China
I used to wonder whether a society that became so networked that it could support a ubiquitous monitoring system would end up not using such a system for oppressive political control, both because of the flows of relatively free information that the networks would enable, and because the ability to run such a system implied a high level of socioeconomic development.
China appears to be answering this question, by building an immense surveillance system that will “cover a half-million intersections, neighborhoods and parks over nearly 400 square miles,” using as many as 500,000 cameras reporting to a central system, David Brin notes (from an NPR report). The monitoring system is ostensibly targeting crime, but could clearly be redirected for political surveillance — and in any case the line between crime and politics becomes blurred in China, for instance when social order is seen to include suppressing dissent by Tibetans or Uighurs.
Still, while China puts immense efforts into controlling expression on the Internet and mobile networks, these technologies have still provided new outlets for expression that have changed the role of public opinion in Chinese society. China runs a highly oppressive high-tech monitoring system, by some definitions, but it is also clear that new information networks are changing the nature of China’s politics.
So I won’t dismiss my original question about the role of technology. Its oppressive aspects will vie with its liberating qualities in coming decades, shaping human rights this century.
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The Washington Post has a handy tool for calculating when China’s economy becomes the world’s largest.
The short answer is: not very long from now.
- If China grows rapidly, its economy is largest by 2025 EVEN IF the US grows at an improbably fast 4%.
- If China slows to 7%, and the US grows at 4%, it is only put off an additional 17 years, till 2042.
- In what seems most plausible, the US reverts to its long-term average (2.5%), and China slows to 7%, yielding 2032.
| US RATE |
China fast (11%) |
China current (10%) |
China slower (7%) |
| US fast (4%) |
2025 |
2027 |
2042 |
| US current (3%) |
2022 |
2024 |
2034 |
| US long-term (2.5%) |
2022 |
2023 |
2032 |
These scenarios are not inevitable, of course: economic disaster scenarios for both countries are accumulating. They seem more likely for China, and range from social instability to the “middle-income trap,” in which China’s growth strategy stalls at a midpoint on the development ladder.
In a recent piece in The New Yorker article, writer Rohinton Mistry mentions growing up in India in the 20th century, “raised to believe that this ancient country was futureless, the only solution to settle in the West, to make a better life.”
This raises a basic question: how do people come to believe they are or are not the future? This belief is central to civilizational confidence, and to a society’s momentum, but it is hardly universal.
The present is here, it is just unequally distributed
People do not even necessarily believe that their societies are in the present, a prerequisite for believing one is the future. It is common to hear people in developing countries say, “We want to be a normal country, we want to join the present.” They have an active sense of dyschronicity: that there is a progression toward a future, and they are further from it than others.
And some cultures may feel shut out of the present. This is a political issue in some societies. In Latin America, for instance, over the last few decades indigenous peoples emerging from quasi-colonial treatment explicitly demand to be considered part of the present, not relics of the past.
Battling for the past
To believe one’s way is the future, it is helpful to believe that you are the culmination of the past. This is a strength of many religions, including state Marxism as practiced in the 20th century.
The American right grasps this concept, incidentally, and is working hard to redefine the American past, sometimes straining historical realities in the process.
China seems to be working through this redefinition now too. In its new narrative, China is not the formerly oppressed vanguard of the Third World—its story for a while—but the global leader for millennia, now emerging from a temporary (150-year) bad patch. (You don’t have to pick a real past to go back to. Some groups that see themselves as the future seek to go back to a past that never was: the glorious rule of the Caliphate, or a free America without government.)
Losing faith
A society can lose its belief in its own place in the future. That happened gradually to the Soviet Union, as its faith-based Marxism was gradually proven to be inferior to other systems, until Gorbachev came along and announced that not even the leadership believed any more.
There is a sense that this is happening in the United States now, that the American narrative is faltering. This is implicit in comments that many Americans make about the Chinese: “They just want it more” and the like. And it seems to underlie the seeming inability to contemplate — or fund — any large projects.
It is unclear whether this is a bigger loss of faith than other periodic doubts, but it is a departure from the normal narrative. From de Tocqueville on, Americans and others typically assumed that America was destined for greatness.
The “American exceptionalism” argument is partly about this: if you are the anointed leader, you must be the future. And in the past, the sense of exceptionalism was in no small sense based on reality: America was the future in so many areas: we had levels of democracy, electrification, car ownership, college education, etc. that other countries would not reach for years.
That reality is gone in almost every area, from health care to Internet speed to political dynamics. Perhaps it is time to find some new ways to be exceptional, to be the future?
