and Qing periods, to inculcate in the population a sense of
shared values and culture based on Confucian principles 108
The years 191628 were the period of
warlordism. Not only was the country now de facto if not de jure divided,
but also, for the fi rst time for many centuries, military power, together with the
continuing foreign presence, became the arbiter of Chinas future 115
The Han Chinese identity, bolstered by new forms of anti-Manchu
expression
from the late nineteenth century, was simply too strong and too exclusive,
while provincial identities remained ill-formed and never acquired any
nationalist
aspirations. Furthermore, as China entered the Western-dominated modern
nation-state system, it was to experience the binding effects of modern
nationalism: the centuries-old sense of cultural identity and cohesion, born of
a unique kind of agrarian civilization, was reinforced by a profound feeling of
grievance engendered by foreign occupation 116
Despite everything, the Chinese never lost their
inner sense of self-confi dence or feeling of superiority about their own
history and civilization.83 This notwithstanding, the scale of Chinas suffering
and dislocation in the century of humiliation has had a profound and longterm
effect on Chinese consciousness, which remains to this day. 117
China is not a nation-state unlike its eruopean counterparts the Chinese
aristocratic elites
had been destroyed, with the consequence that no elite enjoyed authority
independent of the state. The opposite, in fact, was the case, with the bureaucratic
elite enjoying unrivalled authority and numerous privileges, and all
other elites dependent for their position on the patronage of the state 107
The key fi gure was Mao Zedong. Notwithstanding his colossal abuses of
power,
which resulted in the deaths of millions, as the architect of the revolution
and the founder of an independent and unifi ed China 119
???
The
rise of the Asian tigers, however, has an altogether more fundamental import.
Hitherto, with the exception of Japan, modernity has been a Western
monopoly. This monopoly has now been decisively broken. 127
The shift from the countryside to the cities, from working on the land to
working in industry, is the decisive moment in the emergence of modernity. 128
more statistics of rural to urban movement on p 128
Shanghai, like many cities in the region, encapsulates a remarkable juxtaposition of
the present and the past, of modernity and tradition
existing cheek by jowl, as was once the case in European cities. The
difference is that because East Asia is changing so quickly, the contrast
between the past and the present is much more visible and far more pronounced
than it was in nineteenth-century European cities. 129
Another expression of the imminence of the past can be found in peoples
attitudes and belief-systems. On the 1st and 15th of every month, it is
common for the Chinese to burn incense and worship their ancestral spirits.
Walk through the streets of Taipei, or any Chinese city, on those dates and it
wont be long before you see people burning fake money as an offering to
their ancestors Whatever the reason, the persistence of
pre-modern ways of thinking is a striking characteristic of many East Asian
cultures. 130
People make it up as they go along. They
try things out. They take risks. Seemingly the only constant is change. Scrap
and build is a classic illustration, with little importance attached to conservation,
in marked contrast to Europe.20 Whereas European cities for the most
part change relatively little from one decade to the next, Asian cities are constantly
being turned upside down. You can rest assured that your favourite
landmark in a European city be it a cinema, a square, a building or an
underground station will still be there when you next visit; the only certainty
in many Asian cities is that the furniture will once again have been
rearranged so that you wont even be able to recognize the place, let alone
fi nd the landmark 132
Japan represents perhaps the most extreme form of this embrace of the
future, or hyper-modernity rather than the Western
norm of one, while the electronics fi rms that Japan is famous for are constantly
changing their product lines. Where the Western fashion industry is
happy to turn out two collections a year, one in the autumn and one in the
spring, Japanese designers seem to believe in perpetual sartorial motion as
one collection follows another at bewildering speed several times a year. 132
civilization
has been so different from Western societies in so many ways that it
is impossible to comprehend it, and its modernity, simply by the use of Western
concepts. Is it not a question of whether the concepts/theories are far
away from Chinese reality? Chinas own practice, he concludes, is capable
of generating alternative concepts, theories, and more convincing frameworks. 135
proposition that cultural difference counts for little can now be tested in
practice. The classic exemplar is post-war Japan. As we saw in Chapter 3,
Japan remains, notwithstanding the fact that it is at least as advanced as the
West, very different from its Western counterparts in a myriad of the most
basic ways, including the nature of social relations, the modus operandi of
institutions, the character of the family, the role of the state and the manner
in which power is exercised. By no stretch of the imagination can Japanese
modernity be described as similar to, let alone synonymous with, that of the
United States or Europe 135