I’m currently reading ‘When China Rules The World: The Rise of The Middle Kingdom and the End of The Western World’ by Martin Jacques. I’ve been enjoying this book a great deal. Tackling our perceptions of westernisation and modernisation, a huge task; Jacques examines cultural differences, East Asian (and by definition, global) history, global economics and politics. Themes that may appear heavy and hard to grasp are explored and explained simply and methodically.

 

For example, Jacques contends that opposed to the historically conventional view that modernisation in developing countries must be synonymous with westernisation, we are seeing and will see an increasing plurality of modernity. Models of modernity that are so heavily linked with a country’s cultural core that they are incomparable with the western modernity that has been the only yardstick until recent decades. Examples of East Asian modernity are explored through investigation into the value of indigenous languages, the perception of the body, including traditional fashions, the culturally central role played by food, and the cultural and historical perception of politics.

 

This idea of the existence of plural modernity is one, as a westerner, that instantly drew me in, as it questioned what we’ve come to accept as gospel (the universality of modernisation via westernisation) through education and media. And reading the book (I’m only half way so far) it has already helped me to contextualise my experiences of life in China. The combinations of old and new; east and west; tradition and modern that are so often spoken of in relation to Beijing and Shanghai are superbly a delicately revealed as a Chinese modernity.