Chinese Military,Political and Social Superthread

[tomahawk6]

Well the PRC economy isnt as mighty as some had thought. The economy is 40% smaller !! This from the World Bank:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-op-mead30dec30,0,1035099.story?coll=la-sunday-commentary

The great fall of China
Revised GDP calculations show that Beijing isn't the giant we thought it was.
By Walter Russell Mead
December 30, 2007
The most important story to come out of Washington recently had nothing to do with the endless presidential campaign. And although the media largely ignored it, the story changes the world.

The story's unlikely source was the staid World Bank, which published updated statistics on the economic output of 146 countries. China's economy, said the bank, is smaller than it thought.

About 40% smaller.

China, it turns out, isn't a $10-trillion economy on the brink of catching up with the United States. It is a $6-trillion economy, less than half our size. For the foreseeable future, China will have far less money to spend on its military and will face much deeper social and economic problems at home than experts previously believed.

What happened to $4 trillion in Chinese gross domestic product?

Statistics. When economists calculate a country's gross domestic product, they add up the prices of the goods and services its economy produces and get a total -- in dollars for the United States, euros for such countries as Germany and France and yuan for China. To compare countries' GDP, they typically convert each country's product into dollars.

The simplest way to do this is to use exchange rates. In 2006, the World Bank calculated that China produced 21 trillion yuan worth of goods and services. Using the market exchange rate of 7.8 yuan to the dollar, the bank pegged China's GDP at $2.7 trillion.

That number is too low. For one thing, like many countries, China artificially manipulates the value of its currency. For another, many goods in less developed economies such as China and Mexico are much cheaper than they are in countries such as the United States.

To take these factors into account, economists compare prices from one economy to another and compute an adjusted GDP figure based on "purchasing-power parity." The idea is that a country's GDP adjusted for purchasing-power parity provides a more realistic measure of relative economic strength and of living standards than the unadjusted GDP numbers.

Unfortunately, comparing hundreds and even thousands of prices in almost 150 economies all over the world is a difficult thing to do. Concerned that its purchasing-power-parity numbers were out of whack, the World Bank went back to the drawing board and, with help from such countries as India and China, reviewed the data behind its GDP adjustments.

It learned that there is less difference between China's domestic prices and those in such countries as the United States than previously thought. So the new purchasing-power-parity adjustment is smaller than the old one -- and $4 trillion in Chinese GDP melts into air.

The political consequences will be felt far and wide. To begin with, the U.S. will remain the world's largest economy well into the future. Given that fact, fears that China will challenge the U.S. for global political leadership seem overblown. Under the old figures, China was predicted to pass the United States as the world's largest economy in 2012. That isn't going to happen.

Also, the difference in U.S. and Chinese living standards is much larger than previously thought. Average income per Chinese is less than one-tenth the U.S. level. With its people this poor, China will have a hard time raising enough revenue for the vast military buildup needed to challenge the United States.

The balance of power in Asia looks more secure. Japan's economy was not affected by the World Bank revisions. China's economy has shrunk by 40% compared with Japan too. And although India's economy was downgraded by 40%, the United States, Japan and India will be more than capable of balancing China's military power in Asia for a very long time to come.

But don't pop the champagne corks. It is bad news that billions of people are significantly poorer than we thought. China and India are not the only countries whose GDP has been revised downward. The World Bank figures show sub-Saharan Africa's economy to be 25% smaller. One consequence is that the ambitious campaign to reduce world poverty by 2015 through the United Nations Millennium Development Goals will surely fail. We have underestimated the size of the world's poverty problem, and we have overestimated our progress in attacking it. This is not good.

There is more bad news. U.S. businesses and entrepreneurs hoping to crack the Chinese and Indian markets must come to terms with a middle class that is significantly smaller than thought. Investors in overseas stocks should take note. Companies with growth plans tied to the Indian and Chinese markets could face disappointing results, and the high prices of many emerging-market stocks depend on buzz and psychology. Investor sentiment on China and India may now be significantly more vulnerable to future bad news.

China's political stability may be more fragile than thought. The country faces huge domestic challenges -- an aging population lacking any form of social security, wholesale problems in the financial system that dwarf those revealed in the U.S. sub-prime loan mess and the breakdown of its health system. These problems are as big as ever, but China has fewer resources to meet them than we thought.

And there is the environment. With poor air quality, acute water shortages, massive pollution in major watersheds and many other environmental problems, China needs to make enormous investments in the environment to avoid major disasters. Globally, it will be much harder to get China -- and India -- to make any sacrifices to address problems such as global warming.

For Americans, the new numbers from the World Bank bring good news and bad. On the plus side, U.S. leadership in the global system seems more secure and more likely to endure through the next generation. On the other hand, the world we are called on to lead is poorer and more troubled than we anticipated.

Maybe the old Chinese curse says it best: We seem to be headed for interesting times.

Walter Russell Mead, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of "God and Gold: Britain, America and the Making of the Modern World."

 

[CougarKing]

Well the PRC economy isnt as mighty as some had thought. The economy is 40% smaller !! This from the World Bank:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-op-mead30dec30,0,1035099.story?coll=la-sunday-commentary

The great fall of China
Revised GDP calculations show that Beijing isn't the giant we thought it was.
By Walter Russell Mead
December 30, 2007
The most important story to come out of Washington recently had nothing to do with the endless presidential campaign. And although the media largely ignored it, the story changes the world.

The story's unlikely source was the staid World Bank, which published updated statistics on the economic output of 146 countries. China's economy, said the bank, is smaller than it thought.

About 40% smaller.

Tom,

Scroll up. The 2nd article I posted from NBC a week or so ago draws the same conclusions...

In spite of such a pessimistic outlook, I remember Bei Da professor once telling me in my study abroad program in Beijing he believed that the standard of living for most Chinese would equalize that of the US/Canada/Europe by the mid-2020s. Of course, this was the same professor who argued with me that he really believed that people in Taiwan- even the benshengren, in his point of view- were culturally the same as in any other of China's 30 or so provinces.  :

 

[tomahawk6]

Pure fantasy Cougar that the Chinese could have our standard of living in anything less than 40 years. Somehow they need to figure out how to bring the rural population along for this to happen.

 

[CougarKing]

Pure fantasy Cougar that the Chinese could have our standard of living in anything less than 40 years. Somehow they need to figure out how to bring the rural population along for this to happen.

