When China Rules the World

Even in the case of the United States, however, whose influence is far greater than that of any other nation in history, this overweening power has never been without constraint. The concept of hegemony elaborated by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci – which should be distinguished from the pejorative Chinese use of the term [1229] – entails the complex interaction of coercion and consent, force and leadership, and, though it was originally advanced to explain the nature of power within societies, it is also relevant to international relations. [1230] Gramsci’s idea bears some resemblance to the distinction between hard and soft power employed by the American writer Joseph Nye, though Nye’s appoach is less conceptual and more classifica tory in nature. [1231] Far from hegemony being set in concrete, it is constantly contested and redefined, the balance of power never static, always in motion. Nor is it ever absolute. Even though the United States possesses almost as much military firepower as the rest of the world put together, that does not mean that it can do whatever it likes wherever it chooses, as its disastrous occupation of Iraq illustrated. Moreover, as we have observed, while it enjoys military supremacy, its economic preponderance is steadily being eroded. Although the US is the world’s sole politico-military superpower, its influence varies from sphere to sphere and region to region – and in some cases it remains extremely limited. Take the unlikely example of sport. Although the US generally tops the medals tables in the Olympic Games, there are many sports in which it is not dominant and others from which it is virtually absent. The most popular American sports have remained largely confined to the US in their appeal, with the exception of basketball, while the world’s most popular game is football, a European export. Similarly, apart from its domination of a key sector of the fast-food market, American cuisine enjoys little or no global influence.

So what about China? As in the case of the United States, Chinese global hegemony will reflect the country’s particular characteristics, both historical and contemporary. The task here is to identify those characteristics and how they might leave their imprint on the future. It should also be borne in mind that forms of hegemony are constantly shifting and mutating in response to wider cultural, technological, military, political and economic changes. In the era of European supremacy, for example, the characteristic form of political domination was colonialism and the key expression of force-projection was the navy, but after 1945 colonialism, for a variety of reasons, became unsustainable. The American era, in contrast, is associated with air power, a global network of military bases, huge military superiority, an informal empire, dominance of the international economic system, and a global media. It is impossible, beyond a point, to anticipate the new forms of modernity with which a future Chinese hegemony might be associated.

THE LONG REACH OF CHINESE HISTORY

Global history has hitherto been essentially a Western history. With the rise of China, however, that will no longer be the case. Chinese history will become familiar not just to the Chinese, or even East Asians, but to the entire world. Just as many around the globe are conversant with major events in American history (the same also being true of decisive episodes in European history – such as the French Revolution, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and the Renaissance – as a consequence of Europe ’s earlier supremacy), so key landmarks in Chinese history will similarly become global property. This process is already under way, as the huge interest that surrounded the Terracotta Army exhibition at the British Museum in 2007-8 illustrated. [1232] Of course, the grandeur and richness of Chinese history means that aspects of it, such as the Great Wall, are already quite well known. But this is minor compared with what lies in the future. As an indication, already in 2005 the Great Wall, one of the defining symbols of the Middle Kingdom, attracted more foreign tourists than Florence, the epicentre of Europe ’s Renaissance. [1233]