it happens to on beijing from pursuing the exact same strategy looking for silver or even gold and lining see in every cloud coming confidently to repel the comet 19 slowing down china is now said to be the only major economy to register growth this year much today ambulance american competitor in don't try and hasn't managed to stop china and joe biden do it well to discuss that i'm now joined by martin jakes former senior fellow at the department of politics and international studies at campus university and author of when china rules the world mr jakes it's good to see you thank you very much for taking time to talk to us thank you now you will has been in publication for more than a decade now it's been reprinted to me she is quite at an achievement in this day and age when an alice is often gets outdated before it hits the printing press and i would attribute your ability off your book to find that you were at among the 1st

in the west you. cast doubt on this assumption that as china was more denies ing it would also westernized how did you contour these realisation older way back until 80000. yeah i think it actually the reason the book should have jura bitchy is the 2 reasons that exactly the reason you just said i mean. at the time everyone assumed or a lot most of the west the ship. the row position. modernized it westernized because modernization was so you know synonymous with western eyes a ship and. i reject this because i actually have only got to understand a bit of china to say that that would never happen i mean you know there's an extraordinary continuity about china over a 2000 year period not least in government. the idea that somehow westernize ation

was going to happen was an illusion the other thing by the way predates my book if you of course china will replace the united states as the leading car in the world which i think a very large number of people around the world probably now beginning to feel it's true now e.u. call this idea an illusion and many in washington now call it enemies they'd better what i'm surprised by is by the sheer backwoods existence and the ease with which it was adopted because i present a scheme to be some promises on details and it isn't it ultimately based on the assumption that all knowledge last names are savages because only salvation is in adopting western ways. yes i think there's a lot of truth in that used the west has dominated the world let's say roughly 200 years and the assumptions grown up that the the the western model is universal in

other words it's a predictable too and should be adopted by everyone and therefore progress is progress towards adopting a western model and this is to me a nonsense i mean you know it started case things don't work like that of course you know everyone's been influenced by the west that's true over to were in fact you we've been obliged in various ways sometimes the good the west model is good at certain things to adapt to that but the idea that this is now you know the future i mean poor oh well it's ok yahoo's actually a very good very good analyst in my view but you know the end of history we're all going to be western i mean. the disasters proposition at the time now in my introduction i mentioned this trope about the chinese a warrant for crisis and i think the history of that linguistic misconception it is very telling and actually chan's well with your book because. dad a story a region

a to read the u.s. political elites president kennedy was the 1st to use it but down it found its way into the speeches of congolese arise albacore and many others because it was such a handy a rhetorical device so it wasn't that the american elites didn't recognize the ingenuity of the chinese people by that for some reason that vision was limited on that self interest they only saw what america can get from that broadened and the whole picture or what the chinese can get from god why do you think that is what explains such a narrow scope well i think that the west and extremely bad in understanding other cultures. and other kinds of societies. precisely because it believes everyone should be motoring you know in a western direction. so it doesn't really feel the need to understand other cultures and i think that this is one of the great problems the west faces now is

that it just doesn't understand china and i you know can make sense of china well of course you come make sense of john if you know about the really studying it probably and you always assume that you're going to it's going to end up like you which is your requirement so that and so this is actually you know the west likes to think of itself has already cost the poets. and so on in reality the west is becoming more and more provincial they cook asians only represent about percent of the world's population and the west is roughly you know that's the size of the west . so the vast majority of the will live in very different very a very diverse circumstances with different histories and i think that's you know a beautiful thing about the world now i tend to approach this issues from a psychological perspective and what i find kind of ironic is that there has been a lot of discussion in narcissism in america over the last 4 years primarily connected with that to donald trump but one of the features of these disorder is

what is called and narcissistic expansion days unconscious demand that everything and everyone be on debt is your control and that's exactly the use self image or at least how the united states sees itself on the international irene that isn't and isn't that actually you know one of the reasons why it expects china and other countries to develop in ways that have only beneficial to the united states you know of course that kind of thinking has become quite you know extreme in this beard under trouble and. i mean i think we turn to stan this we have to look at american history and the way america developed because baby. it was all by. the destruction of their mary india and and so they they that it was a sort of ground 0 if you like and it came from and so what happened in america was

