Fareed Zakaria of CNN had as his guest Sunday, Robert D. Kaplan. They were talking about China. From all I read or see it seems generally accepted that China is emerging into a major world power rivaling the United States. China’s population dwarfs that of the United States. China is a major creditor of the United States. Americans bolster China’s rise in the global picture by buying Chinese products in the retail markets such as Wal-Mart.
With that in mind I watched Zakaria and Kaplan. Zakaria seemed to have my same frame of mind, how is it that China is becoming such an influence on the world stage and what does it mean?
Kaplan wrote an article published in in Foreign Affairs in May/June 2010 which can be read on the CNN website.
Citing English geographer Sir Halford Mackinder and his famous 1904 article, "The Geographical Pivot of History," explained that China, located in Eurasia, is in the “geostrategic fulcrum of world power.” China has a 9,000-mile temperate coastline with many good natural harbors. It is both a land power and a sea power. MacKinder predicted “China would eventually guide the world by ‘building for a quarter of humanity a new civilization, neither quite Eastern nor quite Western.’”
With China’s centralized government can expand in ways that “democracies” cannot. But China is absorbing Western technology and practices, integrating them “into a disciplined and elaborate cultural system” forming relationships with other nations.
Kaplan noted the United States grew steadily in the 19th century by trading with the outside world. China’s ambitions “are as aggressive as those of the United States in the 19th century. China doesn’t seek to spread “an ideology or a system of government” as the United States does. Witness the avowed reasons of the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq to establish a democracy along the lines of that of the United States.
China is “propelled by its need to secure energy, metals, and strategic minerals in order to support the rising living standards of its immense population, which amounts to about one-fifth of the world’s total.”
I don’t hear those kinds of goals being pursued by the government of the United States. China’s global “scouring for resources” will bring it into conflict with the “missionary-oriented” United States. Makes some sense to me. Since World War II the United States has resorted to wars rather than building its own resources as evidenced by the Vietnam, Korean wars and now the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. The wars in Vietnam and Korea were avowed to be to stop communism. In Afghanistan and Iraq to fight terrorism and spread democracy. Huge amounts of the U.S. treasury and lives have been spent in all four wars, all occurring within my lifetime.
No wonder the U.S. economy has been in the tank. The U.S. focus has been outward rather than inward all these years, fighting wars. China is currently mining for copper near Kabul in Afghanistan and”has its eye on the region’s iron, gold, uranium and precious gems” while the U.S. chugs away militarily in it’s pursuits. Meanwhile China is expanding its Navy to control seaports around the south of the Asian continent all the way up to the Persian Gulf increasing its influence to the Eurasian border. All of which can jeopardize the stability among the Asian nations.
Yes, times are changing. Relationships between large nations are undergoing revision. Economies of the several nations will also evolve into a different shape following the global recession. If you are so inclined read Kaplan’s article. It will leave you with food for thought.
Related posts:
