Global EditionASIA 中文雙語Fran?ais
    China
    Home / China / National affairs

    Landmark date marks start of 'profound change in global order'

    By Andrew Moody | China Daily | Updated: 2019-10-09 08:52
    Share
    Share - WeChat

    The 70th anniversary celebrations demonstrate that China now represents a different version of modernity to that of the West, according to a leading academic.

    Martin Jacques, author of When China Rules the World, one of the most influential books on the nation in recent times, said the world's second-largest economy had made clear it had a destiny of its own.

    "It was a great moment for China. It marked that 70 years after the revolution, China has done brilliantly. It has dragged itself out of poverty, its standard of living is hugely greater than it ever was and it is now by far the most successful country in the world economically," he said.

    The senior fellow at the Department of Politics and International Studies at Cambridge University insists that any idea that China had to become more Western to succeed now seems absurd.

    "That was just hubris on the part of the West. China is a different sort of modernity, based on a different history and culture, and there is now no sign that it is going to move in that direction at all," he said.

    Jacques said that since the global financial crisis of 2007-08, it is the West that has lost any sense of direction.

    "The West is in big trouble. It is recognizably in serious decline. There is no easy way out for it. It has lost its sense of the future. China and the developing countries now are the crucible of a sense of the future."

    Jacques, one of the United Kingdom's best-known left-wing thinkers, came to prominence as editor of Marxism Today, a popular political magazine in the 1970s and '80s.

    He went on to be deputy editor of The Independent newspaper in the UK, and over the past decade or so has been a leading commentator on China.

    He said it is not always understood in the West why 1949 is so important for China, ending as it did the century of humiliation that began with defeat to the British in the Opium Wars.

    "The decline actually starts in the late 18th century, if not earlier, with the rise of Europe and the failure, even in the most advanced areas such as the Yangtze delta, to keep up economically," he added.

    Jacques said there was nothing inevitable about Mao Zedong being able to turn this decline around.

    "If you look at other great empires of pre-modern times, such as those of Rome and Greece, they were never able to return to their previous status in the world. So there was nothing inevitable about China being able to turn around its historical decline. This is the great achievement of the 1949 revolution," he said.

    Jacques believes that is why Mao is such an important figure in Chinese history.

    "What he achieved was extremely difficult and required ingenuity and leadership on his part. He understood that the revolutionary force in China was not the proletariat but the peasantry, and that showed an originality and imagination in his thinking."

    A number of commentators, particularly some from the United States, argue the big changes came only after Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening-up policy in 1978 and the emergence of a private sector, but Jacques believes this is a fundamental misinterpretation.

    "Deng could never have done what he did in 1978 without Mao. If you are asking me which was the greater achievement, it is no question that it was 1949," he said.

    "He was building on the foundations which, above all, Mao was responsible for creating."

    Jacques said Xi Jinping's report to the Communist Party of China 19th National Congress in October 2017, which launched the country's new era, was another major landmark in the nation's history.

    "He was underscoring that the Chinese economy was not gravitating toward capitalism, that it was not going to end up as a Western-style economy or a Western-style polity, but it was going to remain profoundly different, remaining firmly in a socialist, rather than a capitalist, tradition," he said.

    Jacques said New China's 70th anniversary has come at the beginning of profound change in the global order.

    "The United States under Trump is rejecting the postwar order of which it was the architect, both rejecting multilateralism and advocating a new nationalist position, and thereby not taking responsibility for the global order," he said.

    "China has been very pragmatic. It has been very gradualist and cautious and has not wanted to rip up the existing order. But things are moving much more quickly now and over the next 20 years there will undoubtedly be a new global order of some kind," he said.

    Jacques believes the new order will be one where the West will prove to be less dominant.

    "Europe is going to return to where it was before its rise in the 18th century, a place on the western end of the Eurasian landmass. It will engage more eastward. America, on the other hand, is going to become more divided and inward-looking and is in very serious decline," he said.

    Top
    BACK TO THE TOP
    English
    Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site.
    License for publishing multimedia online 0108263

    Registration Number: 130349
    FOLLOW US
     
    日本高清免费中文在线看| 亚洲国产精品无码久久九九 | 免费A级毛片无码A∨中文字幕下载| 成在人线av无码免费高潮喷水| 久久超乳爆乳中文字幕| 2024你懂的网站无码内射| 熟妇人妻系列aⅴ无码专区友真希 熟妇人妻系列av无码一区二区 | 国产热の有码热の无码视频| 无码国产精品一区二区免费虚拟VR| 日本按摩高潮a级中文片| 国产AV无码专区亚洲AV毛网站| 一区二区三区人妻无码 | 亚洲综合无码AV一区二区| 日本免费中文视频| 中文字幕亚洲男人的天堂网络| 成人无码免费一区二区三区| 亚洲Av无码精品色午夜| 国产综合无码一区二区辣椒| 最近免费2019中文字幕大全| 制服丝袜人妻中文字幕在线| 中文毛片无遮挡高潮免费| 精品无码久久久久久久久久| 6080YYY午夜理论片中无码 | 色婷婷久久综合中文久久蜜桃av| 国产免费无码AV片在线观看不卡| 亚洲欧洲自拍拍偷午夜色无码| 在线天堂中文新版www| 欧美日韩中文国产va另类| 中文字幕免费在线观看| 久久综合中文字幕| 最近2019好看的中文字幕| 中文字幕日韩一区二区三区不卡| 天堂中文在线最新版| 娇小性色xxxxx中文| 最近新中文字幕大全高清| 中文字幕欧美日本亚洲| 免费a级毛片无码a∨免费软件| 精品欧洲AV无码一区二区男男| 中文字幕乱妇无码AV在线| 无码中文字幕av免费放dvd| 日韩精品真人荷官无码|