By Doug Bandow
The end of this century is going to look very different from the start, and much of that difference is going to reflect the enhanced influence, if not dominance, of China.
In ``What Does China Think?" (Public Affairs), European analyst Mark Leonard asks the question: What are the Chinese saying about China's rise?
His work suggests two important conclusions. The first is that the People's Republic of China is more open and less doctrinaire than often thought in the West. The authoritarian Communist Party rules, but how it rules is not preordained.
The existence of an intellectual debate within the PRC doesn't necessarily mean a more liberal outcome, however. The Chinese left, as it were, looks more traditionally socialist, though without the murderous madness of totalitarianism.
The second point is that similar forces are contending for control of Chinese foreign policy. Again, the result won't necessarily please the West, and especially the U.S., along with the neo-conservatives who imagine permanent American hegemony in East Asia.
It seems like a lifetime ago when the Berlin Wall fell and we were told history had ended.
That world is gone. The U.S. and Europe face challenges from Russia and the Islamic world. But it is ``China, with its vast size, economic dynamism, and the political skill of its leaders that is the most serious contender for global leadership in the long term," Leonard explains.
China the state still faces enormous pitfalls ― social unrest, economic instability, and political struggle. But China has before been great and will almost certainly be great again.
First, the PRC's acceptance of Western-style globalization is by no means unanimous. Leonard writes: ``A growing body of Chinese thinkers believe that since their country crawled out of the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, it has simply replaced the shadow of Maoism with another fundamentalist philosophy: the cult of the United States of America."
That might seem unreal to Americans and others who sharply criticize China, but Leonard talks with nationalists who propagate a philosophy which he terms a ``Walled World."
The first part of this view is a return to socialism, or at least a planned economy. So-called ``New Left" intellectuals denounce Beijing for being despotic while failing to govern: ``almost all of the problems hampering China's reforms … had come about because the central government was too weak, rather than too strong," writes Leonard.
Indeed, he makes an important point often lost in the West. While there were students and intellectuals demonstrating in Tiananmen Square demanding political reform, there were also workers protesting globalization and Westernization.
More surprising is the rise of an anti-democracy movement among the intelligentsia. Writes Leonard: ``Instead of trying to develop a Chinese variant of liberal democracy, many intellectuals are looking for a different model altogether."
Thus, it is possible that the world's dominant power will eventually be proudly authoritarian and modestly collectivist, rather than liberal democratic and largely capitalist. The impact on the rest of the globe would likely be profound.
Beijing so far has underplayed its influence, at times sounding almost obsequious in emphasizing the PRC's ``peaceful rise." This, in turn, Leonard contends, ``provoked a counter-attack from the assertive nationalists in Beijing's universities," whom he terms the ``neo-comms."
Leonard quotes one Chinese professor as dismissing the internationalists as appeasers. While China should do all it can to avoid war, Yan Xuetong argues that "that no great nation in history ever rose in peace."
As in America, there are foreign policy pragmatists in the PRC as well.
Beijing is watching the U.S. and learning from its experiences. China is ramping up its campaign to gain influence through cultural and economic means.
Moreover, while American neocons want to spend whatever it takes, however many trillions of dollars, to preserve America's ability to rule the globe, the Chinese have embarked on a far cheaper strategy to prevent permanent U.S. hegemony: create a deterrent force capable of dissuading Washington from intervening against Beijing.
This puts the U.S. in an exquisite dilemma. Spend wildly, to try to maintain the overwhelming military edge necessary to successfully intervene along the PRC's borders? Or accept that Washington can no longer dictate to Beijing?
In Leonard's view, if the 21st century is the Chinese century, that does not mean Chinese dominance so much as shared dominance along with America and Europe. The West's power inevitably will recede, but the West's influence will live on for many years.
The rise of China will pose an enormous challenge to the established order. The outcomes are unpredictable, but peaceful accommodation is possible, so long as Washington recognizes, however reluctantly, that the so-called unipolar moment is passing, and there may soon be two ``essential" nations.
Doug Bandow is a fellow at the American Conservative Defense Alliance and author of ``Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire" (Xulon Press). He is a former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan. He can be reached at ChessSet@aol.com.