Winter Break WK #2: “The Rise of a Fierce Yet Fragile Superpower”
The much-heralded advent of China as a global power is no longer a forecast but a reality. Now we, and they, must manage its triumph.
By Fareed Zakaria
NEWSWEEK
Updated: 1:12 PM ET Dec 22, 2007
For Americans, 2008 is an important election year. But for much of the world, it is likely to be seen as the year that China moved to center stage, with the Olympics serving as the country’s long-awaited coming-out party. The much-heralded advent of China as a global power is no longer a forecast but a reality. On issue after issue, China has become the second most important country on the planet. Consider what’s happened already this past year. In 2007 China contributed more to global growth than the United States, the first time another country had done so since at least the 1930s. It also became the world’s largest consumer, eclipsing the United States in four of the five basic food, energy and industrial commodities. And a few months ago China surpassed the United States to become the world’s leading emitter of CO2. Whether it’s trade, global warming, Darfur or North Korea, China has become the new x factor, without which no durable solution is possible.
And yet the Chinese do not quite see themselves this way. Susan Shirk, the author of a recent book about the country, “The Fragile Superpower,” tells a revealing tale. Whenever she mentions her title in America, people say to her, “Fragile? China doesn’t seem fragile.” But in China people say, “Superpower? China isn’t a superpower.”
In fact it’s both, and China’s fragility is directly related to its extraordinary rise. Lawrence Summers has recently pointed out that during the Industrial Revolution the average European’s living standards rose about 50 percent over the course of his lifetime (then about 40 years). In Asia, principally China, he calculates, the average person’s living standards are set to rise by 10,000 percent in one lifetime! The scale and pace of growth in China has been staggering, utterly unprecedented in history—and it has produced equally staggering change. In two decades China has experienced the same degree of industrialization, urbanization and social transformation as Europe did in two centuries.
Recall what China looked like only 30 years ago. It was a devastated country, one of the world’s poorest, with a totalitarian state. It was just emerging from Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, which had destroyed universities, schools and factories, all to revitalize the revolution. Since then 400 million people have been lifted out of poverty in China—about 75 percent of the world’s total poverty reduction over the last century. The country has built new cities and towns, roads and ports, and is planning for the future in impressive detail.
So far Beijing has managed to balance economic growth and social stability in a highly fluid environment. Given their challenges, China’s political leaders stand out for their governing skills. The regime remains a dictatorship, with a monopoly on power. But it has expanded personal liberty in ways that would be recognizable to John Locke or Thomas Jefferson. People in China can now work, travel, own property and increasingly worship as they please. This is not enough, but it is not insignificant, either.
But whether this forward movement—economic and political—will continue has become the crucial question for China. It is a question that is being asked not just in the West but in China, and for practical reasons. The regime’s main problem is not that it’s incurably evil but that it is losing control over its own country. Growth has empowered localities and regions to the point that decentralization is now the defining reality of Chinese life. Central tax collection is lower than in most countries, a key indicator of Beijing’s weakness. On almost every issue—slowing down lending, curbing greenhouse-gas emissions—the central government issues edicts that are ignored by the provinces. As China moves up the value chain, so the gap between rich and poor grows dramatically. Large sectors of the economy and society are simply outside the grip of the Communist Party, which has become an elite technocracy, sitting above the 1.3 billion people it leads.
Political reform is part of the solution to this problem. China needs a more open, accountable and responsive form of government, one that can exercise control in what has become a more chaotic and empowered society. What such reform would look like remains an open question, but one that is being debated within the seniormost levels of the regime. In the current issue of Foreign Affairs, John Thornton, an investment banker turned China expert, traces how Beijing is taking hesitant but clear steps toward greater rule of law and accountability.
China’s sense of its own weakness casts a shadow over its foreign policy. It is unique as a world power, the first in modern history to be at once rich (in aggregate terms) and poor (in per capita terms). It still sees itself as a developing country, with hundreds of millions of peasants to worry about. It views many of the issues on which it is pressed—global warming, human rights—as rich-country problems. (When it comes to pushing regimes to open up, Beijing also worries about the implications for its own undemocratic structure.) But this is changing. From North Korea to Darfur to Iran, China has been slowly showing that it wants to be a responsible “stakeholder” in the international system.
