Civilization

"What I found interesting and what I like about this book is the fact that Niall takes a very broad look at the East-West theme. When people are looking at this issue of East versus West, or West versus the Rest, they tend to focus either on politics (which is very important and we’ll talk about that when we discuss Richard McGregor’s book on the Chinese Communist Party) or on economics. But there has not been anything that I have read that has been more all-encompassing: looking at religion, looking at East versus West not just as US versus China, but also bringing in other elements like Islam, cultural aspects, historical context, work ethic, Calvinism. So that’s what really drew me to this book. If I were to be critical of an economist’s perspective, it’s that we tend to have a very narrow lens. What Niall has done is added additional pillars to the discourse by bringing in the historical context, covering religion, technological advance, and many other things that are relevant but would fall outside the purview of an economist or a political scientist. That’s a running theme in Niall’s recent work. But I think it’s more about what’s happening in the Rest, and China in particular. The central question he seeks to address is why, over the past several centuries, the West succeeded and mastered economic success whereas other regions have faltered, stalled and even declined. You have to remember it’s not the first time places like China and India have been the largest economies in the world. This was the case in the 1820s. What he’s trying to get at – and what is interesting not just in Niall’s work but across all the books I have chosen – is: Why should it be different for China this time? What mistakes did they make last time? How is it that Western countries actually surpassed China and India to become the biggest economies? Also, what happened to Japan? About 20 years ago everyone was talking about Japan taking over as the lead global economic powerhouse. Why is that we think China can do better than Japan did? Niall is posing tough questions about China’s rise, in the context of historical evidence."