what the european settlers brought with them. and anything different for example african slaves were subjugated and became. a supplicant to this kind of order so that there is a very strong thread in american history and american psychology of being able nobody's control america but you know the world and the world should be grateful for this at the same time and so i but i think that this all this culture is in deep trouble no deep trouble i mean we're out we're out a moment of history where america is now clearly in detroit i mean if you said this in the ninety's when my book came out many people said you know america's not really in decline that it was published in 2009 of course america's in decline and that process is now being much more widely accepted in america especially during

the part is a consequence of the trump. well a new sense being it's being accepted in america but i add also i think that many people think of that as sort of the end of their world and that brings me back to you. i guess the meaning of psychological run work because you know the ultimate goal is to understand your own idiosyncrasies rather than remake somebody else in your image and you mentioned just a moment ago that americans don't understand china but do they actually understand them solace. well that's a. that's a real complication. no i think. that societies construct an image of themselves. which is partly true and partly false i mean you know this put this on the ground. that when you when you go to another country there are things that are familiar and things that are unfamiliar and

sometimes it takes a foreigner. to recognize things that you just take for granted in your society because you never you know sort of looking you're looking at it like this and i think this is very true of americans i mean you know i don't come of the figures now but it 3 quarters of americans of don't have a passport or some very high number they did they haven't traveled around the world and of course you know america's a very big country so you can actually live in such a huge country and not travel so americans are very eager to. if you you know if you exclude the coastal east and west sides america then most americans are actually quite procul and there are now going back to china you call it a civilizational state rather than nation state what would be the difference between that you know well i think that you cannot. understand china

primarily in terms of being a nation state because china is well the chinese like to say you know a civilization is 5000 years old but let's be more limited than that since it became a unified polity in $211.00 b.c. for the vast majority of that period since that china was not a nation state china only became well begun took some of the characteristics of a nation state from the end of the 19th century before that essentially it was a civilization across a lot of land containing many different peoples many different races and the vast majority of characteristics we associate with china predate china being a nation state so you know confucian values very unusual russian in a state and society a distinctive concept to the family that. chinese as

a language. all of these kind of things. are to do with china as a civilization not china as a nation state joined as a complex mixture of being a civilization state and a nation state is a very important because all sorts of things flow from this. there were the way in which society sees the state in china it very very different people in china see the state as an expression of themselves difficult to think there are many countries in. the world that such a strong view exists. so trial of the state not just to the country but to them so well that mr jackson has to take a very short break now but we will be back in just a few moments. so

what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's crazy from day shouldn't let it be an arms race move this off and spearing dramatic developments only really going to exist i don't see how that strategy will be successful very critical time to sit down and tom. welcome back to worlds apart with marching jakes alfaro point china rules the world mr james before the break we were talking about sort of these different conceptual

worldview between the westerners and the easterners the chinese in particular and i think one other important factor here is the conception of time because as i was reading your book it occurred to me that any of these changes her rise in your definition of power automatically changes because when you think in terms of 4 or 5 euro election cycles which is typical in the west. power becomes primarily about politics and politics becomes a primarily about power but when you have a sort of a longer horizon a balance here before you. you can think. about what power it is for and what you can achieve with it you know without power it becomes about development what do you think about that distinction i think this is a very important distinction that we make. you see i think that. i'm not quite sure how what i think of the future of their kind of western style democratic

system because it's serious it's obviously got some very serious flaws because it's unable to think. long term. and that problem has become more and more serious actually because there's been a certain sort of rundown of the state of the capacity of the state all the civil service and so on and this is very this country is very strongly with china where you know there's a sort of rooting group if you like and you notice that it's actually constituted by the chinese communist party or part of the chinese comes in practice the officials and so on and they the whole way which they say you know is completely different they think long term they're also extremely well well informed and and they've got a lot of experience i mean you know take xi jinping i mean he's done many different jobs so he knows how long that filtering system reaches actually farm workers well