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Image: The Wandering Angel (Flickr)
The Washington Post covered China’s rising scientific prowess today, revealing both impressive gains and some weak spots.
China is steadily accumulating bragging points:
- China has the world’s second-fastest supercomputer.
- China has gone from 14th place in 1995 in publications in scientific and technical journals to 2nd now, behind the US.
- A Chinese institute made the largest-ever purchase of high-tech genome-sequencing machines, and with them “could very well surpass the entire gene-sequencing output of the United States.”
- More Chinese researchers are being lured back to their homeland after training in the US (raising issues around the risks and rewards of hosting so many Chinese students).
Chinese weaknesses are apparent too:
- Government bureaucrats “mandate discoveries,” completely missing the nature of innovation (and likely promoting shoddy work).
- China engages in huge amounts of junk science–the articles cites dubious stem cell therapies–and junk patents.
- Plagiarism and doctored results are commonplace — which should give Western researchers, especially those in health and pharma, pause.
Perhaps most interesting are indications that Chinese researchers are less constrained by ethical concerns than Western scientists. One Chinese geneticist mentioned in the article is studying the genomes of his most adept peers in school, comparing them to “normal kids.” If something is too controversial for the West — cloning, human enhancement, or genetic interventions, for instance — it could well end up happening in China.
The Washington Post reports that Confucianism is enjoying a revival in China, propelled both by state promotion and popular enthusiasm.
The Party, Andrew Higgins suggests, sees the philosophy as a counter to Westernization, but it is not without danger to existing power structures, as it requires rulers to be virtuous and benevolent. Still, Confucianism could fill a philosophical vacuum that the last 40 years has left in China, and provide a map for changing relationships between the government and the people.
It could also be a means that China enhances it now-weak soft power, which currently is based on little more than pragmatic utility: development that can appeal to the masses, and legitimized authoritarianism which many elites might like to emulate.
A successful, Confucian China would have real ideas to offer to much of the developing world. Large portions of Africa, Asia, and Latin America would benefit from a Confucian social contract, in which elites have strong obligations to the populace. Even without Western democracy, that would be vastly different approach from the predatory practices of many states today.
Domestically, the relationship of China’s rulers and ruled will have to evolve as well. A Chinese executive in this article suggests why: “For the past 30 years, China has constantly stressed the economy, not culture, philosophy, and reflection,” he said. “But after you reach a certain economic level, you can start to think.”
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Image of Confucius courtesy Ivan Walsh (Flickr)
I attended the Economist’s World in 2010 conference this week. The economic outlook was cautiously positive.
Carmen Reinhart, Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for International Economics, University of Maryland:
- A rapid V-shaped recovery is unlikely, as the conditions are not in place.
- The revenue hit inflicted by the recession will accelerate the arrival of problems associated with paying for rising health care and Baby Boom retirement costs in the US.
- There is no natural successor to the dollar in view. The dollar has Treasuries behind it, but the euro has no unified debt market.
- A “Tobin Tax” on financial transactions would have to be orchestrated globally, or it would simply push business to markets that declined to implement it.
Leo Abruzzese, Economist Editorial Director, North America:
- By the 3rd quarter of 2011, world economic growth will not be back even to 2003 levels.
- The US economy will reach its 2007 size by the 3rd quarter of 2011. It will have taken 16-17 quarters, much worse than other recessions in recent decades.
- The US banking crisis is not over, and many more small- and medium-sized banks will still get in trouble.
- In China, stock and property bubbles are forming, and are likely to pop within 2 to 3 years.
- China should overtake Japan as the world’s second largest economy in the next few months.
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In an attack on the Obama administration’s policy of “strategic reassurance,” Robert Kagan and Dan Blumenthal make an interesting point
“Strategic reassurance” seems to chart a different course. Senior officials liken the policy to the British accommodation of a rising United States at the end of the 19th century, which entailed ceding the Western Hemisphere to American hegemony. Lingering behind this concept is an assumption of America’s inevitable decline. Yet nothing would do more to hasten decline than to follow this path. The British accommodation of America’s rise was based on close ideological kinship. British leaders recognized the United States as a strategic ally in a dangerous world — as proved true throughout the 20th century. No serious person would imagine a similar grand alliance and “special relationship” between an autocratic China and a democratic United States.
Leaving aside that the writers are straining to detect how Obama differs from his predecessors — some see unusual continuity — it is true that the US lacks a natural protege. Brazil and India come much closer than China, as multicultural, democratic countries strongly shaped by Western culture, but real “kinship” is absent.
