A New Great Power Relationship"
Op-Ed, China Daily
March 4, 2013
Author: Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor
Throughout history, the rise of a new power has been attended by
uncertainty and anxieties. Often, though not always, violent conflict
has followed. As Thucydides explained, the real roots of the
Peloponnesian war in which the ancient Greek system tore itself apart,
were the rise in the power of Athens and the fear it created in Sparta.
The rise in the economic and military power of China, the world's most
populous country, will be one of the two or three most important
questions for world stability in this century, and some think that
conflict with the US is inevitable. But it is a mistake to allow
historical analogies determine our thinking. Instead, we should be
asking how China and the US can create a new great power relationship.
Many analysts also compare the rise of China to that of Germany at
the beginning of the last century. The rise in the power of Germany and
the fear it created in Britain was one of the causes of World War I, in
which the European system tore itself apart. This year China's economy
will grow by nearly 7 to 8 percent and its defense spending will grow
even more. Chinese leaders have spoken of China's "peaceful
development", but analysts like John Mearsheimer of the University of
Chicago have flatly proclaimed that China cannot rise peacefully, and
predicted that "the United States and China are likely to engage in an
intense security competition with considerable potential for war."
Who is right? We will not know for some time, but the debaters
should recall both halves of Thucydides' trenchant analysis. War was
caused not merely by the rise of one power, but by the fear it
engendered in another. The belief in the inevitability of conflict can
become one of its main causes. Each side, believing it will end up at
war with the other, makes reasonable military preparations, which then
are read by the other side as confirmation of its worst fears. In a
perverse transnational alliance, hawks in each country cite the others'
statements as clear evidence. One way to make East Asia and the world
safer is to avoid such exaggerated fears and self-fulfilling prophecies.
Moreover, while China has impressive power resources, one should be
skeptical about projections based solely on current growth rates,
political rhetoric, military contingency plans, and flawed historical
analogies. It is important to remember that by 1900, Germany had
surpassed Britain in industrial power, and the Kaiser was pursuing an
adventurous, globally oriented foreign policy that was bound to bring
about a clash with other great powers. In contrast, China still lags far
behind the United States, and has focused its policies primarily on its
economic development.
China has a long way to go to equal the power resources of the
United States, and still faces many obstacles to its development. At the
beginning of the 21st century, the American economy was about twice the
size of China's in purchasing power parity, and more than three times
as large at official exchange rates. All such comparisons and
projections are somewhat arbitrary. Even if Chinese GDP passes that of
the United States in the next decade, the two economies would be
equivalent in size, but not equal in composition. China would still have
a vast underdeveloped countryside, and it will begin to face
demographic problems from the delayed effects of the strict family
planning policy it enforced in the 20th century. Moreover, as countries
develop, there is a tendency for growth rates to slow. China would not
equal the United States in per capita income until sometime in the
second half of the century.
Per capita income provides a measure of the sophistication of an
economy. In other words, China's impressive growth rate combined with
the size of its population will surely lead it to pass the American
economy in total size at some point. This has already provided China
with impressive power resources, but that is not the same as equal
power. China is a long way from posing the kind of challenge to American
preponderance that the Kaiser's Germany posed when it passed Britain at
the beginning of the last century. The facts do not at this point
justify alarmist predictions of a coming war. There is time to manage a
cooperative relationship. As an important Chinese leader recently told
me, "we need 30 years of peace to meet our development goals and come
close to the US." During that period we can focus on building a new type
of great power relationship.
Bill Clinton was right
when he told Jiang Zemin in 1995 that the United States has more to fear
from a weak China than a strong China. Thus far, the United States has
accepted the rise of Chinese power and invited Chinese participation as a
responsible stakeholder in the international system. Power is not
always a zero sum game. Given the global problems that both China and
the United States will face, they have much more to gain from working
together than in allowing overwrought fears to drive them apart, but it
will take wise policy on both sides to assure this future.
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