Status
Available
Call number
Publication
London : Penguin, 2012.
Description
Explains how China's ascendance as an economic superpower will alter the cultural, political, social, and ethnic balance of global power in the twenty-first century, unseating the West and in the process creating a whole new world.
Media reviews
In “When China Rules the World,” Martin Jacques, a columnist for The Guardian of London and a visiting scholar at the London School of Economics, argues that China will not just displace the United States as the major superpower. It will also marginalize the West in history and upend our core
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notions of what it means to be modern....But the fact that China looks messier in practice than in books does not invalidate Jacques’s thesis. He has written a work of considerable erudition, with provocative and often counterintuitive speculations about one of the most important questions facing the world today. And he could hardly have known, when he set out to write it, that events would so accelerate the trends he was analyzing. Show Less
Jacques's insistence that China not be viewed through a Western frame gives some parts of the book a pragmatic clarity... But China's complexity and capacity for paradox also mean that the more Jacques aims for big predictions and sweeping conclusions, the more the particulars get mangled.
User reviews
LibraryThing member vivianargueta
I couldn't help but notice no one has reviewed this book yet, so I venture on doing so despite only being 1/4 through it. In any case, Jacques has me absolutely captured. I am a student of history and an absolute nut for geopolitical analysis. So far, this has offered both while at the same time
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incorporating cultural appreciation and an analysis of the global landscape that just makes sense to me. It is definitely worth a read. Show Less
LibraryThing member HadriantheBlind
A very interesting premise. The book is divided into two parts, of varying quality - about the fall of the western world, and the rise of the Chinese. Covers both topics from a historical, economic, and political perspective.
Some of the conclusion are very interesting (e.g. China will modernize in
In summary, the book has some interesting ideas, but they are mired in repetitions and some incredibly obvious remarks. I suggest one read it, but with a critical eye.
Some of the conclusion are very interesting (e.g. China will modernize in
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its own way with a relatively authoritarian government, and not necessarily follow the Western method of industrialization which also involves greater social liberties), but some of the chapters and assumptions are so repetitive and unnecessary as to be useless. Chinese people enjoy Chinese food? Well, do go on.In summary, the book has some interesting ideas, but they are mired in repetitions and some incredibly obvious remarks. I suggest one read it, but with a critical eye.
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LibraryThing member aitastaes
China will replace the United States as the world's dominant power. In so doing, it will not become more western but the world will become more Chinese.
Jacques argues that we cannot understand China in western terms but only through its own history and culture. To this end, he introduces a
First published in 2009 to widespread critical acclaim - and controversy - 'When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Rise of a New Global Order' has sold a quarter of a million copies, been translated into eleven languages, nominated for two major literary awards, and has been the subject of an immensely popular TED talk. In the three years since the first edition was published, the book has transformed the debate about China worldwide and proved remarkably prescient.In this greatly expanded and fully updated paperback edition, with nearly three-hundred pages of new material backed up by the latest statistical data, Martin Jacques renews his assault on conventional thinking about China's ascendancy, showing how its impact will be as much political and cultural as economic, thereby transforming the world as we know it.
Martin Jacques is one of Britain's foremost public intellectuals. A Visiting Senior Research Fellow at IDEAS, the London School of Economics' centre for diplomacy and grand strategy, a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing, and a Fellow of the Transatlantic Academy, Washington DC, Martin Jacques is widely respected as a leading global expert on what could prove to be the most important geopolitical event of the past 200 years: the rise of China. He was editor of Marxism Today from 1977 until the journal's closure in 1991, and has also worked as deputy editor of The Independent. He has been a columnist for the Times, the Guardian, the Observer, and the New Statesman, as well as writing for international publications such as the Financial Times, Economist, New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Daily Beast, Volkskrant, Corriere della Sera, L'Unita, South China Morning Post, and Folha Des Paulo.
