The World Trade Center, PLU, and City Club sponsored a lecture by Martin Jacques this morning. We were at the beautiful MOG theater and had a good-size crowd there.

And the talk was fascinating. My first instinct when I heard the topic was “Isn’t that what everyone said about Japan 20 years ago?” But Jacques argument was rooted not in economic GDP data but history and other data that was fairly convincing.

He touched on many themes including history, ethnicity, belief in the state, and others to suggest that as China modernizes they will not follow our model but have their own unique modernity. They may liberalize their policies, but they will still be their own thing.

I have no doubt that China will be a very important power in the world in the next few decades. But I would still be wary of thinking of them the next uni-power. For starters, I do believe that liberalization inevitably leads to more which inevitably leads to more until it can’t be controlled any longer. The Soviet Union learned that intensely, and while China certainly learned a lot of lessons from that experience, I’m not sure that means they can avoid them.

Still, all in all, a very compelling argument. Interesting way to start the morning!