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Author: China’s Economic Rise,
America’s Decline Is Inevitable
By Barbara Murphy
Contributing Writer
In writing about China’s determination to dominate “green industries” in last month’s edition of The Golden Times, I quoted from a New York Times’ article in which Martin Jacques wrote that China’s economic rise and America’s decline are inevitable.
I wrote indignantly that maybe Mr. Jacques can come to terms with China’s economic domination of the world, but I can’t and our country shouldn’t.
Now, after having read Mr. Jacques’ much acclaimed book, “When China Rules The World,” I am sadly convinced that Mr. Jacques — an Englishman who knows Asia like the back of his hand and, among other things, has been a visiting professor at Renmin University in Beijing, is right on the money when he insists that China is unstoppable in its intent to become the world’s leading economic superpower and the United States doesn’t have a nano-chance of remaining at the top of the economic ladder.
Mr. Jacques does not believe that China seeks to conquer the world with the sword — though conflict being innate in human beings war is always possible. However, he said, China really wants to avoid all the warfare it can — it seeks to exercise international sovereignty through economic and cultural weapons.
Under Mao and his brand of Soviet-style communism, China was viciously oppressed and impoverished. After Mao’s death, not much changed immediately, but by the 1970s new leaders with new economic philosophies had taken the helm in China. They imposed a kind of state-capitalism and economic development took off with a vengeance.
Helped immeasurably by a huge population that values saving more than spending, pays taxes without complaint and acquiesces (most of the time) to what are often back-breaking working conditions, China took off economically and is now the second biggest economic power in the world, second only to the United States, which China will soon overtake. Multi-national corporations, including many based in the U.S., have rushed to give China their manufacturing business. China, meanwhile, hungry for raw materials, has made deals with countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America to buy their abundant raw materials, which these countries are only too eager to sell (at least for the foreseeable future).
Mr. Jacques said the U.S. did nothing to stop the flood of American jobs to China, made no attempt to restrain its own spending, and encouraged a credit-culture that plunged both the American government and its citizenry into a sea of debt. And who became America’s biggest creditor? China, which bought U.S. treasury bonds by the bushel. The prospect that China might decide to dump these bonds keeps economists awake at night.
Mr. Jacques said the present recession has helped ensure America’s economic downfall. Other fatal blows, he said, were struck by America’s new neo-conservative movement, which advanced a militaristic policy implemented by the George W. Bush administration.
Mr. Jacques said: “The new [neo-conservative] doctrine placed a premium on the importance of the United States maintaining a huge military lead over other countries, rather than being constrained either by its allies or international agreements. In the post-Cold War era, U.S. military expenditure was almost as great as that of all the other nations of the world combined. Never in the history of the human race has the military inequality between one nation and all others been so great.”
Under President George W. Bush, Mr. Jacques said, “the war on terror became the new imperative, America’s relations with Western Europe were accorded reduced significance, the principle of national sovereignty was denigrated and that of regime-change affirmed, culminating in the invasion of Iraq.”
Mr. Jacques said that far from allowing the United States to reshape global affairs, the new militaristic policy resulted in an Iraq quagmire and the U.S. as a result was left enjoying less global support than at anytime since 1945. The U.S., he said, squandered its reserves of “soft power,” which include the attractiveness of America’s culture, political ideals and policies. “The neo-conservative position,” Mr. Jacques said, “represented a catastrophic mis-reading of history.”
China, he said, has learned from America’s mistakes. China is pursuing a policy of “soft power,” forging economic partnerships with other countries, investing in them and promoting Chinese culture which has existed for more than 2000 years.
In its cultural mission, Mr. Jacques said, China has a huge ally in the 40 million Chinese who have migrated to other countries. The overseas Chinese remain enormously proud of being Chinese and enthusiastically promote their home country’s cultural values.
These values are chiefly loyalty to family, reverences for the past and Confucian teachings and respect for the state whose main purpose is seen as maintaining stability, a value the Chinese cherish above all others.
China loses no opportunity to promote its language and culture around the world. It is determined to obliterate the influence of Hollywood while it steadily increases its cultural and economic power. China is opening new research facilities, almost on a daily basis, and is successfully luring home Chinese citizens who went abroad to acquire a scientific education.
The Chinese are a super self-confident people who regard themselves as a pure and superior race and their country as the center of the universe.
What can we do when China rules the world? Mr. Jacques suggests that we start by learning Mandarin.
*
(When China Rules The World, by Martin Jacques, published by The Penguin Group, London, England; 2009, 550 pages; $29.95).
