Everybody can fantasize that China will rise to the world power in economy and manufacturing, and I am not going to refute such an argument because that has been done over and over in the past. The result of that argument has been the word, "Chinese Blow Job" for over a century. One extra reason is that you have to remember that it's Americans, Japanese and European who brought capital investment, factories, materials and people into China to create the Chinese Frankenstein.
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In many ways, the whole idea of a No. 1 is becoming passé. Some experts argue that Asians remain wedded to the idea because Confucian tradition emphasizes respect for hierarchy and order. But look at how Singapore is exploiting the growing importance of information technology to command a global role out of proportion to its tiny size. Or at how global trade and the Internet make it increasingly tough for Beijing to maintain order at home. The global age does not respect Confucian hierarchies.
Foreign-policy realists like to point out that the region has never before known a period when both China and Japan were strong at the same time. They worry that this development could lead to conflict, and fret that China's naval forces, which could be bottled up by the Japanese island chain in a conflict, have already taken to probing Japan's defenses. Meanwhile Tokyo has been beefing up its Coast Guard forces around disputed islands and staging surveillance flights over Chinese drilling rigs. Princeton political scientist Aaron Friedberg compares modern Asia to Europe in the 19th century, with great powers still jockeying for control.
Yet this point underlines just how far China is from regional supremacy. No single nation was able to dominate 19th-century Europe. Similarly, it's not clear China would win even a small conflict with Japan, much less a larger one that drew in Japan's main ally. Consider: despite years of double-digit increases in China's defense budget, it will be at least a decade before Beijing launches its first aircraft carrier—the mark of a serious navy able to project power. (The United States has 11.)
Of course, China disavows any desire for military supremacy or economic tribute, and perhaps it should be taken at its word. Much has been made of how China and the U.S. are now fatefully tied to one another as creditor-to-debtor and seller-to-buyer. But the same is true of China and Japan. China surpassed the United States as Japan's No. 1 trading partner back in 2007. An aging Japan benefits from low-wage Chinese workers, while those factories in the Pearl River Delta often rely on machine tools and technology made in Japan. Global and regional cooperation are very much in both countries' self-interest.
That doesn't mean there's no reason for neighbors to prepare for a more aggressive China. Efforts to create a regional self-defense organization have been stymied by differences in wealth and ideology and by fear of provoking Beijing. But there are ways to promote an Asia of many powers. The Obama administration seems to get this: when Hillary Clinton visited Asia in February, she made a point of hitting Japan first and then Seoul, urging them to work together. Then came Indonesia, a big new democracy. Only then did she stop in Beijing, where she called on the Chinese and Japanese to work together on climate change. That's just the kind of transnational issue that demands cooperation, not great-power jockeying—the kind of increasingly common problem that pays no attention to who's on top.
With Mary Hennock in Beijing
© 2009
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