Understand China to understand the world

Martin Jacques
London School of Economics

For over two hundred years we have lived in a western-made world, one where the very notion of being modern was synonymous with being western. The twenty-first century will be different: with the rise of increasingly powerful non-Western countries, the west will no longer be dominant and there will be many ways of being modern. In this new era of ‘contested modernity’ the central player will be China.

Far from becoming a western-style society, China will remain highly distinctive. It is already having a far-reaching and much-discussed economic impact, but its political and cultural influence, which has hitherto been greatly neglected, will be at least as significant. Continental in size and mentality, and accounting for one fifth of humanity, China is not even a conventional nation-state but a ‘civilization-state’ whose imperatives, priorities and values are quite different. China’s rise signals the end of the global dominance of the west and the emergence of a world which it will come to shape in a host of different ways and which will become increasingly disconcerting and unfamiliar to those who live in the west.

In a few years, we will not be able to make sense of the world, if we can’t make sense of China. China is different from the West and will remain so. We can only understand China in its own terms and not through a Western prism.

理解中国，理解世界

马丁•雅克
伦敦政治经济学院

在往昔两百年间，我们生活在一个由西方创造的世界里。在概念上，“现代化”与“西化”等同。然而，二十一世纪将有所不同：两个非西方大国的崛起将动摇西方的主导地位，现代化的方式将变得多元。在这个拥有不同的现代化方式互相竞逐的时代，中国会是主角。

中国的独特性使其与西方社会迥异。中国的深远经济影响已备受瞩目，但其尚被世人忽略的政治及文化影响力只会比经济的更大。拥有博大的疆域与心态并占有世界五分之一的人口，中国并非传统意义上的民族国家，而是秉承着一套截然不同的主张、关切点与价值观的“文明国家”。中国的崛起标志着西方主导权的结束和一个新世界的诞生，一个处处载有中国烙印，令生活在西方的人们感到陌生的新世界。

短短数载后，无法理解中国，则无法理解世界。中国与西方迥异并将保持其独特性。要理解中国，我们必需置身中国的语境下，而非透过西方文明的三棱镜。