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A Global Power Shift in the MakingJames F. Hoge, Jr.
The transfer of power from West to East is gathering pace and soon will dramatically change the context for dealing with international challenges -- as well as the challenges themselves. Many in the West are already aware of Asia's growing strength. This awareness, however, has not yet been translated into preparedness. And therein lies a danger: that Western countries will repeat their past mistakes.
Major shifts of power between states, not to mention regions, occur infrequently and are rarely peaceful. In the early twentieth century, the imperial order and the aspiring states of Germany and Japan failed to adjust to each other. The conflict that resulted devastated large parts of the globe. Today, the transformation of the international system will be even bigger and will require the assimilation of markedly different political and cultural traditions. This time, the populous states of Asia are the aspirants seeking to play a greater role. Like Japan and Germany back then, these rising powers are nationalistic, seek redress of past grievances, and want to claim their place in the sun. Asia's growing economic power is translating into greater political and military power, thus increasing the potential damage of conflicts. Within the region, the flash points for hostilities -- Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula, and divided Kashmir -- have defied peaceful resolution. Any of them could explode into large-scale warfare that would make the current Middle East confrontations seem like police operations. In short, the stakes in Asia are huge and will challenge the West's adaptability.
Today, China is the most obvious power on the rise. But it is not alone: India and other Asian states now boast growth rates that could outstrip those of major Western countries for decades to come. China's economy is growing at more than nine percent annually, India's at eight percent, and the Southeast Asian "tigers" have recovered from the 1997 financial crisis and resumed their march forward. China's economy is expected to be double the size of Germany's by 2010 and to overtake Japan's, currently the world's second largest, by 2020. If India sustains a six percent growth rate for 50 years, as some financial analysts think possible, it will equal or overtake China in that time.
Nevertheless, China's own extraordinary economic rise is likely to continue for several decades -- if, that is, it can manage the tremendous disruptions caused by rapid growth, such as internal migration from rural to urban areas, high levels of unemployment, massive bank debt, and pervasive corruption. At the moment, China is facing a crucial test in its transition to a market economy. It is experiencing increased inflation, real-estate bubbles, and growing shortages of key resources such as oil, water, electricity, and steel. Beijing is tightening the money supply and big-bank lending, while continuing efforts to clean up the fragile banking sector. It is also considering raising the value of its dollar-pegged currency, to lower the cost of imports. If such attempts to cool China's economy -- which is much larger and more decentralized than it was ten years ago, when it last overheated -- do not work, it could crash.
Even if temporary, such a massive bust would have dire consequences. China is now such a large player in the global economy that its health is inextricably linked to that of the system at large. China has become the engine driving the recovery of other Asian economies from the setbacks of the 1990s. Japan, for example, has become the largest beneficiary of China's economic growth, and its leading economic indicators, including consumer spending, have improved as a result. The latest official figures indicate that Japan's real GDP rose at the annual rate of 6.4 percent in the last quarter of 2003, the highest growth of any quarter since 1990. Thanks to China, Japan may finally be emerging from a decade of economic malaise. But that trend might not continue if China crashes.
India also looms large on the radar screen. Despite the halting progress of its economic reforms, India has embarked on a sharp upward trajectory, propelled by its thriving software and business-service industries, which support corporations in the United States and other advanced economies. Regulation remains inefficient, but a quarter-century of partial reforms has allowed a dynamic private sector to emerge. Economic success is also starting to change basic attitudes: after 50 years, many Indians are finally discarding their colonial-era sense of victimization.
Other Southeast Asian states are steadily integrating their economies into a large web through trade and investment treaties. Unlike in the past, however, China -- not Japan or the United States -- is at the hub.
The members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), finally, are seriously considering a monetary union. The result could be an enormous trade bloc, which would account for much of Asia's -- and the world's -- economic growth.
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China RisingAired: Wednesday, July 14, 2004 7-8PM ET
Recent projections forecast that China is well on its way to becoming a superpower in manufacturing, technology, and telecommunications. It is now the world's second largest consumer of oil, and is exporting everything from TVs to DVD players to cell phones.
