Actually, China currently DOES lack significant ability to project force anywhere in the world (other than onto its contiguous neighbors), which is why they want to build themselves some shiny new aircraft carriers. But what they really lack is the mandate. The world is unlikely to approve of Chinese divisions marching into an adjacent country, whereas US (say) intervention in a crisis is at least usually grudgingly approved by the world community, if for no other reason than we pay to clean up the mess. (China might use this approach, in fact, to intervene in some crisis in Africa and at least gain some street cred.)
And as far as the moon probe thing goes, that isn’t really all that significant. The technology to do so has existed for decades and even countries like, say, Italy have the ability to launch a rocket or three.
I agree and hope you are right, like I said earlier after 2 more economic doublings China’s GDP will be close to 30k per capita. If they can maintain a 7% growth rate for that long and who knows if they can, that is only 20 years away. The world will be a better place with Chinese scientists working on medical tech, robotics, nanotech, etc. Right now China has less than half the per capita GDP of Mexico but their R&D investment as a % of GDP is 5x higher than Mexico (0.4% vs about 2%).
But Chinese patents are not very high quality from what I’ve read. As China continues to price itself out of the global marketplace for manufacturing (why hire Chinese workers at $2/hr when a Bangladesh or Vietnamese worker will do it for $0.25/hr) they will have to turn to innovation and services to keep their economy functioning.
And I’ve heard those Chinese engineering stats aren’t really true. They add in HVAC techs and auto mechanics in their engineering graduate rates. I have also heard Chinese engineering schools do not prepare people for real world engineering careers and lack lab work. However even if that is still true, that can change with time.
China is currently the world leader for investment in alternative energy, largely because there is a big domestic demand for it. I’m sure China demand and innovation is a major reason solar panels have dropped from $5/watt a few years ago to $0.75 a watt now. And as their population grows old and they run into a crisis of labor shortage in a few decades (hundreds of millions of elderly and nobody to take care of them) China will become the world leader in robotics, labor saving devices, low cost health care and other techs that allow them to take care of 400 million elderly people on the cheap with very little human labor while freeing up their labor pool to do something else.
My point is I agree that China will continue to become a world leader in R&D. But right now they are not producing a lot of high quality R&D despite the large number of patents, large number of engineers and large % of GDP devoted to R&D. Over time I’m sure that will change, because it has to if China wants to solve it’s own domestic problems and have an economy based on exporting domestic technology.
Very likely, but the catch is peak oil.
“We are the US. We will add your biological and scientific distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile”
In the Second World War, the leading general against the Germans was German
A American Japanese man enlisted after the war, and became a general
An Arab American general led the Iraq opperation.
Now a Vietnamese American has become a general.
Can you say the same for China?
For almost the last 300 years Anglophone countries have dominated the globe, spreading, for better or worse, their culture and values worldwide. China is now certain to become the new big kid on the block and it could be a very different world that we’re facing. I don’t think however that Chinese influence will have the pervasive effect that British and American influence did. It doesn’t have an Empire to assist it nor will it have the overwhelming dominance, economic or military, that the US enjoyed.
So no, China won’t be the new US.
Might have to do with the Triffin dilemma:
Eventually the educated professional/technical class required to run an industrial economy starts demanding a say in how the country is run.
The biggest challenge faced by China will be internal, not external. It has always been plagued by corruption at the highest levels. They struggle to keep those with political power clean and manage the economy. If a powerful but incompetent cliques gets into power and the economy goes south, the internal tensions could become extreme. Peasants living on the land can be controlled. But millions of unemployed workers concentrated in big cities would be a serious challenge to any government.
Growth does not go on forever, when it runs out of steam, they will have to restructure the economy which will put strains on the political system that the current generation of politicians have no experience of handling. If is not as if they can tell the 150 million who have migrated to the cities to go back to their collective farms in the countryside and grow rice.
That affects every country, therefore does not affect China’s prospects for relative dominance in the world – does it?
China doesn’t seem to have the same ideological/religious drive to control the world, or to spend more on the military than the next dozen or so nations combined. So no, they aren’t the next America.
I just thought of an interesting question that may be relevant: how does language influence a county’s spread of power?
The British Empire ruled India partly by making the use of English a useful and convenient way (even if forced and unwillingly) to communicate, in a land of 100 languages… There are parts of Africa that speak French for the same reason. But Chinese is virtually impossible for adults to learn as a foreign language, and it will never become the “lingua franca”.