T6,
Very true. And surprise, surprise- the professor who came up with that fantasy belief, if I can recall correctly, was a party member and poli sci professor. :-\

 

[tomahawk6]

China has alot of potential. But they have alot of issues that will limit their progress towards being a super power. They face a major water shortage in the cities being just one problem.

 

[CougarKing]

T6,

You still have to admit that the progress that China made in the last 20 years, since Deng Xiaoping first opened up the PRC in the early 1980s with greater trade with the West as well as privatizing many state-run industries, is amazing. China should qualify as the fifth Asian Tiger right after Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea, whose economies developed so fast in a matter of a few decades on a scale similar to that of Japan's rebuilding and rise to the economic power it is today, even if Japan is in a whole different category altogether from the "Asian Tigers". The first four Asian Tigers built their economies gradually through the process of import substitution and by eventually shifting to capital-heavy industries. Taiwan, for example, at the end of the Second World War and Chinese Continuation of Civil War of 1945-49 was primarily an agricultural society which had a few leftover industries from the long Japanese occupation (1894-1945); today it is one of the world's largest suppliers of semi-conductors and last time, I checked, was the eighth or seventh largest economy, either ahead or right behind South Korea.

Going back to China, my point is that the progress they made in those decades since Deng opened up China is amazing mainly because the PRC did not collapse and become the economic mess that the former Soviet Union used to be at the beginning of the 1990s, when they went too quickly from a Marxist-style command economy to a market one not too long after the glasnost and perestroika years. And to top it off, the CCP has survived until this day and has kept power in spite of the succesful market economy that its members once abhorred. One should read Barry Naughton's Growing Out of the Plan, which I cited in one of my posts earlier, to get a better appreciation of the scope of this transformation.

BTW, if one follows any Mandarin language news source (Xinhua is crap by the way), one will notice that in the three years Pres. Chen Shui-Bian of Taiwan/the ROC has been taking an increasingly nationalistic stance with regard to Taiwan as a sovereign nation instead of the last remaining province of the ROC. Pictures and other memorials of Guo Min Dang leader Chiang-Kai Shek (Jiang Jie Shi)were supposedly removed from their display areas in spite of expected protests from ethnic mainlanders/waishengren who live on the island. Chiang Kai-Shek International Airport has changed its name and ROC passports now have the word "TAIWAN" instead of "China" or the "Republic of China" printed on them. One can infer that since Chen was imprisoned during the Martial Law years when Chiang and then his son Chiang Ching Kuo (Jiang Jing Guo) were in power, Chen wanted to "get some payback" and assert Taiwanese nationalism by expunging all references and memorials to Chiang. One has to take in mind that this happened even when Chen has had to manuever through the corruption/bribery charges thrown on his wife and brother-in-law not too long ago. Furthermore, although Chen is supposed to step down in March when new elections are held, it is rumored that Chen himself may declare martial law partially as a means to stay in power and effect more measures that will completely abolish all trappings of the old ROC and declare Taiwan independence. These martial law rumors do not come from the official media, but the last time I went there, ICRT radio reported that it would be more likely that a popular referendum might be held by the govt. on the independence question. We can only wait till March and wait and see what happens.

It's interesting to note as well that Chen has gotten as far as he has, from the humble maritime lawyer he used to be who was also imprisoned during the Martial Law years.

Here's a source that confirms what I stated above: (scroll to the section on Chen Shui-Bian's biography)

http://www.ibiblio.org/chinesehistory/contents/06dat/bio.5roc.html

Here are also two interpretations of Chen's actions during his term:

There have been two interpretations of Chen's actions during the election in terms of independence politics. The first is that he is ideologically committed to advancing Taiwan independence and that his actions are intended to systematically remove the constraints which prevent this from occurring. Seen in this light, his actions are intended to provoke a crisis in which the PRC must either start a war or accept independence, with the expectation that the PRC would back down. Ironically, this interpretation of his actions is shared both among his most fervent supporters (who think it is a good thing) and his most bitter opponents (who think that it is a bad thing). It is largely to counter this possibility that the PRC has issued statements that it will definitely go to war if certain red lines are crossed. However, they in reality carry little meaning, as Beijing has made such statements warning against electing former President Lee and Chen in the 1996 and 2000 elections, which both failed to materialize. Some people regard these statements now as reverse psychology, as Lee and Chen may help to weaken ROC and advance the unification process.
The second interpretation is that Chen's actions are primarily intended to placate his core supporters rather than provoke a crisis. People who subscribe to this interpretation point out that Chen's early efforts to moderate his pro-independence position did not create a positive reaction either from Mainland China or from his anti-independence opponents on Taiwan. He also alienated some pro-independence supporters. Therefore Chen was forced to take a more assertive approach both as a negotiation tactic with the PRC and to keep support from his core supporters. This strategy is consistent with the oft-stated position that Taiwan would only seek independence as a preemptive measure in the face of evidence of PRC military aggression. However, even this interpretation provokes unease among many people, especially among policy makers in Mainland China and the United States. The first problem is that this interpretation makes Chen seem like an old-style Taiwan politician that seems to say whatever pleases people. The second, more serious problem is the fear that through misunderstanding and misinterpretation, Chen may provoke a war without intending to do so, as Mainland China has repeatedly claimed that any progress towards independence would provoke war.

 

[Edward Campbell]

The so called ‘Overseas Chinese’ pay rapt attention to Chen Shui-Bian and Taiwan. Those two points were reinforced at a very recent gathering. Either:

1. Chen Shui-Bian is resolutely, but fatally, leading Taiwan down some sort of yellow brick road towards a mythical state of real independence and prosperity – fatally and mythically because Beijing cannot tolerate such a state and will put it down; or

2. Chen Shui-Bian is laying the foundation for a “one nation, two systems” solution for Taiwan. He is beating the independence drums to placate his own hard core and to remind Beijing that he negotiates from a position of real strength – Taiwan is neither a military nor economic pushover.

Personally, I’m inclined to the second position. I don’t think Chen Shui-Bian or any but the most fanatical nationalists want an independent Taiwan – most Taiwanese believe they are Chinese and they believe that China should be reunited, with Taiwan as a province, again. The question is: on what terms?

Taiwan wants at least as much independence as Hong Kong has – maybe more. Hong Kong appears to crave more independence – it continues to enjoy (associate) membership status in some international bodies and appears to wish to expand its sovereign influence. It is hard to imagine Taiwan ever settling for less.

