China’s Inevitable Rise to Eminence Means that the United States Needs to Prepare for the Challenge

© 2011 Peter Free

 

06 February 2011

 

 

China’s increasing geopolitical clout is worth being immediately concerned about

 

China’s authoritarian-managed capitalism, combined with the world’s largest population, abundant resources, and a history of success means that the era of easy American dominance is over.

 

We need to plan for a world in which China balances or surpasses our hegemony.

 

Planning means abandoning our penchant for complacent optimism, fact-lacking ideology, rationalizing, and excuse-making.

 

I keep returning to this cautionary theme because Congress and the President are doing such a miserable job of meeting the economic challenges that are already here, much less those that are easily foreseen.

 

My warning perspective is shared by Gideon Rachman, a former Fulbright Scholar, now chief foreign affairs commentator for the Financial Times.  (Prior to that, he was with The Economist.  His blog is here.)

 

Foreign Policy magazine published his point of view regarding China’s rise in its January/February 2011 issue.

 

 

Citation

 

Gideon Rachman, Think Again: American Decline, Foreign Policy (January/February 2011)

 

 

What Mr. Rachman had to say

 

Rachman refutes five American rationalizations regarding China’s rise and the viability of continued American inertia:

 

(1) Past warnings regarding American decline were overblown, this one is not

 

 

Past over-reactions to allegedly declining American power were centered on nations without the population, resources, and economic acumen that China has.

 

 

China has more than four times the population that the United States has.  Its hybrid authoritarian-capitalistic economy is already challenging America  globally.  For example, China is Brazil and South Africa’s most important trading partner.  It is buying bonds in cash-strapped Greece and Portugal.

 

 

America's traditional allies in Europe -- Britain, France, Italy, even Germany -- are slipping down the economic ranks.

 

 

New powers are on the rise: India, Brazil, Turkey. They each have their own foreign-policy preferences, which collectively constrain America's ability to shape the world.

 

 

Gideon Rachman, Think Again: American Decline, Foreign Policy (January/February 2011)

 

 

(2)  China will not succumb to the problems that it will predictably face

 

 

Sheer size and economic momentum mean that the Chinese juggernaut will keep rolling forward, no matter what obstacles lie in its path.

 

 

Gideon Rachman, Think Again: American Decline, Foreign Policy (January/February 2011)

 

 

Although Rachman does not say so, his reasoning parallels that of historians and economists who found that the United States’ advantages relative to the rest of the world at the time of its independence and afterward predicted its eventual (temporary) ascendance to power.

 

 

(3) Though the United States still leads in some economically important categories, its preeminence is declining

 

 

Although American universities are an economic asset, if the U.S. economy can’t generate jobs to employ graduating foreign students, they will take their American education home to benefit their home nations.

 

 

America's appeal might also diminish if the country is no longer so closely associated with opportunity, prosperity, and success.

 

 

Gideon Rachman, Think Again: American Decline, Foreign Policy (January/February 2011)

 

 

Rachman  uses Fortune magazine’s ranking of the world’s top ten largest companies to show that  3 of 10 are Chinese (China National Petroleum, Sinopec, and State Grid), and only 2 are American (Walmart and ExxonMobil).

 

 

On the overtly negative side,

 

 

And though many foreigners are deeply attracted to the American Dream, there is also a deep well of anti-American sentiment in the world that al Qaeda and others have skillfully exploited, Obama or no Obama.

 

 

Gideon Rachman, Think Again: American Decline, Foreign Policy (January/February 2011)

 

 

Militarily, the United States also has problems.  Iraq and Afghanistan have proved that American military force is less useful than American leaders anticipated.  And the U.S. budget deficit may force cuts in the military force that the nation can deploy.

 

 

The present paralysis in Washington offers little hope that the United States will deal with its budgetary problems swiftly or efficiently. The U.S. government's continuing reliance on foreign lending makes the country vulnerable .  . . .

 

 

Gideon Rachman, Think Again: American Decline, Foreign Policy (January/February 2011)

 

 

Realistically speaking, China’s missile and anti-satellite capabilities will edge the United States out of undisputed supremacy in the Pacific.

 

 

(4) Globalization has not worked to the democratic West’s advantage

 

 

In making this argument, Mr. Rachman attacks two ideas popularized by multi-national corporations and their plutocratically-oriented government friends — (i) Economic growth has not reliably led to democratization.  (ii) And democracies are not necessarily oriented toward American interests.

 

 

China’s economic success has clearly come in an authoritarian manner.  In fact, I would argue that its robust expansion has come precisely because it combined capitalistic impulses with generalized authoritarian direction that forced everybody to get on the same efficiency page in specific economic sectors.  There is also little indication that a pronounced authoritarian streak is not going to linger into the future.

 

 

Though Rachman does not say so, the Chinese hybridized authoritarian-capitalism model, if it remains successful, will be more attractive to despots than the U.S. model, which shows little sign of being able to keep up with the Chinese.

 

 

In regard to democratization as a force of Americanization, Rachman points out that:

 

 

India does not agree with the United States on climate change or the Doha round of trade talks.

 

 

Brazil does not agree with the United States on how to handle Venezuela or Iran.

 

 

A more democratic Turkey is today also a more Islamist Turkey, which is now refusing to take the American line on either Israel or Iran.

 

 

Gideon Rachman, Think Again: American Decline, Foreign Policy (January/February 2011)

 

 

Speaking for myself, the “democratization equals an American-friendly world” argument was always a stupid one.  In the real world, power breeds opposition, democracy or not.

 

 

(5) Globalization as win-win is an illusion, at least the way China is bending the rules

 

 

China’s currency games lead to American job losses.  Rachman does not mention that China’s deliberate thievery in regard to intellectual property weakens the innovation advantage the United States and other nations have.  But that’s part of China’s strategy, too.

 

 

[T]he United States has been acting as if the mutual interests created by globalization have repealed one of the oldest laws of international politics: the notion that rising players eventually clash with established powers.

 

 

In fact, rivalry between a rising China and a weakened America is now apparent across a whole range of issues, from territorial disputes in Asia to human rights.

 

 

Gideon Rachman, Think Again: American Decline, Foreign Policy (January/February 2011)

 

 

 

The moral? — Start carrying a bigger economic stick and return American leadership’s attention to the economic interests of the American public

 

Conflict is History’s theme.

 

Protecting one’s position requires thoughtful effort.  I agree with President Theodore Roosevelt, “Speak softly, and carry a big stick.”

 

Instead, the United States has been speaking loudly, waging ill-advised wars, and whittling down its economic stick by excessive borrowing and permitting multi-national corporations to parasitize the wealth that American workers comprise.

 

We need to reverse these elements of our decline.