Martin Jacques - When China Rules the World

[3]We are already living in what is, in economic terms, a multipolar world; Pam Woodall, ‘The New Titans’, survey, The Economist , 16 September 2006. Also, Brian Beedham, ‘Who Are We, Who Are They?’, survey, pp. 14–16, The Economist , 29 July 1999.

[4]Martin Wolf, ‘Life in a Tough World of High Commodity Prices’, Financial Times , 4 March 2008; Jing Ulrich, ‘ China Holds the Key to Food Prices’, Financial Times , 7 November 2007.

[5]‘Sharpened Focus on Sovereign Wealth Funds,’ International Herald Tribune , 21 January 2008; ‘ China ’s Stake in BP’, Financial Times , 15 April, 2008.

[6]Dominic Wilson and Anna Stupnytska, ‘The N-11: More Than an Acronym’, Goldman Sachs Global Economics Papers , 153, 28 March 2007, pp. 8–9.

[7]John Hawksworth and Gordon Cookson, ‘The World in 2050 — Beyond the BRICs: A Broader Look at Emerging Market Growth Prospects’, PricewaterhouseCoopers, March 2008, p. 3.

[8]www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm.

[9]Charles Krauthammer, ‘An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World’, Irving Kristol Lecture, American Enterprise Institute Dinner, 10 February 2004.

[10]Philippe Sands, Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules (London: Allen Lane, 2005), Chapters 3–4, 10.

[11]www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/ArmsTrade/Spending.asp#InContextUSMilitary. SpendingVersusRestoftheWorld.

[12]The argument against the inviolability of national sovereignty, of course, has various rationales, notably failed states and so-called rogue states. Robert Cooper, The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-first Century (London: Atlantic Books, 2003), and ‘Civilise or Die’, Guardian , 23 October 2003; Michael Ignatieff, Empire Lite: Nation-Building in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan (London: Vintage, 2003). Ignatieff quite wrongly suggests (p. 21) that ‘we are living through the collapse into disorder of many [my italics] of these former colonial states’ in Asia and Africa.

[13]G. John Ikenberry, Liberal Order and Imperial Ambition: Essays on American Power and World Politics (Cambridge: Polity, 2006), p. 12.

[14]Joseph S. Nye Jr, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2004), p. x.

[15]Joshua Kurlantzick, Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power is Transforming the World (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007), Chapter 9.

[16]Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (London: Fontana Press, 1988), for example pp. 472-80, 665-92.

[17]Angus Maddison, The World Economy: Historical Statistics (Paris: OECD, 2003), p. 261.

[18]Ibid., p. 258.

[19]See Christopher Chase-Dunn, Rebecca Giem, Andrew Jorgenson, Thomas Reifer, John Rogers and Shoon Lio, ‘The Trajectory of the United States in the World System: A Quantitative Reflection’, IROWS Working Paper No. 8, University of California. A dramatic and early illustration of the effects of the UK’s imperial decline was the rapid loss of British Asia between 1941 and 1945; Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper, Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia, 1941 - 1945 (London: Allen Lane, 2004).

[20]Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict (London: Allen Lane, 2008), Chapter 1.

[21]Adrian Wooldridge, ‘After Bush: A Special Report on America and the World’, The Economist , 29 March 2008, p. 10.

[22]George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, 29 January 2002.

[23]For a discussion of the US ’s current account deficit, see Niall Ferguson, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire (London and New York: Allen Lane, 2004), Chapter 8.

[24]Speech by Henry Hyde, chairman of the House International Relations Committee, 26 January, reprinted as ‘The Perils of the “Golden Theory”’, Strait Times , 21 February 2006. Paul Kennedy, ‘Who’s Hiding Under Our Umbrella? ’, International Herald Tribune , 31 January 2008.

[25]The US has even become a net importer of investment: the difference between the overseas assets owned by Americans and the American assets owned by foreigners fell from 8 per cent of GDP in the mid 1980s to a net liability of minus 22 per cent in 2006; Niall Ferguson, ‘Empire Falls’, October 2006, posted on www.vanityfair.com.

[26]Steven C. Johnson, ‘Dollar’s Decline Presents a Challenge to US Power’, International Herald Tribune , 28-9 April, 2007.

[27]‘US’s Triple-A Credit Rating “Under Threat”’, Financial Times , 11 January 2008.

[28]There is no precedent for the extent of the militarization of the US economy both during the Cold War and subsequently; Eric Hobsbawm, Globalisation, Democracy, and Terrorism (London: Little, Brown, 2007), p. 160.

[29]For an interesting discussion of the economic cost to the United States of its military expenditure, see Chalmers Johnson, ‘Why the US Has Really Gone Broke’, Le Monde diplomatique , February 2008.

[30]Thomas L. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999), pp. 309-22; Gerald Segal, ‘Globalisation Has Always Primarily Been a Process of Westernisation’, South China Morning Post , 17 November 1998.

[31]For a discussion on the fundamental importance of cultural difference in the era of globalization, see Stuart Hall, ‘A Different Light’, Lecture to Prince Claus Fund Conference, Rotterdam, 12 December 2001.

[32]Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), Chapters 4–5.

[33]Chris Patten, East and West: China, Power, and the Future of East Asia (London: Times Books, 1998), p. 166.

[34]Francis Fukuyama, ‘The End of History?’, National Interest , summer 1989. See also for example, Edward Luttwak, Turbo-Capitalism: Winners and Losers in the Global Economy (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998), p. 25.

[35]John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), for example Chapters 2, 6, 12, Epilogue.

[36]Ezra F. Vogel, The Four Little Dragons: The Spread of Industrialization in East Asia (Cambridge, Mass.: and London: Harvard University Press, 1991); Jim Rohwer, Asia Rising (London: Nicholas Brealey, 1996), Chapters 1–3.

[37]Maddison, The World Economy: Historical Statistics , p. 261.

[38]Martin Jacques, ‘No Monopoly on Modernity’, Guardian , 5 February 2005.

[39]Manuel Castells, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture , Vol. III, End of Millennium (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), p. 277.

[40]James Mann, The China Fantasy: How Our Leaders Explain Away Chinese Repression (New York: Viking, 2007), pp. 1–2, 11–12.

[41]Wilson and Stupnytska, ‘The N- 11’, p. 8.

[42]G. John Ikenberry, ‘The Rise of China and the Future of the West: Can the Liberal System Survive?’ Foreign Affairs , January/February 2008, p. 2. Also Ikenberry, Liberal Order and Imperial Ambition , pp. 7–8.

[43]Göran Therborn, European Modernity and Beyond: The Trajectory of European Societies, 1945 - 2000 (London: Sage, 1995), pp. 4–5.

[44]C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World 1780 - 1914: Global Connections and Comparisons (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), p. 11.

[45]Therborn, European Modernity and Beyond , p. 3.