If I’m correct then China is headed, albeit slowly, towards some new sort of federal status with some provinces (like Hong Kong and Taiwan) enjoying a degree of international sovereignty - which might apply, in varying and differing degrees, to the Autonomous Regions, too.

 

[tomahawk6]

I suspect that Taiwan hopes for a collapse of the communist regime at some point as many of the other hard line regimes have.

 

[CougarKing]

Personally, I’m inclined to the second position. I don’t think Chen Shui-Bian or any but the most fanatical nationalists want an independent Taiwan – most Taiwanese believe they are Chinese and they believe that China should be reunited, with Taiwan as a province, again. The question is: on what terms?

Campbell,

I must disagree with you on this point. As I have stated before, the majority of people in Taiwan are benshengren, who are still ethnically Han Chinese, but whose experience mainstream Chinese history was cut off from the mainland by more than 50 years as a Japanese colony (1894/5-1945) and by events such as the infamous 2-28 massacre of hundreds, if not thousands of Taiwanese, by mainlander Guo Min Dang troops who set to reclaim the island for the ROC in 1945.  These benshengren also speak the local Taiwanese/Tai Wan Hua dialect (which itself is a dialect of the Fujian Hua/Hokien spoken in Fujian province on the mainland, just adjacent to Taiwan) and comprise over 90% of the island's population. Pres. Chen Shui-Bian and even ex-Pres. Lee Tung Hui are members of the benshengren majority; Lee even stated in an interview with a Japanese correspondent not too long ago that he identified himself as Japanese prior to 1945. However, the majority of benshengren who were born and raised during Chiang's rule, such as Chen, see themselves as distinctly different and seperate from the Chinese mainstream/waishengren, and thus explains their strong desire for independence.

The waishengren, on the other hand, comprise those ethnic Han Chinese who either fled to Taiwan from the mainland during the 1945-49 Civil War, or their descendants. The waishengren or "ethnic mainlanders" are those who dominated the culture of the island for the past 60 years and imposed Mandarin language and mainstream Chinese culture on the already thoroughly Japanized benshengren; most of these "ethnic mainlanders" speak only Mandarin and get around Taiwan easily because everyone speaks it, although a few have picked up Taiwanese as well, especially local officials and those who intermarried with Taiwanese. Still, it was these waishengren who then dominated many of the Guo Min Dang and Legislative Yuan's positions until the end of Martial Law years and the rule of both Chiang-Kai Shek and Chiang-Ching Kuo.

Unlike the "Overseas Chinese" or Hua Qiao you see in North America or scattered in every Chinatown across the world who identify themselves as "Chinese first" and have provincial roots second, regardless of their dialect (Cantonese, Fukienese), the Taiwanese/ benshengren see themselves as being VERY DISTINCT within pan-Chinese culture and thus now increasingly see themselves "Taiwanese first, Chinese second". Thus, just because the Taiwanese have reclaimed many of their pre-1894-1945 Japanization (doka/kominka) mainstream Chinese cultural values and now seem indistinguishable from Chinese culture DOES NOT MEAN they see themselves as just being Chinese anymore, but as Taiwanese first and foremost.

If you applied the same logic you used for all Chinese, regardless of provincial origin, that you used in the quote above to Singapore as well, you would also be mistaken, since the large Hua Qiao community there has a shared experience with the Malays and the Indians who populated that island nation during British rule and thus see themselves as Singaporeans first as well.

Furthermore, if the Taiwanese were not as nationalistic as you assumed, then why have changes such as the ff. changes received such support that they were quickly implemented?

from the above earlier post of mine:

notice that in the three years Pres. Chen Shui-Bian of Taiwan/the ROC has been taking an increasingly nationalistic stance with regard to Taiwan as a sovereign nation instead of the last remaining province of the ROC. Pictures and other memorials of Guo Min Dang leader Chiang-Kai Shek (Jiang Jie Shi)were supposedly removed from their display areas in spite of expected protests from ethnic mainlanderswaishengren who live on the island. Chiang Kai-Shek International Airport has changed its name and ROC passports now have the word "TAIWAN" instead of "China" or the "Republic of China" printed on them.

And from a passage quoted from this site:

http://www.ibiblio.org/chinesehistory/contents/06dat/bio.5roc.html

After his first year in office, Chen seemed to move away from sending conciliatory gestures. In the summer of 2002, Chen became the chairman of the DPP. During his tenure, images of Chiang Kai-shek, and Chiang Ching-kuo (and to a lesser degree Sun Yat-sen) have disappeared from public buildings. The word "TAIWAN" is now printed on new ROC passports. Also continuing a trend from the previous administration, the Education Ministry has revised the school curriculum to be more Taiwan-centered.The "Free China Press" has been renamed the Taiwan Press and Who's Who in the ROC has been renamed Who's Who in Taiwan. In January 2003, the Cabinet-level Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission was abolished and replaced by a newly-formed Taiwan-Tibet Exchange Foundation. Though Chen has proposed talks with the PRC, relations remain deadlocked as Chen has refused to pledge to the One-China Policy, as required by the PRC for talks to begin. Such a pledge seemed unlikely for Chen since there remains strong opposition within his own party. Despite these symbolic gestures, Chen moved away from "no haste, be patient" policy and opened the three mini links.

 

[tomahawk6]

The PRC have a new LCAC to fit in their new Type 071 LPD.

 

[CougarKing]

The PRC have a new LCAC to fit in their new Type 071 LPD.

They are obviously slowly increasing their amphibious capabilities so they can land more than the single-500 man strong PLA Marine brigade they have on their obvious target: any port on the Taiwan coast where commandeered Ro-Ro ships can unload more of their armor.  Or is this possibility just an unlikely assumption on my part?

One shouldn't ignore the PLA's 3-division strong 15th Airborne Corps based in Wuhan either in a Taiwan invasion scenario. However, I'll leave it to the professionals here to comment on whether they think any such airborne landing would still be feasible given the types of defenses Taiwan has; whether Taiwan's vaunted F16s or its SAM batteries on its warships will affect such an airborne drop is not in my lane to say.

http://www.sinodefence.com/organisation/airforce/airborne.asp

 

[Greymatters]

Its not the F-16s or SAMs that count, its how good their EW system is that will make the day.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Campbell,

I must disagree with you on this point ...

We’ll have to agree to disagree.