Jacques argues that we cannot understand China in western terms but only through its own history and culture. To this end, he introduces a
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powerful set of ideas including China as a civilization-state, the tributary system, the Chinese idea of race, a very different concept of the state, and the principle of contested modernity. First published in 2009 to widespread critical acclaim - and controversy - 'When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Rise of a New Global Order' has sold a quarter of a million copies, been translated into eleven languages, nominated for two major literary awards, and has been the subject of an immensely popular TED talk. In the three years since the first edition was published, the book has transformed the debate about China worldwide and proved remarkably prescient.In this greatly expanded and fully updated paperback edition, with nearly three-hundred pages of new material backed up by the latest statistical data, Martin Jacques renews his assault on conventional thinking about China's ascendancy, showing how its impact will be as much political and cultural as economic, thereby transforming the world as we know it.
Martin Jacques is one of Britain's foremost public intellectuals. A Visiting Senior Research Fellow at IDEAS, the London School of Economics' centre for diplomacy and grand strategy, a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing, and a Fellow of the Transatlantic Academy, Washington DC, Martin Jacques is widely respected as a leading global expert on what could prove to be the most important geopolitical event of the past 200 years: the rise of China. He was editor of Marxism Today from 1977 until the journal's closure in 1991, and has also worked as deputy editor of The Independent. He has been a columnist for the Times, the Guardian, the Observer, and the New Statesman, as well as writing for international publications such as the Financial Times, Economist, New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Daily Beast, Volkskrant, Corriere della Sera, L'Unita, South China Morning Post, and Folha Des Paulo.
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LibraryThing member LisCarey
This is an intentionally opinionated history of the Supreme Court of the United States of America.
Burns brings his considerable historical knowledge and literary skill to bear on what has sometimes been the most respected institution in American government, and at other times derided as partisan
Certain bad Court decisions, such as Dred Scott, are well known, and I have a strong interest in American history. Despite that, I found much of the surprisingly sordid history of Court decisions turning the meaning even of the 14th and 15th Amendments on their heads, inventing a distinction between state and national citizenship, and applying "due process" and other procedural and substantive rights almost entirely to property and the regulation of economic activity, and reducing civil rights of individuals to almost nothing, to be a revelation.
The interplay between politics and the Court, and the persistent conservatism of the Court over decades and generations, even in the face of true national crises like the Great Depression, is disturbing and disheartening. When he reaches the Warren Court, Burns is in some respects downright gleeful, but also aware that it is the flip side of the intransigent Court that opposed Franklin Roosevelt's efforts to create legislation and take action that would alleviate and reverse the Great Depression. In both eras, the personalities and political views of the Justices, rather than the myth of dispassionate, high-minded jurisprudence,
As we proceed forward from the Warren Court to the current Roberts Court, once again a conservative Court with an easy willingness to strike down as "unconstitutional" progressive legislation, Burns begins to lay out the polemical purpose of this book. He argues that the power of the Court to strike down legislation and to be the final arbiter of Constitutionality in all things, is unfounded in the Constitution or any supporting evidence of the intentions of the Founders, and that it has done more harm than good, threatening the foundations of democracy. His proposed solutions will sound radical to many, and certainly don't entirely agree with him myself. Nevertheless, even as a polemicist, Burns remains calm, rational, clear, and thoughtful, and this is an argument well worth reading and considering.
Recommended.
I borrowed this book from the library.
Burns brings his considerable historical knowledge and literary skill to bear on what has sometimes been the most respected institution in American government, and at other times derided as partisan
Show More
and backward-looking. As he traces its development from the words in the Constitution and the brilliant, energetic, ambitious, and forward-thinking John Marshall, through to today's Roberts Court, it becomes clear that Burns considers the latter view to be correct for most of the Court's history.Certain bad Court decisions, such as Dred Scott, are well known, and I have a strong interest in American history. Despite that, I found much of the surprisingly sordid history of Court decisions turning the meaning even of the 14th and 15th Amendments on their heads, inventing a distinction between state and national citizenship, and applying "due process" and other procedural and substantive rights almost entirely to property and the regulation of economic activity, and reducing civil rights of individuals to almost nothing, to be a revelation.
