In the years to come, the greatest challenge facing the US will be how best to engage with China as it bursts with national pride and is keen to wash off “a century of humiliation” under Western and Japanese domination and occupation.
The US policy and opinion-makers are aware of this challenge, but their preoccupation with the Middle East is hindering any coherent debate on the important issue of China’s rise.
At the official level, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said that China’s rising influence is not something to fear “if that power is used responsibly” — an important qualification.
She also voiced concern regarding China’s “rapid development of high-tech weapons systems.”
China’s “lack of transparency about its military spending and doctrine and its strategic goals increases mistrust and suspicion,” Rice wrote in a recent article in the journal Foreign Affairs.
But, despite some serious concerns regarding China on a host of issues, it is “incumbent on the United States to find areas of cooperation and strategic agreement” to deal with many international problems.
Rice’s formulations on China in Foreign Affairs are essentially a mild response to the very serious question of China’s rise and the challenge it poses for US power.
It doesn’t suggest any medium or long term blueprint to deal with a new and hyperactive power energized by a sense of overcoming, if not avenging, its national humiliation in the past.
A comparison with India in this respect is instructive.
In some ways, India suffered more under colonial occupation that lasted two centuries, and its historical narrative is quite blunt about it, but there is no comparable national hysteria to capitalize on it politically.
In China’s case, its carefully controlled jingoism takes on — at times — the appearance of Nazi rallies, so much a feature of Hitler’s Germany.
Adolf Hitler mobilized Germany to avenge its humiliation during World War I. The result was the outbreak of World War II, with disastrous results all around.
The periodic explosion of national anger in China, directed against the West and Japan, can create its own momentum, with the potential to plunge the world into catastrophe.
But John Ikenberry argues in Foreign Affairs: “Technology and the global economic revolution have created a logic of economic relations that is different from the past — making the political and institutional logic of the current order all the more powerful.”
The point though is that similar arguments were made to rule out the danger of World War I.
It is argued that because China is a beneficiary of the existing global system, it would not want to rock the boat. For China, “The road to global power, in effect, runs through the Western order and its multilateral economic institutions.”
In any case, “In the age of nuclear deterrence, great-power war is, thankfully, no longer a mechanism of historical change. War-driven change has been abolished as a historical process,” he said.
Even if Ikenberry is right, there are intermediate stages involving the use or projection of force to maximize power. China’s defense buildup is an exercise in this direction.
Indeed, China’s Asian neighbors are already adjusting to the perceived reality of China’s power.
There is a sense in some quarters that the US will not only need to engage with China, but it should seek to create a partnership with it to manage the world.
Fred Bergsten, director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, is a strong proponent of this view.
His basic argument is that because China is being so difficult “pursuing strategies that conflict with existing norms, rules and institutional arrangements,” the only thing the US can do is co-opt it as a joint manager of world affairs, especially in economic matters.
Bergsten said: “To deal with the situation [of a recalcitrant China], Washington should make a subtle but basic change to its economic policy strategy toward Beijing ... Instead of focusing on narrow bilateral problems, it should seek to develop a true partnership with Beijing so as to provide joint leadership of the global economic system.”
“Only such a ‘G-2’ approach will do justice, and be seen to do justice, to China’s new role as a global economic superpower and hence as a legitimate architect and steward of the international economic order,” he said.
Bergsten is not terribly concerned about the sensitivities of other powers to a “G-2” arrangement between the US and China, except to say “it would be impolitic for Washington and Beijing to use the term ‘G-2’ publicly.”
His contention is that “for the strategy [of joint management of the world] to work, the US would have to give true priority to China as its main partner in managing the world economy, to some extent displacing Europe.”
The naivety of Bergsten’s thesis is breathtaking.
First, there is an implicit assumption that countries like Japan, India, Europe and others would simply accept a US-China consortium to control the world economy.
The second assumption seems to be that if the US works hard to co-opt China into a joint leadership framework, it would lock it into a US-crafted system of global governance, both economic and political.
There is a growing sense that China is going to displace the US as the world’s largest economy in the next few decades.
Under those circumstances, it would be smart for the US to forge a partnership with China to stay ahead of the game — that, at least, would seem to be the logic.
The question, though, is: Why would China (if it looks like it’s becoming the top dog) share its new patch with the old owner? Why wouldn’t it like to recreate a new Middle Kingdom with China at the center?
Besides, with its GDP at about one-fifth of the US, it still has a long way to go. And even if China makes it, its per capita GDP will be way behind that of the US.
In any case, China has tremendous social, economic and political problems that make any prediction of its rise to the top highly questionable.
Rice raises the pertinent question: “Ultimately, it is at least an open question whether authoritarian capitalism is itself an indefinitely sustainable model. Is it really possible in the long run for governments to respect their citizens’ talents but not their rights? I, for one, doubt it.”
Sushil Seth is a writer based in Australia
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