The Rise of China

Reading John Ikenberry's, "The Rise of China and the Future of the West" was a fascinating and very pertinent read, considering the implications that China and India will at least economically overcome the U.S. in this next century and present a power shift that we have never seen before. Thinking back to my last visit in China, which was in 2005, I remember being astonished at the amount of progress this country has made in the last two decades. There was a curious juxtaposition of the West and East on every street corner, ranging from old farmers selling fruit and vegetables in wooden vendors to the impressive steel skyscrapers gently settling the background behind them. Anyone who suggests that China is still a communist country is greatly mistaken and completely behind the times--the Communist Party more or less acts as the club that everyone must join in order to get anywhere in the upper echelons of society, not an anti-democratic, anti-Western red scare that some still paint it out to be.

Given China's bold free-market stance and inability to acquiesce the West's demands to denounce civil rights violations, it's interesting to watch the progression of Chinese politics nervously tiptoe around the issues that matter to the West. As we talked about in discussion section, Western countries could use the international institutions that best represent Western (the IMF, UN Security Council, World Bank...) as leverages for forcing China to comply with certain policies, such as fair labor practices. The article mentions that the West can only triumph if the system is revised to meet the needs of the 21st century, and this view parallels the similar argument made in, "An Empire, if You Can Keep It" by Steve Rosen. The U.S. can only maintain hierarchy by embracing new technology and organization advantages, and I don't believe that military power alone can stabilize a hegemony: economic prowess and domestic political stability are key factors in keeping a global superpower the sole superpower, or at least ensuring that it doesn't completely fall behind.

However, the article acknowledges that the West, with its "nondiscrimination and market openness," coalition-based leadership, and recognized system of rules and institutions allow it to ease China into a liberal international order. Perhaps liberals and constructivists are more accurate in a sense that they recognize that power-maximization can be overcome through global institutions and recognizing state identities, not just power shifts alone. People argue for trade barriers in China because the Chinese government is, ahem, rather lax when it comes to ensuring civil rights, but democracy and order cannot be fostered within a few years or even a few decades--as China emerges as a world power, it will be forced to join the WTO and eventually adhere to the rules that have shaped every other developed country. In the future, China must also grant democratic rights to its people in order to succeed within the international market. Thousands of years of Chinese culture will slowly transform to accommodate these "new" Western ideas of equality and liberty, as they realize that successful markets are the ones that don't discriminate.

And what about the US? The article mentions that the US must go back and rebuild support for multilateral institutions (in great contrast to the blatant unilateralism that the Bush Administration has provoked these past eight years). It also mentions that the US must put in (presumably) domestic institutions that "safeguard a person's interests regardless of whether he is rich or poor, weak or strong." To me, this advice suggests that individual decision-makers and domestic politics will greatly determine whether the US can compete with China on a global scale in the next ten, twenty, or fifty years. To do so, we must address the issues that will propel younger generations to behave as global citizens in addition to US citizens. Major public education reforms must come to pass, and encouragement of R&D as well as environmental protection policies can ensure that the US will be ready for a shift in power, no matter how severe, and that we can ease into this century with stability and readiness rather than with chaos and struggle.