Americans benefit but are also threatened by the "China" price being set lower and lower. It is a good trend for consumers but not for manufacturers in Midwest America.
Click one of the "Listen" links to hear a discussion of China and its new face of global economic power.
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back to Word from main page Arming China
July 19, 2004 The French and the Germans are trying to stick it to us again. No, not over Iraq — over China.
The 25-nation European Union (EU), led by Paris and Berlin, is giving serious consideration to lifting the post-Tiananmen Square arms embargo against Beijing.
Even though we've made our objections perfectly clear, from President Bush on down. (America's top Pacific allies, Japan and Australia, have also protested.)
This means that at some point in the future, the weapons of European allies may be used against American forces in the Pacific over the defense of Taiwan, Japan or even South Korea.
There are several reasons why ending the sanctions is foolhardy:
* Human Rights. Both the U.S. and EU imposed the embargo after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, where 3,000 peaceful democracy demonstrators died at the hands of China's People's Liberation Army (PLA). Beijing has yet to come clean on this matter, and human-rights problems abound. Just in 2004, Chinese security services harassed and detained the justice-seeking mothers of Tiananmen Square victims, political activists and Internet users.
Lifting the ban would send the wrong signal to other repressive regimes. China's human-rights record certainly doesn't merit a reward.
Moreover, China's army still has a domestic-security mission, meaning EU arms could be used to suppress political dissent across China, especially in Buddhist Tibet and Muslim Xinjiang (western China.)
* Military Threat. China is engaged in a major military buildup that goes far beyond its defensive needs. In the next few years, China will develop real military options for muscling its democratic neighbor Taiwan (which Beijing considers a renegade province). Down the road, China looks toward dominating Japan and Southeast Asia, too.
And who really knows where Beijing will come down if South and North Korea come to blows? (The last Korean War might be a good indicator . . .)
Ultimately, the PLA's long-term, military modernization game plan is to deter, delay or deny U.S. intervention in any Asian conflict involving China. Beyond that, the PLA seeks to ultimately replace America as the preeminent military power in the Pacific.
* Weapons Proliferation. China is a notorious weapons proliferator — from weapons of mass destruction to small arms. Its record on export controls is abysmal. Sensitive European technology will surely fall into the hands of China's roguish friends: Iran, North Korea, Syria and Burma.
So why are the Europeans doing this?
Two reasons: To balance American global power and — tah dah! — to make money.
Paris and Berlin have long pushed for a multipolar world, in which the United States' overwhelming power is balanced (read: weakened) by other power centers (i.e., poles) such as the EU, China and Russia.
In practice, France and Germany, instead of spreading power, intend to align these other poles in a political axis against America.
Making China more powerful in Asia will stretch U.S. resources (and perhaps resolve) and distract Washington from its interests in Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere, leaving Paris and Berlin to call the shots.
The EU leaders' other goal here is to compete with the United States in the world's arms market. The sheer quality of U.S. arms makes it tough to compete globally, so the best strategy is to go places where the Americans aren't, such as China — which is a $5 billion per year cash (arms) cow.
The Chinese, who applaud the EU's policy shift, are hungry for advanced European submarine, aviation, space and missile systems and technology. (Again, think about the possibility of secondary weapons proliferation to Iran, Syria and North Korea.) Beijing would also like to drive a wedge into the trans-Atlantic alliance.
The United States welcomes China's peaceful integration into the international community as an open and free society through commerce, tourism, academic exchanges and official dialogue. These activities maximize the free world's efforts to encourage positive political and social change for 1.3 billion Chinese.
But we must also consider the dark side of China's rise — its military buildup — and the effect on regional and global peace and security.
The EU's decision to change course on China is counterproductive and counterintuitive, but not surprising: Europe's security interests in Asia are minimal and, hey, there's cash to be made.
But if the EU goes ahead, our government should stop the flow of U.S. military technology to European firms.
In the end, the EU's folly will further increase the trans-Atlantic divide, give an imprimatur to dismal human-rights records everywhere and increase the likelihood of conflict in the Pacific, which is no one's interest — not even the distant EU's.
Peter Brookes is a Heritage Foundation senior fellow.
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