No matter how hard I look, I cannot find a single good reason why either China, proper, or Taiwan would want to fight over reunification. It can be allowed to fester quietly but, I think both Chinese and Taiwanese interests will be best served, in the mid to long terms, by peaceful reunification on the ”one nation, two systems” model.

Despite the effects of various policies the fact is that China is starved for the natural resources needed to sustain a growing economy for the decades and decades required to modernize the entire country and, therefore, legitimze the rule of the Red Dynasty. There is a resource treasure-house in Siberia, East of the Yenisei, that China, rather than Russia, may be best positioned to exploit, but that will not be sufficient to meet China’s needs. Resources, especially petroleum, from around the world will be required and China understands, I believe, that it needs right mix of the political/diplomatic, economic, cultural and military power to guarantee that it can have free, fair and unchallenged access to the resources it needs.

I do not think the ongoing Chinese naval build-up is aimed, specifically, at Taiwan. Rather, I think China is working, steadily, towards making itself into a global power – and a navy is the sine qua non of global power projection.

China has global interests that require protection; thus China requires a capable blue water navy. The fact that such a fleet threatens Taiwan is icing on the cake – but the cake is global power.

The other thing China needs, for at least the rest of the first half of the 21st century is: PEACE. Despite its huge population and growing economic and military powers, China is weak and fragile. War, any war, is not in its interest. The Chinese leadership system allows, even encourages long range, strategic thinking; thus it is less likely to stumble into an ill-considered war than are many competing nations.

I think that factor (“No war, thanks; we’re Chinese.”) serves to explain why China is playing a larger and larger role in traditional (baby-blue beret) UN peacekeeping – they want to engage and expand their political/diplomatic footprint without resorting to force -anywhere.

I take your point about the ethnic benshengren majority in Taiwan but I think the waishengren Chinese in Taiwan and their confreres on the mainland will, ultimately, decide the issue for the greater good – which I think means peaceful reunification.

 

[CougarKing]

Campbell,

Thank you for your responses, although we disagree on the point about Taiwan. However, I do agree with your statements about China seeking to eventually develop a blue-water navy and increase its influence through both diplomatic and economic initiatives; China's past and present efforts to cultivate its ties with several African nations including those visits by Premier Zhou En Lai, when he was still alive, demonstrate Beijing's eagerness to increase its "footprint" as you so aptly put it.

As for China's involvement in peacekeeping missions through the UN, you are also correct, since the PLA did send observers, doctors, nurses, engineers and so forth to Cambodia, East Timor and the Democratic Republic of Congo (the former Zaire), among other missions, if I can recall correctly.

 

[Kirkhill]

A question to both Edward and CougarDaddy.

How "in sync" are the PLA leadership and the civil leadership of the CCP?  My understanding was that there have been some significant stressors in the past that saw the PLA and the, if I may, Mandarins.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I'll defer to CougarDaddy on the PLA but, I think, there is a new generation of Chinese leaders on the rise - we can see them in those recently elected at the party congress. They strike me as being pragmatists which, in a Chinese sense, means, to me, that they are party/dynastic (but not communist) apparatchiks. It appears to me that the Red Dynasty might be better named the Deng Dynasty - Sun and Mao may have been just the sorts of upsets that, traditionally, characterize the interregnum between stable dynasties in China's history.

Strategically, I think that means "stay the course" and for us - the West - that means China will be a serious competitor but not an enemy; not unless we, wilfully, stumble into some avoidable disagreement with her.

 

[CougarKing]

A question to both Edward and CougarDaddy.

How "in sync" are the PLA leadership and the civil leadership of the CCP?  My understanding was that there have been some significant stressors in the past that saw the PLA and the, if I may, Mandarins.

Kirkhill,

I am going to answer your question assuming that you mean "in sync" to signify military compliance to party policy following a certain adage put forth by any serving CCP leader, such as Deng's "Three Represents", etc.

The PLA, as you well now, is linked to the CCP via the Central Military Commission (CMC), of which the PRC President is usually the chairman. The other members also include some heads of the major PLA commands, such as the General Staff Department (GSD), the General Political Department (GPD), the General Armaments Department (GAD) and so forth. However, one must have in mind that the CMC in fact is not one, but two bodies under the same name: a Party CMC and a State CMC. For most of PRC history, their membership has coincided; I think the exceptions may include times when there was an internal power struggle, such as the late 70s following Mao's death, when the Gang of Four led by Mao's widow Jiang Qing competed with Deng Xiaoping and his supporters for control of the party while Mao's so-called initial successor Hua Gaofeng had a fragile grip on power before Deng eventually prevailed, if I can recall correctly.

With that in mind, the current membership of both the State and the Party CMC still coincide, though this may be later affected by the ongoing process of dang-jun fen-kai and dang-zheng fen-kai.

The former means the "seperation of the military from the party" and the latter means "the seperation of the party from the state". Sinologist David Shambaugh mentions both concepts repeatedly in at least one of his books and emphasizes the importance of the former if the PLA is to become a truly more professional force. Such a process would include deemphasizing the role of commissars/political officers attached to military units; Shambaugh has even stated that such political officers now focus on more practical needs regarding the troops' welfare, such as arranging housing for the families of service members, although they are still first ones to go to report any signs of political dissent. Although at least two of the current CMC members still rose through the ranks via the General Political Department/GPD in various roles such as being political officers/commissars, the process of dang-jun fen kai is ensuring that more officers from the GSD, GLD and other departments are making it into the CMC's membership in more recent years.
I already discussed in a previous post how individual past PLA leaders such as Marshal Peng Dehuai and Marshal Lin Biao either opposed the party leader(s) or party line and ended up with an uneviable fate, such as being purged/disgraced like Marshal Peng or dying in a plane crash as Marshal Lin supposedly did. It would be premature though, to assume that any PLA senior leaders today would not meet such a fate for making an enemy of anyone in the CCP's Politburo Standing Committee; the purge of Premier Zhao Ziyang at the behest of Deng Xiaoping, following the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, is another important reminder that if the CCP can still purge civilian state leaders as high as Zhao, they can do so as well with any CMC member or PLA officer at any level.
However, one must also note that in the immediate aftermath of the Tianamen Square Massacre, when the dissidents were being rounded up, the CCP ordered a sort of "political re-entrenchment" or "political reinforcement" of hardliner principles not only within civilian govt. agencies state-run corporations, but also among the PLA's leadership as well; no doubt the political officers/comissars from the GPD were key to making this "ideological reinforcement" campaign work. Instrumental to this "ideological reinforcement" campaign were the notorious Yang brothers: Generals Yang Shangkun and Yang Baibing, whose work at supposedly ordering and effecting martial law and the numerous systemic purges and arrests of many suspected dissidents throughout Beijing and so forth seems like a horrific throwback to the hardliner days of the Cultural Revolution. Some sources say General Yang Shangkun, then the Vice-Chairman of the CMC and also the PRC President (more of a ceremonial role back then since Deng held the real power as the CCP's paramount leader), initially sympathized with the student protestors along with Premier Zhao, though he quickly changed his position when it became apparent that Deng would crack down on the students; it was Yang Shangkun who declared martial law. Furthermore, his brother Yang Baibing- surprise, surprise-had risen through the ranks of both the CCP and PLA through his work as a political commissar, eventually to head the GPD itself. On another interesting note, Yang Shangkun's nephew General Yang Jianhua headed the 27th Ground Army, which participated in the actual Tiananmen Square crackdown alongside the 38th and 54th Ground Armies (the 54th was commanded by General Liang Guanglie, whom I mentioned earlier, who was serving in the CMC as of 2002, though he is no longer a CMC member now). Read any detailed account of the Tiananmen Square Massacre and the immediate period of purges and crackdowns in the following months and Yang Shangkun will be mentioned, if not Yang Baibing; however, one can infer that they were merely pawns for Deng himself. The work of Shambaugh, Nathan and Gilley, among other sources I mentioned earlier, will continue to emphasize Deng's role influencing the past and current CCP and PLA.

