On the Financial Times, Martin Wolf tries to find an answer to the question everyone is asking:
…We have to recognise what the rise of China does obviously mean.
First, we are seeing the end not only of the brief period of the US vision of itself as the “sole superpower”, but, more broadly, of centuries of western domination. The rise of India, though closer the west, as the world’s largest democracy, reinforces this transition. Over the next few decades a west in relative decline will be forced to co-operate with the rest of the world. This is a good thing. But it will create huge challenges.
Second, China is not only non-Western, but has a distinct history, culture and political system. The latter may be the most important point. It is hard to sustain trusting relations with a country whose government mistrusts its own people. It is no less difficult to enter into binding agreements with a government that cannot accept the fundamental principle of the rule of law – that the law binds the state to the people as much as the people to the state.
Third, we have to recognise that transitions of power always create huge frictions, with the incumbents trying to protect what they see as the “natural” order of things and the insurgents resentful of always delayed recognition of their rising power and status.
Yet we also need to understand the potential advantages of the transformation now under way. The population of the world could, with luck and judgement, share in prosperity and contribute its ideas and energy to securing a better future for everybody.
So how might this end? I envisage three possible outcomes.
