Will a rising China revenge for the past humiliation?
China also rises
By Piers Brendon
AMONG THE gifts brought by Lord Macartney, who came to Beijing in 1793 on a historic embassy intended to open China to British merchants, was a map of the world, which the Emperor Ch’ien-lung found unacceptable because the Middle Kingdom was represented on it as too small and not in the middle. During the eighteenth century Greenwich was adopted as the prime meridian of longitude, a convention internationally ratified in 1884, and imperial maps using Mercator’s projection made Britain seem greater than it really was. Toward the end of the Second World War, American writers such as Nicholas John Spykman and Neil MacNeil urged that their country’s dominant geopolitical power should be recognized by redrawing maps of the world to put the United States at the center.
Today, the question arises with increasing urgency: Is China set to occupy pride of place in the global picture as it had famously done in the time of Marco Polo?
THE WAKING of the Asian giant, which was dormant for so long but has just overtaken Japan as the second-largest economy on the planet, is one of the most astonishing developments of the modern age. Then–leader of China Deng Xiaoping initiated a “second revolution” which realized the vast potential of what was, at the time, one of the poorest and most undeveloped countries in the world.
This year, according to the International Monetary Fund, China’s GDP will reach $5.36 trillion, slightly more than that of Japan. Of course, this is well below the U.S. figure of $14.79 trillion, but China’s economy is expected to overtake that of America, its largest overseas market, before 2030. Worse still for the United States, its trade deficit with the People’s Republic reached a record $268 billion in 2008. By mid-2009, China owned nearly 27 percent of America’s staggering $3.5 trillion foreign-held public debt. Thus the two nations, so alien politically and culturally, are locked together in an unprecedented, and what seems to be an inextricable, economic embrace.
How will it all end? Is it to be a spider-like clinch followed by a poisonous bite? Or is it to be a fruitful union in which each party learns to love the other? Will China attempt to translate its economic strength into military might and challenge the dominance of the world’s sole superpower?
Japan invasion provided a ghastly climax to China’s years of humiliation and confirmed its people’s abhorrence of outsiders. AMERICA IS disliked almost as much as Japan, not only because of the part it played in China’s shameful exploitation but also because it backed Chiang Kai-shek, who retreated to the fortress of Taiwan after Mao’s Communists took control of the mainland.
HERE, THEN, is an account calculated to show that the reinvigorated Chinese dragon will endeavor to retaliate against the American eagle, itself seeking a new foe in lieu of the Soviet bear. China is bound to regain face, so the argument goes, by using its newfound resources to arm itself and to confront the United States in military terms.
A clash between the two titans, divided for so long by so much bad blood, is widely supposed to be inevitable.
This is not the case. Not only does history not repeat itself, it contains no rhythms or patterns which enable its students to make sure predictions. One conceivable outcome that deserves serious consideration is that we are at the dawn of an era of fruitful cooperation between China and America.
It must be said that commercially successful states do not automatically or immediately beat their pruning hooks into swords. Deng’s China itself put the modernization of its armed forces behind that of agriculture, manufacturing and science, and in the two decades after 1981 its troop numbers fell by half, to 2.3 million. Admittedly, its defense spending rose thereafter, but it remains a much-lower percentage of GDP than does America’s. And this year the rise has been checked, apparently in order to assuage foreign worries about its military modernization.
In other words, there is no necessary correlation between economic growth and military strength. Yet China’s leaders seem dedicated to augmenting prosperity in order to secure stability. As Deng Xiaoping insisted, “Stability supersedes all.”
Historically, China has assimilated aggression, rolling with punches, overcoming hardness with softness. Where possible it has avoided taking the offensive. China prefers, particularly in a nuclear age, to use “soft power” and “smile diplomacy” abroad.
THERE IS little evidence that China wishes to jeopardize its burgeoning affluence by adventurist attempts to contest American hegemony. On the contrary, the Chinese leadership is all too conscious that the Soviet Union’s endeavor to compete militarily with the United States was a major factor in its collapse.
China’s priority is to tackle these problems. It aims to build a rich and great society, dedicated to peace, progress, harmony, sustainable development and international cooperation. No doubt the Chinese leaders also favor motherhood and apple pie. But it is easy to be cynical to suspect that China is still nurturing bitter resentment toward the West for the century of humiliation, and to fear that it is only biding its time and accumulating the necessary strength before retaliating in kind. Yet the Chinese are not necessarily prisoners of their past and they have overwhelming economic reasons to seek a political modus vivendi with America. Indeed, they now talk of using history as “a mirror to look forward to the future.” Certainly it makes sense for them to look forward, rather than back, since their future is much better than it used to be. And this is what China’s 1.3 billion people may well do as they advance toward the center of the world’s stage.
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