The term civilization-state is becoming increasingly familiar, even in the West. It exists in its most complete form in China where civilization and the state have been inextricably bound together for thousands of years, and especially since 211 BC.

If the term civilization-state is being employed more widely, so is the term civilization. Post-colonial developing countries have increasingly sought to emphasise their civilizational traditions as a way of connecting with their pre-colonial history, emphasising their indigenous identity, and distinguishing themselves from their Western colonisers. Identifying with civilizational difference has become a growing trend. Indian historian Hindol Sengupta argues that the "narrative of the Indian state today is different from the decades after independence when the legitimacy of India's nationhood was largely thought to be derived from its anti-colonial movement, and its post-independence constitution." We are only at the very earliest stages of the process by which the developing countries explore and recover their past as integral to an understanding of and defining their future.

The great exception to this civilizational trend is the West itself. There is a hole at the centre of the debate about civilizations—which is the West. It rarely uses the expression "Western civilization" except in a rather esoteric way when reflecting on Ancient Greece and Rome. There is, instead, repeated reference to "the West," a recognition that the countries that are seen as Western share an important economic, political, and cultural legacy, combined with various contemporary values and norms, such as democracy. The West views the world overwhelmingly in terms of nation-states, confining the notion of civilization to history. Until the twentieth century, the nation-state was an almost exclusively European phenomenon, apart from its various exported offshoots such as Canada, Australia, and the United States. With the global spread of European colonialism, most of the world was incorporated into the colonial empires of Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and others. With no independent existence, the former colonies were denied and deprived of much of their pre-existing history and culture, including their languages, religions, names, customs, and indigenous forms of governance. It was not until the mid-twentieth century that the former colonies became independent nation-states.

This history helps us to understand why the concept and term "civilization" only has a shadowy existence in contemporary Western discourse. Civilization speaks to histories and cultures that are independent of, and predate, Western rule and control, such as the Mali and Songhai in Africa, the Maya, Aztec and Inca in South America, Islam in the Middle East, and many other civilizational traditions. The colonial powers consciously sought to undermine and erase these traditions in the name of a modernising project that preached and insisted upon universal (that is, Western) values.

We now live in an entirely different era. A pivotal event of the last century was national liberation and the overthrow of colonial rule. It enabled, for the first time in the modern era, a majority of people in the world to rule their own countries and become subjects in their own right, rather than appendages of their colonial rulers. But independence, except in the most formal sense, did not mean and has not meant respect or equality, as illustrated by the nature of the international system. The hierarchies of the past lived on in the culture and mentality of people in both the coloniser and the colonised states, in what might be described as an implicit global hierarchy of race, with the white rich world at the top and those of African descent generally near or at the bottom. Whites still enjoy far greater power and influence than any other race. But this hierarchy, in all its various forms, is under growing challenge. This is one of the great mega themes of the present century.

The rise of China confounds and disrupts the Western mental picture and the underlying assumption that a white Western tradition was, is and will continue to be, superior to all others. We should not underestimate just how deep these attitudes remain in predominantly white societies. After four decades of China's rise, there is still little understanding in the West of how and why it has been possible. This is why Western attitudes towards China could go into such rapid retreat after 2016: China suddenly became synonymous with the Communist Party of China—China began in 1949, and the Chinese civilization disappeared entirely from view.

The West is besieged by the challenge of profoundly different civilizations. European colonisation involved the subjugation of a majority of the world's population. In the United States and Australia, it resulted in the virtual elimination of the native peoples; to a lesser extent this was also the case in Canada and New Zealand. As a result of European colonial expansion, the West is now confronted with two great problems, one global, the other domestic.

First, there is the rise of the developing world, the countries and peoples that the West subjugated, and the accompanying decline of the West. The reordering of the global hierarchy that this involves will be profound, multi-dimensional, protracted, and—for the West—very painful. It is already well underway. The recent rise of the Global South to such prominence is a powerful illustration. It is not an accident that the far right in numerous Western countries believes that white supremacy is under threat: white people constitute only around 10% of the world's population. The rise of the developing world represents a huge civilizational challenge for the West.

Second, the Western expansion has led to huge inward migration from the former colonies. This is why the UK and France, which possessed Europe's two largest empires, have such racially diverse populations. 13% of the UK's population is non-white. The traditions and cultures of the latter are different, a combination of where they came from—Indian, Caribbean, African, and many others—and their new British identity. The greatest single challenge of recent times is, as in France, posed by Muslims. The British have been obliged, in the face of its new citizens, to rethink many of their assumptions and ideas of who they are. But this is a long and difficult process. Discrimination by the dominant whites against non-white minorities remains deep and systemic. While the United States has failed to resolve its relationship with African-Americans whose continuing oppression at the hands of white society has its origins in slavery.

A declining and fragmenting West will become progressively less important in the world. Western countries are faced with a profound process of restructuring which will take many decades and is far beyond what any have so far imagined.

Martin Jacques, Former Senior Fellow, POLIS, Cambridge University; Senior Fellow, Institute of Modern International Relations, Tsinghua University; and Author of When China Rules the Worl

The article excerpts from Martin Jacques's speech delivered at the International Symposium on "Understanding the Chinese Nation: Unity in Diversity for Common Development" during the 2024 Understanding China Conference in Guangzhou on December 4.

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