Books on China have never been more popular, but are they teaching us anything?
Few books have polarized opinion in recent years as much as When China Rules the World, but when it was published in 2009, author Martin Jacques was thinking less about kickstarting an international debate than he was simply relieved to have completed a 10-year project marred by personal tragedy.
“I’d moved to Hong Kong in 1998 with my wife Hari and our 9-week-old son Ravi. We were going to be there for three years and I had ambitious plans for the book as well as a television series lined up,” Jacques says. “But after we’d been there for 14 months, my wife died in terrible circumstances and the book went out of my mind. I was just struggling to survive and I didn’t touch the book for five years. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be capable of writing it, but it must have somehow stayed in the back of my mind because by 2005 I started to work on it again.”
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It’s been three weeks now since the start of the standoff with China at Scarborough Shoal, a group of mostly submerged rocks in the West Philippine Sea that the Philippines and China are claiming as part of their respective territories. While a diplomatic way out of the impasse is being sought, a complex signaling exercise involving the deployment and withdrawal of maritime vessels is also going on. What further complicates matters is that the standoff began just a few days before the start of the US-Philippine joint military exercises. The Philippines insists the two events are unrelated, but that is not how the situation looks from a geopolitical perspective.
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You don’t pick a fight with someone bigger than you. But if you must defend yourself, you need to find an ally as big as he is, or get the backing of other small entities that may feel similarly threatened. Such support has its own costs. It may mean giving up certain things in return, or going against some cherished ideals. That is what realpolitik is about. It may seek cover behind principles, but, in essence, it is political conduct based on a clear calculation of long-term interests and a sober recognition of the pragmatics of power. Realpolitik applies to persons as well as to states.
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The financial crisis has seen the global economy turned on its head. And it is China, rather than America, that is set to dominate through both soft and hard power
The 2008 financial crisis marked a fundamental shift in the relationship between China and the United States. Nothing could or would be quite the same again. The management of the US economy was revealed to have been fatally flawed, a lightly regulated financial sector almost allowed to shipwreck the entire economy. In a few short months, the crisis served to undermine a near-universal assumption of American, and western, economic competence; in contrast, China’s economic credentials have been considerably burnished. The crisis at the same time exposed the huge levels of indebtedness that have sustained the American economy, accentuated since by the financial rescue package, while underlining the financial strength of the Chinese economy, now the world’s largest net creditor with its massive foreign exchange reserves. Although hardly new, the crisis finally woke Americans up to the fact that China had become their banker, with all this meant in terms of the shifting balance of power.
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LONDON – Several renowned experts from China and foreign countries gathered on Monday todiscuss China’s development model during the London Book Fair, exchanging views on itsfuture.
At the beginning of the forum, Liu Binjie, Director of the General Administration of Press andPublication, reviewed China’s path of development over the past century.
“China has considered about the way of western style, and also once followed the formerSoviet Union’s planned economy,” he said. “But during the course, it found out that only a waywhich complies to its culture and fits its real condition could lead the country to success.”
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A CONTEST FOR SUPREMACY – China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia
By Aaron L. Friedberg
360 pp. W. W. Norton & Company. $27.95.
Published: September 23, 2011
It seems inevitable that Chinese-American relations will increasingly come to preoccupy the world. The United States continues to be the only global superpower, but in the not-too-distant future China promises to acquire the status of an equal or near equal. How this relationship evolves during a period when the balance of power between them is shifting so rapidly is inevitably a cause for concern.
To be sure, there is at least one important source of encouragement. Ever since the Nixon-Mao rapprochement in the 1970s, the relationship between the two countries has been remarkably stable, notwithstanding the many changes of leadership and the numerous twists and turns of history. The future, though, promises to be different.
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