When China Rules the World

These four issues – the United States ’ attitude towards globalization; the shift in the balance of power in East Asia; China ’s emergence as an alternative model to the US; and the issue of military power – do not lie at some distant point in the future but are already beginning to unfold; nor do they exhaust the likely areas of friction. As China ’s power and ambitions grow apace, the points of conflict and difference between the US and China will steadily accumulate. Such is the speed of China ’s transformation that this could happen more rapidly than we might expect or the world is prepared for: China-time passes rather more quickly than the kind of time that we are historically accustomed to. It is not difficult to imagine what some of these points of difference might be: growing competition and conflict over the sources of energy supplies – in Angola or Venezuela, or wherever; an intensifying dispute over the expanding strategic partnership between the United States and India; Chinese firms, awash with cash, threatening to take over American firms and provoking a hostile reaction (as happened in the case of the oil firm Unocal); the Chinese sovereign wealth fund, its coffers filled with the country’s huge trade surplus, seeking to acquire a significant stake in US firms that are regarded as of strategic importance; [1202] and a pattern of growing skirmishes over the militarization of space. [1203] Moreover, China being culturally so different from the United States, in a way that was not nearly as true of the USSR, only adds to the possibility of mutual misunderstanding and resentment. Furthermore the fact that China is ruled by a Communist Party will always act as a powerful cause of difference as well as an easy source of popular demonization in the US, with memories of the Cold War still vivid. [1204] Any serious, protracted depression could serve to heighten the prospect of friction as countries, in the face of stagnant living standards and rising unemployment, become increasingly protectionist amidst a rising tide of nationalist sentiment. [1205]

Potentially overshadowing all these issues in the longer run is the growing threat of climate change and the need for the world to take drastic action to reduce carbon emissions. Under the Bush administration the United States adopted a unilateralist position on this question, refusing to be party to the Kyoto Protocol or accept the near-universal body of scientific opinion. As a developing country, China was not required to sign the Kyoto agreement, but now that it is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases its exclusion is unsupport able from a planetary point of view. [1206] Any new climate treaty will be meaningless unless it includes the United States, China and India. But any agreement – involving inevitable conflict between the interests of the developed countries on the one hand and the developed on the other, with China the key protagonist for the former and the United States for the latter – will be very difficult. [1207]