How many of you who peruse newspapers and websites like this one regularly have concluded that this will be the Chinese century -- a Pax Sinica, which supplants the Pax Americana of the last six decades? If the answer is yes, you're not alone. Indeed, your assessment is reasonable, for we're deluged by details documenting China's triumphs.
Sure, there's bad news about China: pollution, corruption, the hounding and jailing of dissidents, etc. But overshadowing such reportage is the grander theme of a China on the move and on the make, poised to reshape the world.
Since 1978, the Chinese economy has grown by an average of nine percent annually, and the result (apart from smog) is that it is projected to surpass America's by 2020. If that happens, the United States will be overtaken, just as it bypassed Britain in the 19th century, in a critical measure of national power.
There's more. Our industrial base has eroded, with many jobs moving to China, which excels in mobilizing millions to work long hours for relatively low pay and in establishing vast, efficient supply-chain systems to service companies that build or assemble things. China has likewise made big strides in solar energy, our overall technological superiority notwithstanding. Ditto in infrastructure and mass transit: We bemoan the shopworn state of ours while reading about how theirs are new and gleaming.
Our persistent trade imbalance with China ($273 billion last year) is estimated to have cost 2.8 million American jobs since 2001, and we cover our budget deficits by relying on Chinese purchases of our treasury bonds. The U.S. still retains a massive military advantage (we'd better, with a defense budget exceeding the next twenty-three countries' combined). But China is doggedly remaking what was, not long ago, a bloated, infantry-based army into a lean, modern force with an expanding reach.
Given these comparisons, you may be surprised that my claim is not that Pax Sinica is imminent, or even assured, but that the prevailing portrait of China is distorted. China faces some serious problems. One is the increasing mismatch between an archaic political order and a dynamic society. While China's polity has hardly stayed frozen since Deng Xiaoping jettisoned Maoist economics for state capitalism in 1978, its one-party regime remains obsessed with social control and fearful of rival political ideas, blocking websites and monopolizing power with an iron hand. This strategy will become increasingly anachronistic -- and an impediment to creativity -- in what is now a sophisticated society that continues to be revolutionized by -- for example -- a booming economy, globalization, social media, and the expanding ranks of professionals and intellectuals and western-educated youth.
How long can the Party manage such a vibrant society like a kindergarten? Yet significant change and the preservation of the Party's all-encompassing power are incompatible, which means that real reform, if it is to occur, must come from below -- with unpredictable consequences.
Most China experts dismiss such reasoning, arguing that the political system has considerable popular legitimacy, having maintained stability and delivered massive gains in living standards. Perhaps. But we've never seen it function amidst a sustained economic slump. Can the decades-long streak of hyper-growth last indefinitely? What will happen when the "you conform-and-we'll-make-you-rich" formula it has enabled fizzles? Persistent problems (corruption, inequality, environmental degradation, the limits on liberty) may then produce much more discontent than they do now.
China's economy won't slow you say? Well, there's reason to believe it could. Continued prosperity will push wages up, diminishing a key advantage that has helped China attract a cornucopia of foreign investment. Furthermore, because of the government's draconian one-child policy, begun in 1979, and the fall in the "total fertility rate" (the number of children the average woman is expected to bear: China's TFR is 1.7; 2.1 is the minimum needed to maintain the size of a population) that invariably accompanies modernization, China is graying. This demographic shift will reduce the flow of young people into the workforce. The tax base will get smaller. The proportion of older people dependent on government programs will increase.
Another problem is the growing alienation of key minority nationalities. Here, statistics can be deceiving. Han Chinese account for almost 92 percent of the population, but China's total is 1.3 billion, so the non-Han communities (55 in all) are, together, sizable in absolute terms. They also inhabit 64 percent of China's landmass, with many concentrated geographically. The most restive regions, Tibet and Xinjiang, in the far west and home to the Turkic-Muslim Uighurs, are remote from China's principal power centers. Far from reducing Tibetan and Uighur nationalism and dissent, modernization has increased them. That's because it has expanded the intelligentsia (historically the purveyors of nationalism) and has been accompanied by Han settlement, which locals consider demographic imperialism. Protests (some violent) persist in both locales, with no end in sight.
So China will collapse? No, and it would be disastrous if it did. But when assessing its future, let's avoid the linear thinking that caught experts and policymakers flatfooted when communism crumbled, and the self-immolation of a humble Tunisian street vendor unleashed a wave of protests from Morocco to Syria that swept away, or rattled, seemingly stable authoritarian regimes.