In any case, having a protege offers no guarantees: the US actively worked to deprive Britain of its chief global-power asset, its empire, even as the “special relationship” formed.
Given the strong odds that China and other countries will singly or collectively surpass the United States, the lack of proteges reinforces the value of the embedding the rising powers in an international system that Americans find amenable. It also argues for vigorous pursuit of soft power, converting rising powers to think more like us. Both of these tools were battered by the Bush administration, but Obama is pursuing them.
It should also be noted that an “autocratic China” is not forever. In many respects China is already less oppressive than South Korea and Taiwan were 50 years ago, when they were bastions of “the free world.” China may follow a similar course, and Kagan and Blumenthal imply that that matters. (Pure realists might object. After all, the US and Britain spent the first 100 years of their relationship warring or talking about warring with each other.)
Decline can be gradual: Britain remains a great power, 120 years after losing its place as the world’s largest economy. By that math, America will still matter in 2150.
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Zachary Karabell, author of Superfusion: How China and America Became One Economy and Why the World’s Prosperity Depends on It, spoke at New America Foundation this afternoon.
In discussing the deep mutual dependence of the US and Chinese economies, he suggested that two pathways are likely:
- China and the US might be like future EU members at mid-century, in proto-partnership, though no one is acting with that intention.
- China might be playing the role of the US in its relationship to the UK in early-mid 20th century, with the US fighting irrelevant fights (Iraq, Afghanistan) while China grows in power; it was ultimately the US that supplanted Britain, not Germany.
Other ideas of interest:
- It is not clear if global resources –- steel and oil, for instance –- could even support a much more prosperous China. Chinese demand is likely to drive up oil, copper, etc. prices in a few years.
- The chances are “almost nil” that China will follow Japan’s path, falling into stagnation. Japan was never as open to global commerce than China is; India is not as open as China either.
- China may be pleased with the American obsession with Iran, because that is something that it hardly cares about at all — it is always great to have one’s adversaries expending their energies at something that doesn’t matter to you.
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China is about to become the world’s second-largest economy, supplanting Japan, the New York Times reports.
This “will bring an end to a global economic order that has prevailed for 40 years, with ramifications across arenas from trade and diplomacy to, potentially, military power,” the Times notes.
China is already the second-largest economy measured by purchasing power, of course. But as early as next year it could achieve this status at exchange rates as well, a crucial turning point, as it is a better measure of global economic clout.
China is projected to overtake the US in total purchasing power before 2020, the Times says. Then comes the big moment:
Based on current growth and currency trends, Mr. Kwan forecasts that the Chinese economy could surpass that of the United States in 2039. And that date could move up to 2026 if China lets its currency appreciate by a mere 2 percent a year.
Meanwhile, Japan is not faring as well:
China’s rise could accelerate Japan’s economic decline as it captures Japanese export markets, and as Japan’s crushing national debt increases and its aging population grows less and less productive — producing a downward spiral. “It’s beyond my imagination how far Japan will fall in the world economy in 10, 20 years,” said Hideo Kumano, economist at the Dai-Ichi Life Research Institute.
Japan is already fraying, by some standards:
Many here ask whether Japan is destined to be the next Switzerland: rich and comfortable, but of little global import, largely ignored by the rest of the world… The per-capita gross domestic product of Japan … stalled at $34,300 in 2007; it is now a quarter below American levels and 19th in the world. Both income inequality and poverty are on the rise.
No Japanese companies are now in the top 10 firms by market capitalization, and Japan’s largest, Toyota, is 22nd. Only 5 other Japanese companies are in the top 100.
Japan’s self-regard has taken a hit; a new poll finds Japanese to be the least proud of their country among 33 nations surveyed.
(Japanese self-image: tip from @Urbanverse)
(Image of Shanghai courtesy alexkost, Flickr)
People are not that certain of China’s rise. Majorities or pluralities in only half of the countries surveyed “believe that China will — or already has — replaced the U.S. as the world’s leading superpower.” Sensibly, only minorities believe that the handover has already occurred — 4 to 17% think so, with no clear pattern emerging in countries with larger percentages within this range. Only 8% of Chinese believe that they are already on top.
People in developed countries –and thus likely higher education levels — are more likely to expect Chinese dominance.
Two exceptions set the stage for future clashes of expectations: only 26% of Americans foresee being replaced by China, with 57% doubting that this will ever happen, while 59% of Chinese expect to replace the US, and only 20% are skeptical that this will occur.
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