Martin Jacques is the author of the global best-seller When China Rules the World: the end of the Western World and the birth of a new global order. It was first published in 2009 and has since been translated into eleven languages. The book has been shortlisted for two major literary awards. A second edition of the book, greatly expanded and fully updated, was published on 29 March 2012.

His TED talk on how to understand China has had almost one million views. He is a Senior Visiting Fellow at IDEAS, a centre for diplomacy and grand strategy at the London School of Economics, and a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing. He is also a Fellow at the Transatlantic Academy, Washington DC. He has previously been a Visiting Professor at Renmin University, the International Centre for Chinese Studies, Aichi University, Nagoya, and Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto.

He was a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. He was formerly the editor of the renowned London-based monthly Marxism Today until its closure in 1991 and was co-founder of the think-tank Demos. He has been a columnist for many newspapers, made many television programmes and is a former deputy editor of the Independent newspaper. He took his doctorate while at King’s College, Cambridge. He lives in London with his son Ravi.