Martin Jacques

Martin Jacques is one of Britain's foremost public intellectuals. A Visiting Senior Research Fellow at IDEAS, the London School of Economics' centre for diplomacy and grand strategy, a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing, and a Fellow of the Transatlantic Academy, Washington DC, Martin Jacques is widely respected as a leading global expert on what could prove to be the most important geopolitical event of the past 200 years: the rise of China.

Born in Coventry in 1945, Martin Jacques earned a first class honours degree in Economics at Manchester University, followed by a masters degree, and then a PhD from Cambridge University. He subsequently held a lectureship in the Department of Economic and Social History at Bristol University.

In 1977, he became editor of Marxism Today, a post he held for fourteen years until the journal's closure in 1991, transforming what was an obscure and dull publication into a the most influential political magazine in Britain. In the early 1990, Jacques co-founded the think-tank Demos, and worked as deputy editor of The Independent. He has been a columnist for the Times, the Sunday Times, the Guardian, the Observer, and the New Statesman, as well as writing for many newspapers and magazines worldwide, including Financial Times, Economist, New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Daily Beast, New Republic, Volkskrant, Corriere della Sera, L'Unita, Il Mondo, Süddeutsche Zeitung, South China Morning Post, and Folha Des Paulo.

He has made many television programs for the BBC, including writing and presenting Italy on Trial (1993), The Incredible Shrinking Politicians (1993), a two-part series on The End of the Western World (1996) and Proud to be Chinese (1998).

In recent years Martin Jacques has worked as a Visiting Professor at Renmin University, Beijing, a Senior Visiting Fellow at the University of Singapore,a Visiting Research Fellow at the Asia Research Centre at the London School of Economics, and a Visiting Professor at both Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, and at the International Centre for Chinese Studies at Aichi University in Nagoya.