Some scholars and policy intellectuals (and a few generals in the Pentagon) look at the rise of China and see the seeds of inevitable great-power conflict and perhaps even war. Look at history, they say. When a new power rises it inevitably disturbs the balance of power, unsettles the international order and seeks a place in the sun. This makes it bump up against the established great power of the day (that would be us). So, Sino-U.S. conflict is inevitable.
But some great powers have been like Nazi Germany and others like modern-day Germany and Japan. The United States moved up the global totem pole and replaced Britain as the No. 1 country without a war between the two nations. Conflict and competition—particularly in the economic realm—between China and the United States is inevitable. But whether this turns ugly depends largely on policy choices that will be made in Washington and Beijing over the next decade.
In another Foreign Affairs essay, Princeton’s John Ikenberry makes the crucially important point that the current world order is extremely conducive to China’s peaceful rise. That order, he argues, is integrated, rule-based, with wide and deep foundations—and there are massive economic benefits for China to work within this system. Meanwhile, nuclear weapons make it suicidal to risk a great-power war. “Today’s Western order, in short, is hard to overturn and easy to join,” writes Ikenberry.
The Chinese show many signs of understanding these conditions. Their chief strategist, Zheng Bijian, coined the term “peaceful rise” to describe just such an effort on Beijing’s part to enter into the existing order rather than overturn it. The Chinese government has tried to educate its public on these issues, releasing a 12-part documentary last year, “The Rise of Great Nations,” whose central lesson is that markets and not empire determine the long-run success of a great global power.
But while the conditions exist for peace and cooperation, there are also many factors pointing in the other direction. As China grows in strength, it grows in pride and nationalist feeling—which will be on full display at the Summer Olympic Games. Beijing’s mandarin class is convinced that the United States wishes it ill. Washington, meanwhile—sitting atop a unipolar order—is unused to the idea of sharing power or accommodating another great power’s interests. Flashpoints like human rights, Taiwan or some unforeseen incident could spiral badly in an atmosphere of mistrust and with domestic constituencies—on both sides—eager to sound tough. Two thousand eight is the year of China. It should also be the year we craft a serious long-term China policy.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/81588
A fierce yet fragile superpower is a great name for how China is in its current state. I say that because of exactly what Lawrence Summers said. The Industrial Revolution took the average living standards of Europeans up 50% compared to what China could experience which will be about a 10,000% increase. It took about forty years for this to happen. Though this sounds good to the people living in major cities it doesn’t express how the increase will affect the people that live in the rural areas of China. It makes me think… if China increases this much, how will it affect.
1.) The balance of power in the world?
2.) Economic Growth of 3rd world countries?
3.) Us the United States?
To me these are some key concerns that the American Government and the American people should be more concerned about then who will win in the Iowa Caucuses.
On the minds of the Chinese Government would be, how should they expanded the government to cover the people that are still in the poverty level and how to get them up with the rest of the Chinese people. I can’t think of anyway that this could relate to resent topics due to the lack of governmental education that I have been lacking. Send me a message if you can think of anything.
I’m happy for China. Living conditions are improving, they’re building cities and ports and all kinds of great stuff. I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner though considering that they have over a billion people in their country. We just reached 300 million and are the most powerful nation in the world. That 10,000 percent statistic is mind-blowing though. I wish that instead of giving another statistic on how Europe did through the industrial revolution they would give one on the U.S. Then the article also said “The United States moved up the global totem pole and replaced Britain as the No. 1 country without a war between the two nations.” what? Didn’t we fight two wars with them?
It also seems to me like a lot of Evan’s questions were answered in the article like how Chinas rise will affect the balance of power. The article said that there will be competition between the two superpowers and possibly even war. I would also disagree with your statement on how we need to not pay attention to the Iowa caucuses and focus on how we need to approach China and their rise as a global power because the man or woman that we elect in the primaries and the next presidential election will be deciding how we deal with China very soon and if you want some nut job to handle any conflict that has been predicted to occur very soon then go ahead and ignore the Iowa caucus. Instead we need to focus on the primaries because whomever we elect will be deciding our future with China.
