So long a cipher of the US, and now mired in its own travails and sense of decline, Europe has grown myopic, a poor vantage point from which to see the future.
In fact, we can already begin to see the broader implications of China's transformation: its global search for oil and other commodities; its increasingly proactive diplomatic presence around the world, from Southeast Asia and the Middle East to Africa and Latin America; and a rapidly growing nervousness in Washington about China's emergent global role.
And we are still only at the very beginning of this cognitive process. I have been struck on this visit to Beijing by the rapidly rising sense of self-confidence that characterizes attitudes here -- the feeling that history is "on our side."
History is proving surprisingly fleet of foot. In the aftermath of Sept. 11 and in the build-up to the invasion of Iraq, few questioned the idea that the US was likely to be the extant superpower for several decades to come. Few anticipated how quickly the neoconservative project would run into the sands -- or that China would rise so quickly.
The story of this century -- or the first half of it -- will be the decline of the existing superpower and the rise of a new one: ramifications are enormous. Power will no longer be located primarily in the West. The assumptions that inform global discourse will cease to be overwhelmingly Western. History will no longer be written with a hugely Western bias. Chinese interests, history, values, attitudes and prejudices will become familiar to us all.
Perhaps all of this does not lie so far in the future as we might think. In his speech at Yale University on his recent visit to the US, Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) talked of Chinese values and what they have to offer the world. Here in Beijing one can detect a growing confidence in a more assertive argument about the achievements and merits of the Chinese Communist Party.
So what, then, of the argument concerning 1989 and 1978? Perhaps we should, indeed, see 1989 as the epochal book end of the 20th century, the event that brought it all to a close. And -- with a little historical license -- we should regard 1978 more properly as marking the beginning of the 21st century, the event that ushered in a new epoch, though barely anyone could possibly have realized it at the time.
It is worth remembering, too, that 1989 was first and foremost a European event, probably the last great global event that was also European that we will witness for a very long time to come.
Of course, 1978 was a purely Chinese moment, albeit with huge global ramifications. What could be a more eloquent summary of their respective places in history?
Martin Jacques is a visiting professor at Renmin University in Beijing.
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