The world is likely to look very different from the one with which we have become so familiar -- and comfortable -- since Britain's industrial revolution began in the 18th century.
From 1800 -- some would argue much earlier -- and until very recently, the center of global developments was Europe. Admittedly, its hold became tenuous after 1945, but its bisection by the Cold War faultline sustained its status -- a status that was lost with the events of 1989.
Now, without question, the most important region in the world is east Asia. It is economically the strongest, outdistancing both North America and Europe by some considerable margin. The main reason, of course, is China, together with Japan and, to a lesser extent, the Asian tigers. But east Asia's centrality is not just a question of economic strength, even if this underpins it -- east Asia is also where the future will be played out, where the world will first see the wider meaning and implications of China's rise: not least in growing Sino-Japanese tensions, and in increasing pressure on the US' role in the region.
The rise of China contradicts the commonsense view in the West, particularly strong in Europe, that the nation-state is in decline and that the future belongs to unions of nation-states, along the lines of the EU and ASEAN. On the contrary, the rise of China -- and India -- marks the ascendancy of a new kind of mega-nation-state, which, together with the US, the EU, Japan and Russia, will dominate the 21st century.
In the 1990s, after Tiananmen Square, China was overwhelmingly seen through the prism of human rights and democracy. For a long time it was virtually impossible to start a discussion in the West about China except in these terms, or when this question was a central part of the agenda. This remains part of the Western agenda, but a much less important one in the light of China's stunning transformation.
The question of Western-style democracy remains no closer now than it was in the wake of Tiananmen. On the contrary, the regime has not only survived but prospered to an extraordinary extent over the last quarter-century.
The final point is the least recognized and least discussed, but it is none the less a striking feature of China's rise. And it presents us with a profoundly paradoxical feature of the era in which we live. The events of 1989 represented the end of European communism. The Chinese Communist Party was expected to go the same way -- wasn't that supposed to be the import of Tiananmen?
We couldn't have been more wrong.
What everyone expected never happened. A communist party is presiding over arguably the most remarkable economic transformation in human history. It is true, of course, that the Chinese party is a very different creature to its European counterparts, not least in its ability, since 1978, to undertake the most extraordinary regeneration. This paradox presents us with one of the great enigmas of the early 21st century.
But these points, profound as they are, are merely the hors d'oeuvre to the kind of impact that China will have on the world over the next few decades.
Martin Jacques is a visiting professor at Renmin University in Beijing.
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