i mean on on a professional level far more complex and efficient down you know simply voting for somebody who's ad he saw on television and use you know you saw his family and you like him and therefore you are you made a decision to entrust your country into the hands of this man or woman for that reason i mean the chinese system of course from confucius and other saying because of his time is based on the idea of meritocracy where you promote people who have the capacity to do things well and this is a very very important part of the way in which the chinese think. about governance so they have a very long term view you think of the 5 year plans and so on they are based on a view about how the country should vote now quite frankly if you take my government to britain me jerry incompetent they are incompetent well because you don't know what you think is surely a small clearing politics they're not doing development and even if they wanted to

do development it's to be a question of whether the system would allow them to do that we should raise me to get to that to my next question about why the west is so obsessive on about pushing its political system onto other countries is it really because it needs affirmation because of its conviction that its system is the best of perhaps quite the opposite you know the realisation that things are not working that well and you try to prevent others from becoming who they are reach which is an essentially definition of anime i think that the idea grew are particularly after the 2nd world war 'd all it goes back to earlier for britain and the united states democracy was. in the best interest of the people because it reflected the views of the people and the assumptions being that somehow that is suitable for everywhere i think this is a misconception. that you know actually the condition so the

development of democracy well it comes from europe so what you've got to then take into account what are the specificities of your which are not true of other societies so for example in the 19th century of the evolution of the european nation state was a century based on one dominant race. so all of the nation states in europe you know in varying degrees are like that now the problem is if you introduce ethnic or racial diversity then that's a very different question altogether and it seems to me one of the reasons why for example it's not worked very so well in africa oh africa doing better but that kind of notion is because it's in 6 to impose on the african countries a system which is not tolerant of different the society is has to be constructed on the basis of different racial groups this is essential well it's interesting that you mention that because i think diversity true diversity has

a not there sort of layer to it and it's not just cultural but sort of developmental layer i see that a lot not only in china but let's say in russia where we have my native st peter's parking lots a chance ya and loss social customs culture at our plight very differently there and you cannot do anything to bring that to some sort of conformity even if you have unlimited powers or you know too radical powers so it's not sort of a melting pot it's not a mistake it's more about a garden where plans bloom at herat and different paces do you think a western mind will ever be able to come to terms with dad definition of diversity developmental diversity that is culturally direct and produce that is you know the in the development as and the political system as a result of of historic development rather than a precursor to. i think that the west is. is having

serious difficulties which are going to get bigger in coming to terms firstly with the world their diversity of the world when the west was so dominant it could. military or economic means get what it wanted but when it's getting weaker what it wanted i mean like when do you wage a war in iraq and when to many other places do you suppose they get what it wanted didn't get it now of course no i mean that was an abject failure because they tried to impose on iraq a system of government governance and a culture to go with it which was utterly inimical to iraq or afghanistan or many of the other countries so the situation is that i think that the west as it as it becomes weaker will find less and less able to do impose these kind of

recall beastly clear these kind of solutions the other problem is that the west itself is changing certain western countries they're becoming increasingly diverse and you can see in you know it takes france recently with regard to. the prophet mohammed and start you know the french reaction is to impose a homogeneous it system french values irrespective of the fact that the country is no you know significantly a multi-racial a multicultural and so there's a crisis if you like of culture a crisis of model within the with within the within the within the western countries it's actually a very good point because we can see that in many other western countries they're finally or suddenly realizing that their farm one diver is down and was previously acknowledged one other example i would bring up is a nice and west germany where you can now see statistically see distinct political

cultural social differences between east and the west even though it's been always considered that you know west germany is simply swallowed the east and i was the deal we can see divisions india out of states not only because men think occasions and the blacks but also between the cost on america. they fly over country and they have different values they have different goals they have different vision of what america is supposed to be undone and of diversity i think managing that kind of diversity takes more than just school or in a war moral indignation which has been sulfide the their western ways of dealing with it rather than talking about westernized ation of china don't you think that due west has something to learn from the east in terms of how to deal with those sometimes polarizing differences and how to hourman that how nice them into something resembling genuine unity national unity well i think what we what we're going to say or what we are already saying actually is

