Your humble blogger is headed to China for the next few days as part of a conference sponsored by the MacArthur Asia Security Initiative and the School of International Studies at Peking University, at which we will be discussing "What roles do power, history, ideas, and other legacies and factors play in shaping the American and Chinese approaches to sovereignty?" and "What is distinctive about the American and Chinese orientations and what are the implications of their preferences for the international order?" and "Could I please have an extra serving of tripe?" OK, that last one will just be a personal quest for yours truly, but you get the idea.
We will also be "Meeting with high-rank officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the International Liaison Department of the Central Committee of the CPC" -- so with luck, I'll be able to post blog items that will impress Chinese readers more than, say, your average Tom Friedman column. Assuming, that is, that the interwebs are semi-friendly over there.
While I am praying for an upgrade on my flight to Beijing winging my way to the Middle Kingdom, go and contemplate Gideon Rachman's latest in the Financial Times. He points out that should China supplant the United States during this decade, it will be a very strange superpower indeed:
The ascent of China will change ideas of what it means to be a superpower. Over the course of the American century, the world has got used to the idea that the world’s largest economy was also the world’s most obviously affluent nation. The world’s biggest economy housed the world’s richest people.
As China emerges as an economic superpower, the connection between national and personal affluence is being broken. China is both richer and poorer than the western world. It is sitting on foreign reserves worth $3,000bn. And yet, measured at current exchange rates, the average American is about 10 times as wealthy as the average Chinese....
The power of China – combined with anxiety about the frightening public debts being built up in the US, the EU and Japan – will challenge western ideas about the relationship between democracy and economic success. Ever since the US became the world’s largest economy, towards the end of the 19th century, the most powerful economy in the world has been a democracy. But, if China remains a one-party state over the next decade, that will change. The confident western slogan that “freedom works” will come under challenge as authoritarianism becomes fashionable, once again.
What do you think? More tripe, or go for the chow fun instead?
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