Martin Jacques

“The era when the United States was the dominant global power is steadily coming to an end, and it must find a way of acknowledging this and framing its ambitions and interests accordingly. I...”

“The fact that the Bush administration, and those in Europe who have followed its 9/11-inspired agenda, somehow believe that the future of the world is being played out in the Middle East and...”

“The U.S. might enjoy overwhelming military advantage, but its relative economic power, which in the long run is almost invariably decisive, is in decline. The interregnum after the Cold War,...”

“The two ethnic groups that remain fundamentally different from the Han Chinese - in terms of history, culture, language, religion and physical appearance - are the Uighurs and Tibetans. In t...”

“Two European nations emerged with credit from the Iraq disaster: France and Germany. Both had the courage to withstand the Bush administration and oppose the U.S.-led invasion.”

“The Internet has been seen in the West as the quintessential expression of the free exchange of ideas and information, untrammeled by government interference and increasingly global in reach...”

“China's Internet will continue to be policed and controlled, information filtered, sites prohibited, noncompliant search engines excluded, and sensitive search words disallowed. And where Ch...”

“The reason why China forecasting has such a poor track record is that Westerners constantly invoke the model and experience of the West to explain China, and it is a false prophet. Until we...”

“Never underestimate the ability of political leaders to misread history on a monumental scale. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan have both served to hasten western decline: they have bot...”

“In 1975, the Americans suffered a spectacular military defeat at the hands of North Vietnam and the Vietcong, with U.S. helicopters seeking to rescue leading U.S. personnel from the tops of...”

“There has always been something less than wholesome about New Labour. But Blair for a long time had an easy ride. There was the whopping majority. There was the relief that the Tories were f...”

“The fact that television and tourism have made the whole world accessible has created the illusion that we enjoy intimate knowledge of other places, when we barely scratch their surface. For...”

“My guess is that good and bad parenting is spread fairly evenly across different social groups. But can you imagine Tony Blair lecturing the middle class on how to bring up their children? H...”

“Where the costs of entry are minimal, there is a wide avenue of opportunity for those with little or nothing, which is why football is just about the most democratic sport of all: African an...”

“When Europe dominated, there were no or few feedback loops. Or, to put it another way, there were few, if any, consequences for its behaviour towards the non-western world: relations were si...”

“The Chinese state is constructed in an entirely different way from western states. Unlike European states, for over a millennium the Chinese state has not been obliged to compete for power w...”

“Now, I know it's a widespread assumption in the West that as countries modernize, they also westernize. This is an illusion. It's an assumption that modernity is a product simply of competit...”

“If one wanted to find a modern symbol of personal freedom, the motor car is right there near the top of the list. But a car has come to mean much more than that. It has become a powerful sta...”

“The election of the nationalist Chen Shui-bian as president in 2000 and his re-election in 2004 was a nadir in the relationship between Taiwan and the mainland.”

“Just as the Japanese pioneered a new form of manufacturing - lean production and quite new standards of reliability - so Tata, too, is embracing new forms of manufacture in order to revoluti...”