China’s indefatigable rise — especially in stark contrast to sluggish growth in the US, fiscal crisis in Europe and the shrinking of Japan — is helping to spawn an “anti-Fukuyama” school of thought that sees Chinese-style authoritarian capitalism as the next beginning of history.
Stefan Halper has written one of the school’s primers. He borrows a term coined by Joshua Ramos, “Beijing consensus,” to describe the real China threat: a state-led model of developmental capitalism without democracy, and a neo-Westphalian model of international relations where states limit their interactions to pure business. This model, Halper argues, is ascendant across the developing world, displacing the liberal internationalism and economic neo-liberalism of the Washington Consensus.
After finishing Halper, the reader can move on to Martin Jacques’ When China Rules the World and Ian Morris’ Why the West Rules — For Now for deeper exploration of how the China model might transform the international system.