The interplay between politics and the Court, and the persistent conservatism of the Court over decades and generations, even in the face of true national crises like the Great Depression, is disturbing and disheartening. When he reaches the Warren Court, Burns is in some respects downright gleeful, but also aware that it is the flip side of the intransigent Court that opposed Franklin Roosevelt's efforts to create legislation and take action that would alleviate and reverse the Great Depression. In both eras, the personalities and political views of the Justices, rather than the myth of dispassionate, high-minded jurisprudence,
As we proceed forward from the Warren Court to the current Roberts Court, once again a conservative Court with an easy willingness to strike down as "unconstitutional" progressive legislation, Burns begins to lay out the polemical purpose of this book. He argues that the power of the Court to strike down legislation and to be the final arbiter of Constitutionality in all things, is unfounded in the Constitution or any supporting evidence of the intentions of the Founders, and that it has done more harm than good, threatening the foundations of democracy. His proposed solutions will sound radical to many, and certainly don't entirely agree with him myself. Nevertheless, even as a polemicist, Burns remains calm, rational, clear, and thoughtful, and this is an argument well worth reading and considering.
Recommended.
I borrowed this book from the library.
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LibraryThing member mitchanderson
A robust qualitative and quantitative account of China's rise to power in the closing decades of the 20th and beginning decades of the 21st centuries. When China Rules the World certainly makes its case with more than enough supporting data.
Much of the informative qualitative aspects are traced
Unsurprisingly, most of Jacques' argument stems from the quantitative analysis of Chinese economic performance, relative to the global economic order and, if the intuition wasn't already there for you, the rise of Chinese influence around the world is convincingly an incontrovertible reality. The argument is made through countless references (contained within roughly 100 pages of notes and bibliography) and a few anecdotes from Jacques himself (observed through his professor fellowships held at several Chinese universities through the early aughts and aught-teens).
While the last update was over 7 years ago, there's little that seems to have changed in the general trend that Jacques has illustrated throughout this book. The only shortcoming I had with it, and this may merit a separate text altogether, is the lack of detail on domestic political function, structure and organization. While there was a small subsection or two on domestic politics, very little of it made any mention to particulars and instead fell to the more qualitative anecdotes and inferences made by Jacques. Whether this was due to far less rigidity in domestic Chinese political protocol (as compared with its Western counterparts) or that it was simply not what Jacques was attempting to explain was not easily discerned within the text.
Regardless of this, Jacques has put together a comprehensive and quality argument for why China will rule the world. For anyone interested in foreign policy, global finance, economic power and even Chinese politics, Chinese culture and its history in terms of Western notions and concepts, I would recommend this book for reading, perusal, or reference.
Much of the informative qualitative aspects are traced
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through a high-level view of Chinese history, revealing the longevity of the Chinese culture, little-known innovative aspects of the earliest Chinese rulers, inventors and explorers, as well as overviews of Chinese cultural behaviors, political philosophies, social sentiments and its notable lack of outward imperial expansion. Indeed, China refers to the latter half of the 19th through the 20th as its "century of humiliation" while, by the beginning of the 21st century it finds itself leading the economic world order admist the faltering Western institutions that have dominated it for the last century and a half.Unsurprisingly, most of Jacques' argument stems from the quantitative analysis of Chinese economic performance, relative to the global economic order and, if the intuition wasn't already there for you, the rise of Chinese influence around the world is convincingly an incontrovertible reality. The argument is made through countless references (contained within roughly 100 pages of notes and bibliography) and a few anecdotes from Jacques himself (observed through his professor fellowships held at several Chinese universities through the early aughts and aught-teens).
While the last update was over 7 years ago, there's little that seems to have changed in the general trend that Jacques has illustrated throughout this book. The only shortcoming I had with it, and this may merit a separate text altogether, is the lack of detail on domestic political function, structure and organization. While there was a small subsection or two on domestic politics, very little of it made any mention to particulars and instead fell to the more qualitative anecdotes and inferences made by Jacques. Whether this was due to far less rigidity in domestic Chinese political protocol (as compared with its Western counterparts) or that it was simply not what Jacques was attempting to explain was not easily discerned within the text.
