You can’t help but read stories about China these days. Here are just a few of the themes in the news about China I’ve come across in the last few weeks:
- Chinese consumers promise to be a huge market for American companies.
- Chinese workers threaten to work for far less money than their western counterparts, displacing millions of American jobs.
- Chinese development will most certainly wreak enormous environmental destruction.
- The Chinese space agency has brought it esteem and national pride.
- Chinese research institutions look to supplant American universities as the premiere institutions in the world.
- They will compete with us for oil, raising worldwide demand.
- They hold most of our foreign debt, effectively crippling our military in issues such as Taiwan…
…The stories about China go on and on.
I am no historian, but it seems to me that had the British press been as global in 1900 as the American press is today, there would have been all kinds of similar (though obviously anachronistically-correct) articles about the US. Of course, there are tremendous differences between China now and the US at the turn of the last century, primarily the fact that China is an oligarchy (it is no longer communist, though the Communist Party is still the name of the ruling elite), so history will not repeat itself literally. But, as an eternal optimist, I see China becoming a major positive influence in the world, both economically and socially. The sheer force of 1.2 billion chinese all clawing their way up to the middle class promises to reshape the world every bit as much as a similar blossoming of the US did last century. After all, historically the world (though not the environment) has only benefited from the creation of a new middle class. Hundreds of millions of financially powerful citizens will eventually force change on their political system, and will drive scientific and technological progress in their day jobs.
For so long, my entire life in fact, America has been the “most powerful nation in the world” and the leader of the world in science, technology, finance, and everything else. China represents a lot of things, but primarily what it represents to the American national pride is a large, imminent, bruising. The truth is, China will be our partner (perhaps our larger partner) in 21st century human endeavors that will see the conquering of diseases, securing of peace, prevention of genocides, and expansion into space, and innumerable other efforts of world affairs. Those who see armed conflict in our future with China are thinking like lions in a pride rather than statesman.