Now that we have a better idea of how "in sync" were relations between the PLA and the CCP in the past, this better helps others on this board gauge or predict how relations between those two entities will transpire in the China of today.

One last thing to note, is the role of the PLA Second Artillery (di er da pao), or its nuclear weapons brigades. They receive their orders directly from the Politburo Standing Committee of the CCP itself, not from any Military Region command or type commands as those one would find in the General Staff Department (GSD). It would make sense to place your most powerful deterrents firmly in your control if you were a civilian CCP leader who was wary of any PLA regional commander or ground army commander going rogue and instigating a coup; this mirrors the arrangement the now defunct Soviet Union had for its own missile brigades, if I can recall correctly, by directly linking the highest party leaders with their country's nuclear arsenal.

 

[Kirkhill]

Many thanks for an enlightening summary CougarDaddy.

Digestion time.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Part 1 of 2

I have often preached in these fora that:

1. There is an Anglosphere that has a unique and (I suspect unreproduceable) liberal, democratic, secular and capitalist culture that has moved from success to success for the past 300+ years and that can (must need not) continue to do so with a modicum of good management. See Walter Russell Mead’s recently published God and Gold for more on this;

2. There is no basis for the triumphalist tendencies which existed in Britain in the 19th and 20th centuries and which persist today in Amera. Gott is not mit uns and “uns” (such as there is any sort of coherent “we”) must make our own way forward or, as surely as the gotts made little green apples, be left behind to be trampled in the rush, à la Belgium, Portugal and Turkey;

3. The current unipolar strategic situation in which America’s power in unchallenged cannot last – indeed, ought not to last; and

4. China, while undoubtedly rising is not now and need not be our enemy in the future.

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the Jan/Feb 08 issue of Foreign Affairs is an article by  G. John Ikenberry with which I am pretty much in full accord:

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080101faessay87102-p0/g-john-ikenberry/the-rise-of-china-and-the-future-of-the-west.html

The Rise of China and the Future of the West
Can the Liberal System Survive?

By G. John Ikenberry

From Foreign Affairs , January/February 2008

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Summary: China's rise will inevitably bring the United States' unipolar moment to an end. But that does not necessarily mean a violent power struggle or the overthrow of the Western system. The U.S.-led international order can remain dominant even while integrating a more powerful China -- but only if Washington sets about strengthening that liberal order now.

G. JOHN IKENBERRY is Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and the author of After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order After Major Wars.

The rise of China will undoubtedly be one of the great dramas of the twenty-first century. China's extraordinary economic growth and active diplomacy are already transforming East Asia, and future decades will see even greater increases in Chinese power and influence. But exactly how this drama will play out is an open question. Will China overthrow the existing order or become a part of it? And what, if anything, can the United States do to maintain its position as China rises?

Some observers believe that the American era is coming to an end, as the Western-oriented world order is replaced by one increasingly dominated by the East. The historian Niall Ferguson has written that the bloody twentieth century witnessed "the descent of the West" and "a reorientation of the world" toward the East. Realists go on to note that as China gets more powerful and the United States' position erodes, two things are likely to happen: China will try to use its growing influence to reshape the rules and institutions of the international system to better serve its interests, and other states in the system -- especially the declining hegemon -- will start to see China as a growing security threat. The result of these developments, they predict, will be tension, distrust, and conflict, the typical features of a power transition. In this view, the drama of China's rise will feature an increasingly powerful China and a declining United States locked in an epic battle over the rules and leadership of the international system. And as the world's largest country emerges not from within but outside the established post-World War II international order, it is a drama that will end with the grand ascendance of China and the onset of an Asian-centered world order.

That course, however, is not inevitable. The rise of China does not have to trigger a wrenching hegemonic transition. The U.S.-Chinese power transition can be very different from those of the past because China faces an international order that is fundamentally different from those that past rising states confronted. China does not just face the United States; it faces a Western-centered system that is open, integrated, and rule-based, with wide and deep political foundations. The nuclear revolution, meanwhile, has made war among great powers unlikely -- eliminating the major tool that rising powers have used to overturn international systems defended by declining hegemonic states. Today's Western order, in short, is hard to overturn and easy to join.

This unusually durable and expansive order is itself the product of farsighted U.S. leadership. After World War II, the United States did not simply establish itself as the leading world power. It led in the creation of universal institutions that not only invited global membership but also brought democracies and market societies closer together. It built an order that facilitated the participation and integration of both established great powers and newly independent states. (It is often forgotten that this postwar order was designed in large part to reintegrate the defeated Axis states and the beleaguered Allied states into a unified international system.) Today, China can gain full access to and thrive within this system. And if it does, China will rise, but the Western order -- if managed properly -- will live on.