So, I have always heard about china being an up and coming nation. But, I have never really paid too much attention. This article has opened my eyes. Is China really becoming such a huge threat? Do we really need to start thinking of the possibility of war with China? To me, china doesn’t seem like a country to start a war. It doesn’t even seem like a country to terrorize the United States. As the article said, china has grown in twenty years that Europe has grown in 200. China is prospering. The article also stated that China doesn’t see itself as a world superpower. To me it seems that the author is more afraid of the US becoming arrogant and not allowing another super power. “Washington, meanwhile—sitting atop a unipolar order—is unused to the idea of sharing power or accommodating another great power’s interests…Two thousand eight is the year of China. It should also be the year we craft a serious long-term China policy.
Fierce yet fragile indeed. I read several other articles on China in the Newsweek issue that featured Fareed Zakaria’s piece and was blown away at the tremendous changes that have been occurring over the past three decades. With some discomfort I have considered what it will be like when China becomes powerful enough to rival the United States. The 2008 Olympics will mark a new era, one in which China will either take its place in the international political arena or fail miserably. What I find most interesting is China’s economic transformation and how it corresponds to our economy. Michael Bloomberg (yes, the mayor of New York) wrote a very insightful article for Newsweek entitled “A Race We Can All Win”. It is a statement on the United States and Chinese economies, how they exist now and how they can coexist in the future. Bloomberg writes that “China is not a threat to America…but an incredible opportunity.” I agree. Beginning now, China and the U.S. are competitors, but also coworkers in a global workplace, collaborating on crucial issues and shaping international policy. Shanghai, China’s economic center, is akin to New York. As Bloomberg cites, our two countries face the same issues: congestion, pollution, education concerns, rising health care costs, and a growing gap between the rich and the poor. The challenge is not preventing China from catching up, but preventing the U.S. from slowing down. There is a need for us to invest in the technology and industry of the 21st century in order to spur our economy onwards and upwards. I fervently hope that our future leaders will take this into consideration and open the United States up to new opportunities for growth and success. Nonetheless, as Bloomberg states, our country does have an edge on China: democracy. China is, as I believe, primarily a unitary system, dictated still by a rather rigid central government – even three decades after the end of his reign, remnants of Mao’s communist regime are present. If China wishes to keep up with the United States, it will need to institute democratic measures such as popular sovereignty, freedom of the press, and more open, transparent markets. Still, when once the idea of China as a superpower created feelings of anxiety, I am now intensely excited to see how our two countries will interact in the future
I don’t understand why we should feel so threatened by China at this point in time. Amanda, I agree that Democracy in our present form is a huge advantage, but you forgot to mention why. Right now China is operating on a level of cooperation akin to the Articles of Confederation. It seems to me that the production of higher levels of energy and industrial supplies could be attributed to the LACK of control the central government has over its population. Remember the toys covered in lead paint that were sent to America not too long ago? The government supervisor of product quality in China was convicted of bribery and sentenced to death by beheading. While I’m sure they were hoping to prove to the rest of the world that China’s central government was absolute, I saw it as an overreaction in an attempt to wrangle the provinces back into order.
The people in China have become disaffected in the central government, but the only thing that prevents China from turning into the Middle East is the level of comfort provided to the people. Since their is no avenue for change (or at least expression) in politics, the Chinese will rebel– but only when times start to get hard, and the citizens move from apathy to anger. It’s Ayn Rand’s paradise, where corporations and businesses are free to go as they please. This will only last so long as the citizenry is happy. We shouldn’t be prepared from an attack on China. If China wanted to make war, they would have– they really need the land. We need to start preparing for all possibilities: China dividing into a dozen small countries; a a violent crackdown on the precincts in an attempt to keep the union, a ‘Civil War’ if you will; a citizen uprising, resulting in an unstable Eastern Europe right next door to Vladmir Putin.
We don’t need to be afraid of China as a superpower. But we should be afraid of it.
Luke,
I’m confused. At the beginning you said that we didn’t need to be afraid of china. But now you are saying that we shouldn’t be afraid of china being a superpower but we need to be afraid of them. China being a superpower would be the only reason that we need to be afraid of china. Personally, I think if china becomes a superpower, it wouldn’t be so bad. We just need to get on china’s good side. That way we won’t have the scare of the soviet union being a superpower. Yes china is sill controlled by the communist but they are becoming more and more like the rest of the world. The article said that china grew in 20 years what Europe did in 200. I think it wouldn’t a bad idea to become best friends with china. If they keep advancing like they do, why wouldn’t he united states want to participate in the advancement. Also, since china has so many people, think about the military power. I’m rambling now, but I feel that we shouldn’t fear china if we can get on their good side.