identify! No gangsta, Mike Lee! Embrace him, mainstream consumers!

So what's the big deal? Why be such a hater? Can't the feeble shell of American boxing use all the publicity and popular heroes that it can get? Yes, sure, of course. And it has plenty of potential hero types. Bernard Hopkins was in jail at the age when Mike Lee was attending Notre Dame. Hopkins went on to win the world middleweight championship and defend it successfully 20 times. He's still fighting, and announcing, on HBO at the age of 48. There's a mural of him in the prison where he used to be caged up. He's a world-class fighter. Where is his Subway commercial? Andre Ward is an Olympic gold medalist, devoted father, and staunch Christian. He's aChinese Puzzle

Chinese Puzzle

Article excerpt

WHEN CHINA RULES THE WORLD

by Martin Jacques Penguin, £30, pp. 550,

ISBN 9780713992540 . £24 (plus £2.45 p&p)

0870 429 6655

This long and repetitive book is exactly about what it says on the cover. Unlike Martin Jacques I hesitate to say the same thing again and again, but his point is that the Chinese have a very long, tenacious, unified, and enduring culture that is overtaking the 'West' - he means the United States, a country of recent origin compared to the 5,000-yearold Chinese civilisation-state. Some time in the mid-term future the Chinese will be global masters.

Jacques, a well-known journalist, onceeditor of Marxism Today and now a columnist for the Guardian and the New Statesman, lived for some years in Japan, Hong Kong, and China. In his