Regardless of this, Jacques has put together a comprehensive and quality argument for why China will rule the world. For anyone interested in foreign policy, global finance, economic power and even Chinese politics, Chinese culture and its history in terms of Western notions and concepts, I would recommend this book for reading, perusal, or reference.
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LibraryThing member Paul_S
This is uncritical of China to the point of sycophancy. It even goes as far as treating Chinese medicine as a genuine science and not a Chinese version of homeopathy that it is. I can only assume this book is sponsored by the communist party. I hope everyone involved in making this is suitably
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embarrassed. Show Less
LibraryThing member ecw0647
I cannot recommend this book highly enough. If you are worried about current trends in politics, this will calm you. We’ve been there before. The battle between the Court, Executive, and Legislature began with Marshall’s court; unenumerated rights and processes were at the forefront of debates
The book’s title is perhaps misleading. When we think of "packing the court" FDR's attempt to add justices to the court immediately springs to mind, yet ever since Marshall's Marbury decision that shifted an enormous amount of power to the court with judicial review, presidents have used political cronyism to add their political adherents to the court. Some one term presidents, like Trump, have been very fortunate to be able to change the balance of the court in their favor by adding a large number of justices that favor their political view. Until Trump, Ronald Reagan had appointed the most justices. William Harrison, Andrew Johnson, Zachary Taylor and Jimmy Carter, all had none. Washington (obviously) and FDR each had eight, so FDR got to pack the court anyway, given his many terms in office.
I won't go on about the validity of Marshall's decision even though one would think that "originalists" would be appalled by judicial review as it was certainly unenumerated, but it does make one stop and pause to realize that unelected judges can have an enormous influence on the direction of the country for many years, an influence even contrary to those in elected office.
I was surprised to learn that following the failure of the Jefferson administration to impeach Pickering and Chase in their effort to get rid of Federalist judges, Marshall was so terrified of the prospect of impeachment that he wrote a friend proposing to mollify the Republicans by giving Congress in concert with the president the right to overturn decisions of the Supreme Court.
The whole idea of judicial review has been in or out of favor depending on whether the Court’s decisions favor your particular political position. The Warren Court was lambasted by conservatives for its unabashed use of judicial review to promote many policies conservatives argued were not in the Constitution, totally ignoring the 9th amendment and the actions of the preceding conservative courts. “Since the 1790s and especially since the Civil War, conservatives had praised the Founder’s wisdom in supposedly establishing a judiciary empowered to block rampant majorities and cheered when the Supreme Court used that authority to defend the rich and powerful. Now that the [Warren] court was, for the first time in its long history, consistently using that power to expand liberty and equality, conservatives angrily pointed out that judicial review had no basis in the Constitution.” Much of the criticism came from within the court itself, e.g. Byron White, a Kennedy appointee, who charged that the liberal majority was exploiting the power of judicial review to invent “new law and new public policy.” He neglected to mention that’s what the conservative courts had been doing for more than a century.
LBJ’s attempt to pack the court completely backfired. He persuaded (term used loosely) Arthur Goldberg to leave the court to become UN ambassador when he learned that Warren had decided to retire early because he feared a Nixon victory in the election. Johnson then tried to elevate Abe Fortas to the position of Chief Justice, but the southern Democrats’ conservative antipathy to the Warren Court’s civil rights meant he was facing a hostile Senate. That he and Johnson had been close friends, even speaking almost daily on the phone, his confirmation became impossible. See the excellent Battle For The Marble Palace: Abe Fortas, Lyndon Johnson, Earl Warren, Richard Nixon and the Forging of the Modern Supreme Court by Michael Bobelian for the sordid details.