As it faces an ascendant China, the United States should remember that its leadership of the Western order allows it to shape the environment in which China will make critical strategic choices. If it wants to preserve this leadership, Washington must work to strengthen the rules and institutions that underpin that order -- making it even easier to join and harder to overturn. U.S. grand strategy should be built around the motto "The road to the East runs through the West." It must sink the roots of this order as deeply as possible, giving China greater incentives for integration than for opposition and increasing the chances that the system will survive even after U.S. relative power has declined.

The United States' "unipolar moment" will inevitably end. If the defining struggle of the twenty-first century is between China and the United States, China will have the advantage. If the defining struggle is between China and a revived Western system, the West will triumph.

TRANSITIONAL ANXIETIES

China is well on its way to becoming a formidable global power. The size of its economy has quadrupled since the launch of market reforms in the late 1970s and, by some estimates, will double again over the next decade. It has become one of the world's major manufacturing centers and consumes roughly a third of the global supply of iron, steel, and coal. It has accumulated massive foreign reserves, worth more than $1 trillion at the end of 2006. China's military spending has increased at an inflation-adjusted rate of over 18 percent a year, and its diplomacy has extended its reach not just in Asia but also in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. Indeed, whereas the Soviet Union rivaled the United States as a military competitor only, China is emerging as both a military and an economic rival -- heralding a profound shift in the distribution of global power.

Power transitions are a recurring problem in international relations. As scholars such as Paul Kennedy and Robert Gilpin have described it, world politics has been marked by a succession of powerful states rising up to organize the international system. A powerful state can create and enforce the rules and institutions of a stable global order in which to pursue its interests and security. But nothing lasts forever: long-term changes in the distribution of power give rise to new challenger states, who set off a struggle over the terms of that international order. Rising states want to translate their newly acquired power into greater authority in the global system -- to reshape the rules and institutions in accordance with their own interests. Declining states, in turn, fear their loss of control and worry about the security implications of their weakened position.

These moments are fraught with danger. When a state occupies a commanding position in the international system, neither it nor weaker states have an incentive to change the existing order. But when the power of a challenger state grows and the power of the leading state weakens, a strategic rivalry ensues, and conflict -- perhaps leading to war -- becomes likely. The danger of power transitions is captured most dramatically in the case of late-nineteenth-century Germany. In 1870, the United Kingdom had a three-to-one advantage in economic power over Germany and a significant military advantage as well; by 1903, Germany had pulled ahead in terms of both economic and military power. As Germany unified and grew, so, too, did its dissatisfactions and demands, and as it grew more powerful, it increasingly appeared as a threat to other great powers in Europe, and security competition began. In the strategic realignments that followed, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom, formerly enemies, banded together to confront an emerging Germany. The result was a European war. Many observers see this dynamic emerging in U.S.-Chinese relations. "If China continues its impressive economic growth over the next few decades," the realist scholar John Mearsheimer has written, "the United States and China are likely to engage in an intense security competition with considerable potential for war."

But not all power transitions generate war or overturn the old order. In the early decades of the twentieth century, the United Kingdom ceded authority to the United States without great conflict or even a rupture in relations. From the late 1940s to the early 1990s, Japan's economy grew from the equivalent of five percent of U.S. GDP to the equivalent of over 60 percent of U.S. GDP, and yet Japan never challenged the existing international order.

Clearly, there are different types of power transitions. Some states have seen their economic and geopolitical power grow dramatically and have still accommodated themselves to the existing order. Others have risen up and sought to change it. Some power transitions have led to the breakdown of the old order and the establishment of a new international hierarchy. Others have brought about only limited adjustments in the regional and global system.

A variety of factors determine the way in which power transitions unfold. The nature of the rising state's regime and the degree of its dissatisfaction with the old order are critical: at the end of the nineteenth century, the United States, a liberal country an ocean away from Europe, was better able to embrace the British-centered international order than Germany was. But even more decisive is the character of the international order itself -- for it is the nature of the international order that shapes a rising state's choice between challenging that order and integrating into it.

OPEN ORDER

The postwar Western order is historically unique. Any international order dominated by a powerful state is based on a mix of coercion and consent, but the U.S.-led order is distinctive in that it has been more liberal than imperial -- and so unusually accessible, legitimate, and durable. Its rules and institutions are rooted in, and thus reinforced by, the evolving global forces of democracy and capitalism. It is expansive, with a wide and widening array of participants and stakeholders. It is capable of generating tremendous economic growth and power while also signaling restraint -- all of which make it hard to overturn and easy to join.

It was the explicit intention of the Western order's architects in the 1940s to make that order integrative and expansive. Before the Cold War split the world into competing camps, Franklin Roosevelt sought to create a one-world system managed by cooperative great powers that would rebuild war-ravaged Europe, integrate the defeated states, and establish mechanisms for security cooperation and expansive economic growth. In fact, it was Roosevelt who urged -- over the opposition of Winston Churchill -- that China be included as a permanent member of the UN Security Council. The then Australian ambassador to the United States wrote in his diary after his first meeting with Roosevelt during the war, "He said that he had numerous discussions with Winston about China and that he felt that Winston was 40 years behind the times on China and he continually referred to the Chinese as 'Chinks' and 'Chinamen' and he felt that this was very dangerous. He wanted to keep China as a friend because in 40 or 50 years' time China might easily become a very powerful military nation."

Over the next half century, the United States used the system of rules and institutions it had built to good effect. West Germany was bound to its democratic Western European neighbors through the European Coal and Steel Community (and, later, the European Community) and to the United States through the Atlantic security pact; Japan was bound to the United States through an alliance partnership and expanding economic ties. The Bretton Woods meeting in 1944 laid down the monetary and trade rules that facilitated the opening and subsequent flourishing of the world economy -- an astonishing achievement given the ravages of war and the competing interests of the great powers. Additional agreements between the United States, Western Europe, and Japan solidified the open and multilateral character of the postwar world economy. After the onset of the Cold War, the Marshall Plan in Europe and the 1951 security pact between the United States and Japan further integrated the defeated Axis powers into the Western order.

In the final days of the Cold War, this system once again proved remarkably successful. As the Soviet Union declined, the Western order offered a set of rules and institutions that provided Soviet leaders with both reassurances and points of access -- effectively encouraging them to become a part of the system. Moreover, the shared leadership of the order ensured accommodation of the Soviet Union. As the Reagan administration pursued a hard-line policy toward Moscow, the Europeans pursued détente and engagement. For every hard-line "push," there was a moderating "pull," allowing Mikhail Gorbachev to pursue high-risk reforms. On the eve of German unification, the fact that a united Germany would be embedded in European and Atlantic institutions -- rather than becoming an independent great power -- helped reassure Gorbachev that neither German nor Western intentions were hostile. After the Cold War, the Western order once again managed the integration of a new wave of countries, this time from the formerly communist world. Three particular features of the Western order have been critical to this success and longevity.