If, by some miracle it should happen to surpass the U.S. in PPP GDP per capita, it will be the first large country to do so. I sure wouldn't bet on that happening.
India started at the same place as China in 1978 (actually having a higher per capita GDP at that point). Today, India's per capita GDP is about 1/4 of that of China under the Chicoms.
Whether China can surpass the U.S. in per capita GDP is largely a function of what the U.S. does (China is steady as she goes). If America does not correct the madness of allowing all its financial houses to jointly gamble at a scale 50 or a 100 times the GDP, the conclusion is forgone. By June 2011, the derivatives casino is already $700 Trillion strong (compared to the $14.5 T GDP of America). With the mutual funds industry lobbying heavily to adopt derivatives use on a massive basis, and the commodities commissioner promulgating rules to get more small guys involved in trading derivatives, the madness will be $1.5 Quadrillion in no time.
After 2008, China and Germany were the only large economies that banned their banks from massive gambling in OTC derivatives - both economies recovered. America on the other hand borrowed more and doubled down. In 2011 the budget deficit will again exceed $1 Trillion. The derivatives casino grew by almost 50% since the 2008 debacle.
America does not import iron ores. China makes 65% of the world's steel, and imports a lot more.
America imports oil. China imports oil. China buys mostly from the liquid international markets. In terms of locked in supplies, America has much more of that. Moreover, with the rocket speed expansion of the American shale gas output, America is actually looking to export LNG to China. What a difference a few years make! China has about twice the proven shale gas reserves of America. If that gets developed fully, China will be more or less energy self sufficient.
Yes, China needed sustained economic growth to keep the citizens happy - and Beijing has been delivering that. There is no indication it would not be able to carry out the 5 year plans. In fact, the poor half of the nation is a cup half full - all the infrastructure building that would be required for the next 50 years will sustain substantial growth, and China has ample financial resources to support that development.
I agree.
This is a rather precise definition of current situation in United States. Thank you.
1. Gridlock;
2. No reforms;
3. Since money drives elections, only the interest of the real constituents (the paying kind) will be taken care of;
4. Corruption is legalized - bribes are now campaign contributions, or better yet, unlimited dollar Super PACs.
Banksters' lobby causing the near total collapse of the American economy, followed by trillions of low or no cost loans to the banks ($7.77 Trillion according to Bloomberg; $16 Trillion according to the GAO report) is one glaring example. GMO food is yet another. It is a Goldberg-esque nightmare that is stranger than fiction - Agri company decides to play with the genes of corn so that it produces the BT pesticide at a local concentration 1,000 times the recommended application rate (of the BT pesticide if you apply it externally). Protected by patents and litigation, Agri-co makes billions. Minor detail: new study shows that this BT gene actually gets transferred to bacteria that reside in the human gut, thereby turning each human who ingested BT corn to be a pesticide factory. 95% of American mothers and 80% of fetuses tested now carry the BT pesticide in the blood.
America now has a life expectancy matching that of Cuba.
In China, the seed company would have been out of business, and a couple of the top guys/gals executed. America? Billions are still made, while the lobbyists and their targets make more millions.
Experts and policy-makers also seemed pretty certain in the 90s that Japan would initiate some sort of security competition with the US or at least create some challenge. It's human nature to continuously be on the lookout for new threats and we'll latch onto whatever we find. For the US it was Europe in the 19th century, the Soviet Union during TCW, Japan during the 90s and China now.
China is more advanced in enviro-tech now than U.S.
They are buying the best enviro-tech from the leaders in the field-- Germany, Spain, Israel, U.S.
Because of that China has 4 million kilowatts in wind generated power and 3 million kilowatts in solar power. And it will grow ten-fold in a few years.
China's hydro-power generation is about 200 million kilowatts--first in the world.
China has greatly contributed to dramatically lowering the cost of solar panels by investing in major mass production capacity
China's installed capacity of nuclear power--10 million kilowatts.
They shut down thousands of coal- suing plants in last 5 years.
Comes on, go search the web, there are so many anti-china stories in the western media, Every other stories I read is to talk about China collapsing and China spring. Many commentaries such as Gordan Chang and Professor Ming made their living talking bad about China.
Where is China love story he is referring to?
So next time professor, when you write something, please do something research before making comment. It really make you look ridiculous.
Sure, you have a right to be nervous, but maintaining your own ignorance? No.
Thanks.
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I understood your points.
I appreciate your opinions and effort to communicate. I understand how much you have to learn to express yourself in a non-native tongue.