The pendulum (see The Cycles of Constitutional Time by Jack M. Balkin) for more on the conservative/liberal cycles and how it’s affected by politicization) began to swing in the other direction and Trump’s successful packing of the court may be the harbinger of the end of the current cycle, we’ll see.
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constantly in the early 19th century, the decisions in Marbury (judicial review) and McCullough (national bank) plus numerous others also illustrate the battle over national v. state rights; extreme partisanship; the division of the country by sectional and class interests, east v. west, industrial and financial v. agricultural and rural; and not the least, the Electoral College and election of the President with the election of 1800, and 1824 (John Quincy Adams defeated Andrew Jackson in 1824 by garnering more electoral votes through the House of Representatives, even though Jackson originally received more popular and electoral votes.) And so it goes, with only the personalities changing. The issues have never been resolved.The book’s title is perhaps misleading. When we think of "packing the court" FDR's attempt to add justices to the court immediately springs to mind, yet ever since Marshall's Marbury decision that shifted an enormous amount of power to the court with judicial review, presidents have used political cronyism to add their political adherents to the court. Some one term presidents, like Trump, have been very fortunate to be able to change the balance of the court in their favor by adding a large number of justices that favor their political view. Until Trump, Ronald Reagan had appointed the most justices. William Harrison, Andrew Johnson, Zachary Taylor and Jimmy Carter, all had none. Washington (obviously) and FDR each had eight, so FDR got to pack the court anyway, given his many terms in office.
I won't go on about the validity of Marshall's decision even though one would think that "originalists" would be appalled by judicial review as it was certainly unenumerated, but it does make one stop and pause to realize that unelected judges can have an enormous influence on the direction of the country for many years, an influence even contrary to those in elected office.
I was surprised to learn that following the failure of the Jefferson administration to impeach Pickering and Chase in their effort to get rid of Federalist judges, Marshall was so terrified of the prospect of impeachment that he wrote a friend proposing to mollify the Republicans by giving Congress in concert with the president the right to overturn decisions of the Supreme Court.
The whole idea of judicial review has been in or out of favor depending on whether the Court’s decisions favor your particular political position. The Warren Court was lambasted by conservatives for its unabashed use of judicial review to promote many policies conservatives argued were not in the Constitution, totally ignoring the 9th amendment and the actions of the preceding conservative courts. “Since the 1790s and especially since the Civil War, conservatives had praised the Founder’s wisdom in supposedly establishing a judiciary empowered to block rampant majorities and cheered when the Supreme Court used that authority to defend the rich and powerful. Now that the [Warren] court was, for the first time in its long history, consistently using that power to expand liberty and equality, conservatives angrily pointed out that judicial review had no basis in the Constitution.” Much of the criticism came from within the court itself, e.g. Byron White, a Kennedy appointee, who charged that the liberal majority was exploiting the power of judicial review to invent “new law and new public policy.” He neglected to mention that’s what the conservative courts had been doing for more than a century.
LBJ’s attempt to pack the court completely backfired. He persuaded (term used loosely) Arthur Goldberg to leave the court to become UN ambassador when he learned that Warren had decided to retire early because he feared a Nixon victory in the election. Johnson then tried to elevate Abe Fortas to the position of Chief Justice, but the southern Democrats’ conservative antipathy to the Warren Court’s civil rights meant he was facing a hostile Senate. That he and Johnson had been close friends, even speaking almost daily on the phone, his confirmation became impossible. See the excellent Battle For The Marble Palace: Abe Fortas, Lyndon Johnson, Earl Warren, Richard Nixon and the Forging of the Modern Supreme Court by Michael Bobelian for the sordid details.
The pendulum (see The Cycles of Constitutional Time by Jack M. Balkin) for more on the conservative/liberal cycles and how it’s affected by politicization) began to swing in the other direction and Trump’s successful packing of the court may be the harbinger of the end of the current cycle, we’ll see.
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Subjects
Awards
Bristol Festival of Ideas Book Prize (Nominee — 2010)
Language
Physical description
xxxv, 812 p.; 20 cm
ISBN
9780140276046