First, unlike the imperial systems of the past, the Western order is built around rules and norms of nondiscrimination and market openness, creating conditions for rising states to advance their expanding economic and political goals within it. Across history, international orders have varied widely in terms of whether the material benefits that are generated accrue disproportionately to the leading state or are widely shared. In the Western system, the barriers to economic participation are low, and the potential benefits are high. China has already discovered the massive economic returns that are possible by operating within this open-market system.

Second is the coalition-based character of its leadership. Past orders have tended to be dominated by one state. The stakeholders of the current Western order include a coalition of powers arrayed around the United States -- an important distinction. These leading states, most of them advanced liberal democracies, do not always agree, but they are engaged in a continuous process of give-and-take over economics, politics, and security. Power transitions are typically seen as being played out between two countries, a rising state and a declining hegemon, and the order falls as soon as the power balance shifts. But in the current order, the larger aggregation of democratic capitalist states -- and the resulting accumulation of geopolitical power -- shifts the balance in the order's favor.

Third, the postwar Western order has an unusually dense, encompassing, and broadly endorsed system of rules and institutions. Whatever its shortcomings, it is more open and rule-based than any previous order. State sovereignty and the rule of law are not just norms enshrined in the United Nations Charter. They are part of the deep operating logic of the order. To be sure, these norms are evolving, and the United States itself has historically been ambivalent about binding itself to international law and institutions -- and at no time more so than today. But the overall system is dense with multilateral rules and institutions -- global and regional, economic, political, and security-related. These represent one of the great breakthroughs of the postwar era. They have laid the basis for unprecedented levels of cooperation and shared authority over the global system.

The incentives these features create for China to integrate into the liberal international order are reinforced by the changed nature of the international economic environment -- especially the new interdependence driven by technology. The most farsighted Chinese leaders understand that globalization has changed the game and that China accordingly needs strong, prosperous partners around the world. From the United States' perspective, a healthy Chinese economy is vital to the United States and the rest of the world. Technology and the global economic revolution have created a logic of economic relations that is different from the past -- making the political and institutional logic of the current order all the more powerful.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Part 2 of 2

The Rise of China and the Future of the West
Can the Liberal System Survive?

By G. John Ikenberry

From Foreign Affairs , January/February 2008

ACCOMMODATING THE RISE

The most important benefit of these features today is that they give the Western order a remarkable capacity to accommodate rising powers. New entrants into the system have ways of gaining status and authority and opportunities to play a role in governing the order. The fact that the United States, China, and other great powers have nuclear weapons also limits the ability of a rising power to overturn the existing order. In the age of nuclear deterrence, great-power war is, thankfully, no longer a mechanism of historical change. War-driven change has been abolished as a historical process.

The Western order's strong framework of rules and institutions is already starting to facilitate Chinese integration. At first, China embraced certain rules and institutions for defensive purposes: protecting its sovereignty and economic interests while seeking to reassure other states of its peaceful intentions by getting involved in regional and global groupings. But as the scholar Marc Lanteigne argues, "What separates China from other states, and indeed previous global powers, is that not only is it 'growing up' within a milieu of international institutions far more developed than ever before, but more importantly, it is doing so while making active use of these institutions to promote the country's development of global power status." China, in short, is increasingly working within, rather than outside of, the Western order.

China is already a permanent member of the UN Security Council, a legacy of Roosevelt's determination to build the universal body around diverse great-power leadership. This gives China the same authority and advantages of "great-power exceptionalism" as the other permanent members. The existing global trading system is also valuable to China, and increasingly so. Chinese economic interests are quite congruent with the current global economic system -- a system that is open and loosely institutionalized and that China has enthusiastically embraced and thrived in. State power today is ultimately based on sustained economic growth, and China is well aware that no major state can modernize without integrating into the globalized capitalist system; if a country wants to be a world power, it has no choice but to join the World Trade Organization (WTO). The road to global power, in effect, runs through the Western order and its multilateral economic institutions.

China not only needs continued access to the global capitalist system; it also wants the protections that the system's rules and institutions provide. The WTO's multilateral trade principles and dispute-settlement mechanisms, for example, offer China tools to defend against the threats of discrimination and protectionism that rising economic powers often confront. The evolution of China's policy suggests that Chinese leaders recognize these advantages: as Beijing's growing commitment to economic liberalization has increased the foreign investment and trade China has enjoyed, so has Beijing increasingly embraced global trade rules. It is possible that as China comes to champion the WTO, the support of the more mature Western economies for the WTO will wane. But it is more likely that both the rising and the declining countries will find value in the quasi-legal mechanisms that allow conflicts to be settled or at least diffused.

The existing international economic institutions also offer opportunities for new powers to rise up through their hierarchies. In the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, governance is based on economic shares, which growing countries can translate into greater institutional voice. To be sure, the process of adjustment has been slow. The United States and Europe still dominate the IMF. Washington has a 17 percent voting share (down from 30 percent) -- a controlling amount, because 85 percent approval is needed for action -- and the European Union has a major say in the appointment of ten of the 24 members of the board. But there are growing pressures, notably the need for resources and the need to maintain relevance, that will likely persuade the Western states to admit China into the inner circle of these economic governance institutions. The IMF's existing shareholders, for example, see a bigger role for rising developing countries as necessary to renew the institution and get it through its current crisis of mission. At the IMF's meeting in Singapore in September 2006, they agreed on reforms that will give China, Mexico, South Korea, and Turkey a greater voice.

As China sheds its status as a developing country (and therefore as a client of these institutions), it will increasingly be able to act as a patron and stakeholder instead. Leadership in these organizations is not simply a reflection of economic size (the United States has retained its voting share in the IMF even as its economic weight has declined); nonetheless, incremental advancement within them will create important opportunities for China.