America’s Decline Is Inevitable
By Barbara Murphy
Contributing Writer
In writing about China’s determination to dominate “green industries” in last month’s edition of The Golden Times, I quoted from a New York Times’ article in which Martin Jacques wrote that China’s economic rise and America’s decline are inevitable.
I wrote indignantly that maybe Mr. Jacques can come to terms with China’s economic domination of the world, but I can’t and our country shouldn’t.
Now, after having read Mr. Jacques’ much acclaimed book, “When China Rules The World,” I am sadly convinced that Mr. Jacques — an Englishman who knows Asia like the back of his hand and, among other things, has been a visiting professor at Renmin University in Beijing, is right on the money when he insists that China is unstoppable in its intent to become the world’s leading economic superpower and the United States doesn’t have a nano-chance of remaining at the top of the economic ladder.
Mr. Jacques does not believe that China seeks to conquer the world with the sword — though conflict being innate in human beings war is always possible. However, he said, China really wants to avoid all the warfare it can — it seeks to exercise international sovereignty through economic and cultural weapons.
Under Mao and his brand of Soviet-style communism, China was viciously oppressed and impoverished. After Mao’s death, not much changed immediately, but by the 1970s new leaders with new economic philosophies had taken the helm in China. They imposed a kind of state-capitalism and economic development took off with a vengeance.
Helped immeasurably by a huge population that values saving more than spending, pays taxes without complaint and acquiesces (most of the time) to what are often back-breaking working conditions, China took off economically and is now the second biggest economic power in the world, second only to the United States, which China will soon overtake. Multi-national corporations, including many based in the U.S., have rushed to give China their manufacturing business. China, meanwhile, hungry for raw materials, has made deals with countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America to buy their abundant raw materials, which these countries are only too eager to sell (at least for the foreseeable future).
Mr. Jacques said the U.S. did nothing to stop the flood of American jobs to China, made no attempt to restrain its own spending, and encouraged a credit-culture that plunged both the American government and its citizenry into a sea of debt. And who became America’s biggest creditor? China, which bought U.S. treasury bonds by the bushel. The prospect that China might decide to dump these bonds keeps economists awake at night.
Mr. Jacques said the present recession has helped ensure America’s economic downfall. Other fatal blows, he said, were struck by America’s new neo-conservative movement, which advanced a militaristic policy implemented by the George W. Bush administration.
Mr. Jacques said: “The new [neo-conservative] doctrine placed a premium on the importance of the United States maintaining a huge military lead over other countries, rather than being constrained either by its allies or international agreements. In the post-Cold War era, U.S. military expenditure was almost as great as that of all the other nations of the world combined. Never in the history of the human race has the military inequality between one nation and all others been so great.”
Under President George W. Bush, Mr. Jacques said, “the war on terror became the new imperative, America’s relations with Western Europe were accorded reduced significance, the principle of national sovereignty was denigrated and that of regime-change affirmed, culminating in the invasion of Iraq.”
Mr. Jacques said that far from allowing the United States to reshape global affairs, the new militaristic policy resulted in an Iraq quagmire and the U.S. as a result was left enjoying less global support than at anytime since 1945. The U.S., he said, squandered its reserves of “soft power,” which include the attractiveness of America’s culture, political ideals and policies. “The neo-conservative position,” Mr. Jacques said, “represented a catastrophic mis-reading of history.”
China, he said, has learned from America’s mistakes. China is pursuing a policy of “soft power,” forging economic partnerships with other countries, investing in them and promoting Chinese culture which has existed for more than 2000 years.
In its cultural mission, Mr. Jacques said, China has a huge ally in the 40 million Chinese who have migrated to other countries. The overseas Chinese remain enormously proud of being Chinese and enthusiastically promote their home country’s cultural values.
These values are chiefly loyalty to family, reverences for the past and Confucian teachings and respect for the state whose main purpose is seen as maintaining stability, a value the Chinese cherish above all others.
China loses no opportunity to promote its language and culture around the world. It is determined to obliterate the influence of Hollywood while it steadily increases its cultural and economic power. China is opening new research facilities, almost on a daily basis, and is successfully luring home Chinese citizens who went abroad to acquire a scientific education.
The Chinese are a super self-confident people who regard themselves as a pure and superior race and their country as the center of the universe.
What can we do when China rules the world? Mr. Jacques suggests that we start by learning Mandarin.
*
(When China Rules The World, by Martin Jacques, published by The Penguin Group, London, England; 2009, 550 pages; $29.95).