a process by which. the west the west. notion of universalism is becoming less and less influential and you can see that and lots of ways including the weak wishing of a democratic form as a model and as a and it's attractive us to people who have well and on the other hand you know witnessing the rise of china which is you know in many ways is going to be much more successful in the united states not least because it's relevant to the developing world where 85 percent of the world's population live because they understand the problem of lack of development and the importance of development so therefore i think that what we'll find over time is that the chinese model or the chinese way of doing things becomes more normative if you like you have to learn from john you have to think about china a different way china does not and never has be never has seen itself as a model it doesn't it has got

a notice it i know expectation the other countries should have a political system like china doesn't think like that but we have so much to learn from a country like china because we're not just still got going for java we should learn from wherever but because of china central it then. china i think. ticky this go now mr jinx there's one more thing i want to ask you about in your book you point out that people in the west and in china conceptualize their governments in totally different ways who westerners believe the government did that are a little to market forces whereas for the chinese the state is the patriarch at the top of the table and all the market forces are ultimately subservient to it and i think that has a lot of implications for and how various countries i'm dealing with the current plan donek it has its effect on the availability of public health care.

you know the your government's ability to introduce sharp and if that if log downs the government's ability to regulate food and drug companies et cetera do you think there will be any reconsideration of the role of a state in don't last in the aftermath of call it then 900 as well as perhaps a rebalancing of individual versus collective values because that balance is ultimately the core distinction between the western and eastern civilizations and i think that. is an extraordinary story. because what this has been is a test of governments. in the west more or less universally there's a good governments a foe the fact of the matter is that you know we're in europe for example we've got a huge thread again ordered and i think without

a vaccine probably. the west will never be able to come to terms with cope with 90 now then look at east asia confusion bases more so there is more collectivist and. more respectful of the government and the importance of government and you know china's outstanding issues are but you know they're more or less eliminated coated 90 south korea viet nam so this is a really important historical moment western societies cannot deal with a crisis of this kind they lack a fundamental resilience now mr dix very quickly if i may because we have really running out of time. it the united states under donald trump made no secret that it wants to arrest china's rise and donald trump president to leave office and yet joe biden's policy is expected to carry some of its legacy it at least in terms

of tariffs it is also expected to add on obama's legacy in the form of criticizing china for its human rights do you think your biden will be able to arrest the trance that you so our question describe in your book which is. the rise of china and also the rise of the rest of the world with that very unique path to development. of course not he doesn't stand a chance the rise of china is one of the great. the causes and the reasons for the rise of china very deep. in history so you know you know there's no way that you can stop this process in china is trying to is growing all the time expanding all the time and so on. the role of the rise of the developing world which has been which china's part has been

a familiar who trained ever since 945 so it should be because 85 percent of the world's population lives and they do it well there's no way the only way for the americans to think that they can stop this process they have to be like king canute king canoe when told to the in english speech and said i can defy the tide. do you think you succeeded well it's now i mean we have seen the star repeated over and over again with maniac american overseas adventures but for some reason it never actually keeps home which may be different now let's let let's hold without either calling 1000 or perhaps donald trump as president will be some very humbling tie for the united states or at least an invitation to learn about other countries anyway mr jakes we have to leave it there thank you very much for sharing your thoughts with us thank you and thank you for watching come to syria again next week on worlds apart. from.

narrator him dead girl is gone another researcher to be. there barry. betteridge weapon of mass communication is spreading into the air fare are ending that way to marinate the day when the end of m.t.v. is if there's an invisible devices in order to a little girl you're going to monitor the country and if you really don't need to worry about that to your mother mary earlier

against alternative vision. you'll start to question the whole american way to expel the air and i related to them and it is very erratically that appear to media air and stay under cover and i'm going to say about any area you will get exposed to authenticate waves decontaminate your library was an alkali it is as brave everything to. track down. where narrow you can defend yourself and your reference from the weapons of mass communication. or transfer the teen girl to the enemy our fingers you are airing.

it's. pretty. clear. u.s. food and drug administration reveals it's now probing 5 allergic reactions to the vaccine including 3 health workers. pay raises the alarm over a deadly new strain of cold 19 and unveils drastic new restrictions across london and much of southeast england over the christmas period. secretary of state blames russia for a cyber attack on government agencies although security officials admit they do not know who was behind the breach. next hour kevin on brings you our sunday review of the week's top stories right now though it is going on.