POWER SHIFT AND PEACEFUL CHANGE

Seen in this light, the rise of China need not lead to a volcanic struggle with the United States over global rules and leadership. The Western order has the potential to turn the coming power shift into a peaceful change on terms favorable to the United States. But that will only happen if the United States sets about strengthening the existing order. Today, with Washington preoccupied with terrorism and war in the Middle East, rebuilding Western rules and institutions might to some seem to be of only marginal relevance. Many Bush administration officials have been outright hostile to the multilateral, rule-based system that the United States has shaped and led. Such hostility is foolish and dangerous. China will become powerful: it is already on the rise, and the United States' most powerful strategic weapon is the ability to decide what sort of international order will be in place to receive it.

The United States must reinvest in the Western order, reinforcing the features of that order that encourage engagement, integration, and restraint. The more this order binds together capitalist democratic states in deeply rooted institutions; the more open, consensual, and rule-based it is; and the more widely spread its benefits, the more likely it will be that rising powers can and will secure their interests through integration and accommodation rather than through war. And if the Western system offers rules and institutions that benefit the full range of states -- rising and falling, weak and strong, emerging and mature -- its dominance as an international order is all but certain.

The first thing the United States must do is reestablish itself as the foremost supporter of the global system of governance that underpins the Western order. Doing so will first of all facilitate the kind of collective problem solving that makes all countries better off. At the same time, when other countries see the United States using its power to strengthen existing rules and institutions, that power is rendered more legitimate -- and U.S. authority is strengthened. Countries within the West become more inclined to work with, rather than resist, U.S. power, which reinforces the centrality and dominance of the West itself.

Renewing Western rules and institutions will require, among other things, updating the old bargains that underpinned key postwar security pacts. The strategic understanding behind both NATO and Washington's East Asian alliances is that the United States will work with its allies to provide security and bring them in on decisions over the use of force, and U.S. allies, in return, will operate within the U.S.-led Western order. Security cooperation in the West remains extensive today, but with the main security threats less obvious than they were during the Cold War, the purposes and responsibilities of these alliances are under dispute. Accordingly, the United States needs to reaffirm the political value of these alliances -- recognizing that they are part of a wider Western institutional architecture that allows states to do business with one another.

The United States should also renew its support for wide-ranging multilateral institutions. On the economic front, this would include building on the agreements and architecture of the WTO, including pursuing efforts to conclude the current Doha Round of trade talks, which seeks to extend market opportunities and trade liberalization to developing countries. The WTO is at a critical stage. The basic standard of nondiscrimination is at risk thanks to the proliferation of bilateral and regional trade agreements. Meanwhile, there are growing doubts over whether the WTO can in fact carry out trade liberalization, particularly in agriculture, that benefits developing countries. These issues may seem narrow, but the fundamental character of the liberal international order -- its commitment to universal rules of openness that spread gains widely -- is at stake. Similar doubts haunt a host of other multilateral agreements -- on global warming and nuclear nonproliferation, among others -- and they thus also demand renewed U.S. leadership.

The strategy here is not simply to ensure that the Western order is open and rule-based. It is also to make sure that the order does not fragment into an array of bilateral and "minilateral" arrangements, causing the United States to find itself tied to only a few key states in various regions. Under such a scenario, China would have an opportunity to build its own set of bilateral and "minilateral" pacts. As a result, the world would be broken into competing U.S. and Chinese spheres. The more security and economic relations are multilateral and all-encompassing, the more the global system retains its coherence.

In addition to maintaining the openness and durability of the order, the United States must redouble its efforts to integrate rising developing countries into key global institutions. Bringing emerging countries into the governance of the international order will give it new life. The United States and Europe must find room at the table not only for China but also for countries such as Brazil, India, and South Africa. A Goldman Sachs report on the so-called BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) noted that by 2050 these countries' economies could together be larger than those of the original G-6 countries (Germany, France, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States) combined. Each international institution presents its own challenges. The UN Security Council is perhaps the hardest to deal with, but its reform would also bring the greatest returns. Less formal bodies -- the so-called G-20 and various other intergovernmental networks -- can provide alternative avenues for voice and representation.

THE TRIUMPH OF THE LIBERAL ORDER

The key thing for U.S. leaders to remember is that it may be possible for China to overtake the United States alone, but it is much less likely that China will ever manage to overtake the Western order. In terms of economic weight, for example, China will surpass the United States as the largest state in the global system sometime around 2020. (Because of its population, China needs a level of productivity only one-fifth that of the United States to become the world's biggest economy.) But when the economic capacity of the Western system as a whole is considered, China's economic advances look much less significant; the Chinese economy will be much smaller than the combined economies of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development far into the future. This is even truer of military might: China cannot hope to come anywhere close to total OECD military expenditures anytime soon. The capitalist democratic world is a powerful constituency for the preservation -- and, indeed, extension -- of the existing international order. If China intends to rise up and challenge the existing order, it has a much more daunting task than simply confronting the United States.

The "unipolar moment" will eventually pass. U.S. dominance will eventually end. U.S. grand strategy, accordingly, should be driven by one key question: What kind of international order would the United States like to see in place when it is less powerful?

This might be called the neo-Rawlsian question of the current era. The political philosopher John Rawls argued that political institutions should be conceived behind a "veil of ignorance" -- that is, the architects should design institutions as if they do not know precisely where they will be within a socioeconomic system. The result would be a system that safeguards a person's interests regardless of whether he is rich or poor, weak or strong. The United States needs to take that approach to its leadership of the international order today. It must put in place institutions and fortify rules that will safeguard its interests regardless of where exactly in the hierarchy it is or how exactly power is distributed in 10, 50, or 100 years.

Fortunately, such an order is in place already. The task now is to make it so expansive and so institutionalized that China has no choice but to become a full-fledged member of it. The United States cannot thwart China's rise, but it can help ensure that China's power is exercised within the rules and institutions that the United States and its partners have crafted over the last century, rules and institutions that can protect the interests of all states in the more crowded world of the future. The United States' global position may be weakening, but the international system the United States leads can remain the dominant order of the twenty-first century.

The key point, for me, is the matter of the OPEN ORDER that Ikenberry suggests characterizes the US led West. I agree it is the dominant characteristic of what we call the “West” but I suggest that the degree of openness varies greatly: it is very high in Australia, Britain, Canada, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, New Zealand Norway, Singapore and a few others and very low in France, Italy, Japan, Poland and Spain and many others in the OECD. China, I believe is economically, socially and culturally more attuned to the liberal Open Order than it is to the illiberal economic systems of many Western nations.

If we can manage our collective policies well then we shall have China as a competitor in a market for trade and influence in a large global market for goods, services and ideas, not as an enemy.