Crossposted with openDemocracy, which asked writers to reflect on three questions:
1) What was the most significant trend in the century's first decade?
2) What do you most hope for, and most fear, about the decade to come?
3) What idea do you see fading and/or emerging in 2010 and beyond?
The greatest challenge for the early 21st century is that China's leadership has contempt for much of the international order and many of the international organizations developed since the second world war. In pursuit of its narrow and even crude understanding of its interest, China will constantly abuse and break international rules, protocols and bodies. Its willful destruction of the Copenhagen summit on climate change reveals the pattern. Its mercantile currency policy in a beggar-thy-neighbor approach, environmental degradation, and disdain for human rights and the rule of law generally are the obvious reflections of its despotism. Through its rough and strange neo-imperialism, in Africa especially but also elsewhere, China is able to gain help, partly through economic intimidation, in its international forays to repel or strike down the responsibilities of internationalism.
Internally, China is a prison of nations, an empire similar to imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, and may also be the most unequal industrial country in distribution of income. China's power is increasing, but the authoritarian regime is hardly the wave of the future as some awestruck worshippers of raw power and money (whether investment bankers or ex-Marxists) imagine. The system is inherently unstable, which accounts for its rigid currency policy (at root a fear of operating on other than a virtual slave-labor standard, of turning its poverty-stricken millions into consumers with real choice, and ultimately of letting go even a little bit).
In the long-term the tyranny of the one-party state and its military rule is at odds with the new economic classes of entrepreneurs and professionals it has fostered. China's growing economic power is accompanied by expanding arrogance, demonstrated not least in the incivility and rudeness with which President Obama was treated on his trip there. China's regime lacks an ideal other than a communist gloss on Confucian uniformity, itself based incoherently on reckless economic development, for example in the areas of currency, environment and labor; it has no "soft power," not just because of the coarseness of its supposed diplomacy, but because its cultural appeal does not travel. China forces its way through coercion of one sort or another.
The next decade will see how flexible or inflexible its rulers are and how secure their system is. The brief effort at a rhetorical gesture by some in the Obama administration who floated the turgid phrase "strategic reassurance" was risible and did not last. For now, the West has no policy to deal with China as it is. The place to begin is on currency.
The most powerful idea for the 21st century is the equality of women. It is the idea most feared by those -- from the Vatican to the Taliban -- arrayed against modernity, the still vibrant project of the Enlightenment. Someday the United States may even have a woman president. It took fifty years after granting the vote to African-Americans to pass a constitutional amendment giving it to women. Perhaps the distance between electing the first African-American president and the first female one will not be so great.
Sidney Blumenthal is former senior adviser to President Clinton, and an Oscar and Emmy award-winning documentary producer. He is writing a book on Abraham Lincoln.
It has continuously occurred to me that this 'dissing' of Pres. Obama and lack of compliance in Copenhagen smacks of typical Asian "Face". One's honor and prestige: Beijing will not let anyone tell them what to do, they will not follow any other country's mandates. Although they are making some progress in green solutions: (check out a blog called cleanergreenerchina), they will not dance to any one else's tune; if for no other reason than it displays a loss of face. I don't really empathize with that, I'm not Chinese, but having lived here for 11 yrs, I know it does exist and just like us westerners, these cultural mores do influence the way Chinese leaders think, act, conduct business and diplomacy.
I see a lot of misunderstanding about China on these sites, and I have 'ta say, I see a lot in your post.
Obama responded with a 34,000 troop increase in Afghanistan and the largest defense bill ever.
Who's the reasonable party there?
Is that not right?
IMHO individual rights are important, but just like the 'free-market vs. socialism' debate, a middle road may be the best path. Citizens of the US could do better with a little more feeling of general civic responsibility. A balance of collective good and individual good.
America also used its economic might to buy up as many resources as it could much like China is.
Isn't this exactly what Bush/Cheney accomplished or tried to accomplish?
Yes, the government is totalitarian, but the people enjoy a much improved life over the previous generation, and their prosperity is improving all the time. People here have a surprising amount of opportunity to improve their lives, and the vast majority that live in my city are upbeat and optimistic.
I think the author should come live here for a few months, rubbing elbows with the citizens before making wild, Cheney like accusations.
westerners have always had a difficult time with the historical fact that the chinese ruled the world economically for THOUSANDS of years before the backward west caught up and interrupted their society for the last coupla hundred years.
this blog sounds like an attempt to paint china as some kind of bad guy because it won't let the usa call the shots in the world.
with respect to copenhagen. china has taken the mantle as the largest polluter in the world but it is also the largest buyer of alt energy solutions. the usa is mad because they got in the way of the global carbon tax.
its obviously difficult for whole countries as well as individual people.
china is the most powerful country in the world because it's ascent is so fantastic. its the greatest economic story since post war usa. china is now the driver of world economics. deny that reality at your own financial and political peril.
the usa is quickly becoming the weakest country on earth despite its still formidable economy and military. its decline is as dramatic as china's ascent. deny that reality at your own financial and political peril.
And the U.S. is different...? how?