DOES THE WORLD NEED CHINA? –   June 10, 2006

Samuel P. Huntington, one of the most recognized contemporary political scientists, expressed in his book “The clash of civilizations and the remaking of the world order” an opinion that Western civilization will loose its dominant position as a leading world’s power in the not far future. In his view, the West will “remain number one in terms of power and influence well into the twenty first century”, however its erosion process has already begun and its continuing decline will cause a major shift in global political balance to the advantage of other civilizations. Furthermore he predicted “the most significant increases in power […] will accrue to Asian civilizations, with China gradually emerging as the society most likely to challenge the West for global influence”. Consequently he concluded that these shifts in power would cause rivalry and rejection of Western culture by the non-Western societies.

People's Republic of China is a declared communist state. Between the years of 1960 and 1963 the country experienced a grave economic crisis, which was the result of a centrally planned economy system created by its communist leaders. In 1961 the Gross National Product of China equaled merely 50% of that of 1959, to fall additional 10% in 1962. The extremely sever situation forced Chinese decision makers to conduct major economic reforms. Some of them began in early 1960s and were designed to curb the growing crisis. Other reforms, such as gradual liberalization of prices or foundation of a diversified banking system took place later, around 1978 and proved to be very successful. Since that year the Chinese Gross Domestic Product has grown more than tenfold making this country one of the biggest global economies. In 2005 the GDP, calculated on the basis of exchange power parity, equaled $8.859 trillion with the growing yearly rate of almost 10%. In the same year the GDP of the United States equaled $12.36 trillion with the growing yearly rate of 3.5%. These facts persuaded some analysts to predict that the fast-growing Chinese economy will overtake the American economy in 2015. Less optimistic experts have predicted such an event a little bit later, around 2039.

As the Chinese economy was getting relatively stronger, its government started to spend more money on military development and modernization of the army. According to the CIA World Fact Book, the actual Chinese military expenditures in 2005 reached $81.48 billion and rose by 4.3% comparing to the previous year. In the same time U.S. military expenditures equaled $518.1 billion with a yearly growth rate of 4.06%. However analyzed from different point of view, between the period of 1985 till 1993, military expenditures of NATO dropped by 10% while the same expenditures in East Asia rose by 50%. According to the Information Office of China’s State Council, Chinese military budget rose yearly by 17.7% in 2000, 17.6% in 2002, 11.6% in 2004 and 12.6% in 2005. Defense budget of China in 2001 was already bigger than the combined defense budgets of Taiwan, India and South Korea. Besides the fact of fast-growing economy and military spending, China possesses also another considerable advantage – it has male manpower available for military service in the amount of 342,956,265 people while the U.S. has male manpower fit for service equaling only 54,609,050.

In political science and international relations, predictions, assumptions and geopolitical theories not always prove to be entirely accurate as they are most often based on forecasting what may happen in the future. As a matter of fact, some potentially unpredictable events may occur, such as it was with a startling disintegration of the Soviet Union, which can cause existing political theories to be corrected and paradigms to be changed. For that reason one cannot say for certain that Chinese civilization will inevitably achieve such political status as Western civilization or that its economy and military power will overtake that of the United States. However analyzing the above mentioned figures one has to admit that China is on a good way to achieve it in the near future and become the dominant civilization in the world.

Paradoxically the emergence of Chinese superpower can have positive influence on the Western civilization and on global security. Presently the United States does not have any serious political or economical rival in the world. International challenge to America made by a comparably strong country would contribute to strengthening national identity of Americans and preventing internal disintegration of the United States. Moreover, if the competition between Western and Chinese civilizations would be deeply based on promoting contradicting ideologies supported by considerable military power, such a rivalry most likely would contribute to closer integration of the European Union causing this organization to become one federal state. So far the threat posed by international terrorism did not prove to be sufficient external incentive to intensify the integration process. Moreover a threat posed by China would strengthen transatlantic cooperation between the EU and the U.S.

Competition at economic level would force the U.S. and especially European countries to spend more funds on technological development and research as it would play crucial role in outdistancing Asian economies and military.

Competition between these two civilizations could somewhat resemble the one between the West and the Soviet Union. Constant risk of escalating potential conflict between China and the West into a third world war might quite well secure global security and peace, as the cost of such confrontation would be too high to bear for both civilizations and therefore they would try to avoid any serious conflict.

As it has been proved throughout the world’s history, rising economic and military powers tend to start external expansion at certain point of their development. As Aaron L. Friedberg, another distinguished scholar explains in his work “The future of U.S.-China relations”, rising states “seek not only to secure their frontiers but to reach out beyond them, taking steps to ensure access to markets, materials, and transportation routes; […] defend their foreign friends and allies and promulgate their values”. There is no reason to assume that the rising Chinese superpower would take different course. Therefore political confrontation with the West might prove inevitable. Nevertheless it may as well create a brand new dimension of global stability and cause a renewal of Western civilization and its slowly declining power.

Sebastian Aulich

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