I still vividly remember an episode in a movie shot by a Chinese American. In it, the son of the main character, a Chinese American, made fun of his Chinese accent after so many years of living in America, and the hero retorted with "What's wrong with my accent. I think my accent is cute".
I have told that story to my son numerous times with my broken English.
Old Challenges at the Dawn of the New Millennium
Dru C. Gladney
The notion of a Han person (Han ren) dates back centuries and refers to descendants of the Han dynasty that flourished at about the same time as the Roman Empire. But the concept of Han nationality (Han minzu) is an entirely modern phenomenon that arose with the shift from the Chinese empire to the modern nation-state (Duara 1995: 47).
http://www.ndu.edu/inss/symposia/pacific2000/gladneypaper.htm
Jane Hardy and Adrian Budd
http://isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=777&issue=133
But it is worse. For each manufacturing job position, the economy loses 3-4 "support" jobs, everything from home building to fast-food.
In total, the job loss in the U.S. is between 24-30 million since 2001.
is vacuumed into the pockets of the greedy elite.
Add to these events the evils of racism, the excessive power of magnates, the genocide of the indigenous people. And much more.
Now think of China. Its expansion will slow down but it will still become the greatest economic power on the planet and remain so for many decades. The obstacles in its way are insignificant.
There's only so many pieces of plastic junk you can make before the fill the world up to the sky and drown us all in the pollution it took to make them.
North American forests and coal have been consumed in vast quantities. Plastic is everywhere.
Planetary problems we are all in together.
http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/2011/08/25/the-munk-debates-be-it-resolved-that-the-21st-century-will-belong-to-china/
Will this century belong totally to China? No, but then again the last one didn't belong totally to the US, more of it was marked by the often close struggle for dominance between the US and the USSR than by the total domination of the US.
Will there be marked social upheavals and changes in the Chinese government and society? Yes, but remember there were those in the US in the last century too.
But odds are pretty good that at at least one point, the US and China are going to find themselves inching towards each other in a pool of gasoline, each holding out a wire that if brought together would send it all up in flames, and the US will be the one that has to back away.
And it wouldn't surprise me if sometime this century the phrase 'the world's only superpower' was used to indicate China.
(PS, if you have the time, you really should listen to the CBC Ideas program I provided the link for, listening to Niall Ferguson, David D. Li face off with Fareed Zakaria, and Henry Kissinger (or really anyone who is informed) in a real debate is worth it, even if you have no interest in the subject they are debating, and seeing as it looks like you are interested in what they are talking about, rather remarkable.)
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2012/01/27/german-statesman-the-inspiration-behind-china%E2%80%99s-state-control/?mod=google_news_blog
The most alarmist commentary on Friday morning came from Xu Xiaonian, a professor at the China-Europe International Business School.
“State capitalism is not something new. When Bismarck invented this idea in 1870 it gave Germany impressive performance over the main superpower of the time, Great Britain,” he said. “But 20 years later, it was the First World War.”
Otto von Bismarck’s model was replicated by other Asian nations before China, including Singapore and Japan, Mr. Xu said. While it can deliver dramatic results in GDP growth over the short–term, he identified three major flaws: inefficiency, as resources are misallocated; inequality, as state champions earn ‘monopoly rents’ and squeeze out independent competitors; and instability in the long-run.
“Even Nazism was a form of state capitalism, and what the Third Reich brought to the world we all know,” Mr. Xu said.
A compassionate or well-regulated capitalism or a socialism akin to Moshavs in Israel, a cooperative federation, where contributions for the group collective are first met and extra input results in individual benefit?
This links to the issues of the Moshavs. Those are small town with a generally homogenous group that knows and trusts each other, which allows the system to work (though not within world capitalism as the abvoe poster was trying to say, this system is inefficient). Could you really see that imposed over the USA?
The CPC cracking under prolonged economic downturn? WHAT do you call the GLF? Instead of falling apart, Deng led the Chicoms with a simple edict - seek truth through facts. No ideology, just facts. If things don't work, change them. That formula has worked wonders for the last 30 years, and today China has the MOST reform minded and flexible major economy in the world.
Yet the biggest difference compared to America, has little to do with Beijing. It has everything to do with America's industrial policy in this post-industrial 21st Century. America, with bipartisan support, has chosen to GAMBLE as the national policy. Today the derivatives casino is $700 Trillion, or about 50 TIMES the total GDP. China, after 2008, joined the Merkel led Germany and banned their banks from gambling massively in OTC derivatives. BOTH the German and Chinese economies recovered. America bet the farm, and INCREASED the bets - today American banks no longer bank (lend) - they TRADE.