Japan has become a major commercial power , but to do so, they had to learn to speak the languages of the countries where they do business. And Japan has not become a major cultural influence on the world, partly because of the language barrier, I think.
The British were in India for 400 years and spent much of the time keeping every other nation out.
The language of trade and the military are quite simple. People learn enough of the language of whoever has power if they are around for long enough to make it seem like a smart career option.
There have been other linga francas in the past. Latin and Greek come to mind and they emerged within political and military empires that covered vast terrirories.
These days you do not need such empires to trade globally and money is quite capable of making itself understood.
Yes, but the thread topic goes beyond that. See the first message in the thread for details.
Oh, are you back in China? I’ve been away from the SDMB for a while.
But, yeah, this ^^.
There appears to be a lot of chaos, but that’s only superficial. The regimentalism is really quite deep. The corruption here has a way of making things get done, rather than the opposite in countries such as India (one of the other countries that I have to spend a lot of time in).
It’s a police state, but you don’t see it. The reports of the American police militarizing worry me more than living in China. My internet may be monitored, but I’m a foreigner. My use of the VPN hasn’t caused anyone to come knocking on my doors. I’m friends with bona fide Party Members, but that’s largely meaningless for most Party Members (until they, you know, decide to progress in the ranks).
Life here, overall, isn’t bad. At least, not bad due to government. Sometimes it makes me question my Liberation values and regress to my childish “if I were emperor sentiments.” If you want things to happen, they simply happen.
Yeah, labor camps, forced organ donation, etc., etc., but that’s such a small percentage of people statisticians would attribute that to measurement error.
The number of terrorist incidence in the USA are in the realm of measurement error, too, and look how it’s fucked up American society.
I’m not defending China, and although I hate my government, I still love the USA. But, China’s not the way so many people tend to think it is.
In a military conflict without nukes, China loses. So we have that.
I just finished reading a 6 page article in the Economist about China.
The main point made was that China feels that it is the rightful hegemony in SEA.
Obviously China is becoming the worlds economic leader and because of this they feel they deserve more respect. The problem being is they’re not sure how to get it.
On regional hegemony.
China is a large economy but they’re not a military power. It will be decades before China will have any way to gain full control over the South China Sea, and the way they’re going about creating a hegemony in SEA will likely be counter-productive in the long run. They are trying to create there own version of the Monroe doctrine, the problem being that SEA, unlike South America during Monroe, is filled with economic and military powers already (Japan, South Korea, etc.) and they aren’t going to Kowtow to China. By trying to intimidate local powers they’re going to push them further into Washingtons hands.
Also China is an absolute mess domestically. As people gain more access to information and foreign ideas they’re going to want more political power. Obviously China doesn’t want this, this is the main reason they’re driving up nationalism and expansionism in the South China Sea. The more China rallies up nationalist sentiment(And anti-Japanese propaganda) the more Japan is going to militarize. Within the end of this century I would be willing to bet that there will be a war between China and Japan.
China also cannot avoid the Tibet question, and how they react to it could really shape the future of Asia. If the U.S. is serious about it’s pivot to Asia then it will have to protect it’s allies which means a proxy war between China and the U.S. is possible.
All these domestic problems stand in the way between China and any possible Global presence they’d want. For China, like almost all nations, foreign policy is meant to distract people from domestic problems. This is China’s goal with the 9-dotted line and their anti-Japanese propaganda. China has far to many domestic problems to worry about global ambitions, and any foreign policy they will decide will not be for world hegemony, but distracting their people.
The people don’t care. They’re not ignorant of outside ideas. The great firewall doesn’t block most things that contain information about ideas and freedom. It blocks economic competitors and things that are directly critical to China.
As long as they’re fed, have fancy cell phones, and the government reacts when they complain loudly, they’re all fat and happy. Thy’re not ignorant about democracy; they simply don’t care, because their system works for them. And the government is learning to become more responsible to the people. Yeah, corruption, smog, etc., etc., but it’s not enough to spur a revolution.
The people have about the same amount of power as Americans do.
Living in china right now.
ISTM that many people on the Dope take one of two extremist positions:
- China’s a flash in the pan; they’ve cheated their way to prosperity by e.g. copying american products, but they’re not doing anything right, and the whole thing will fall apart any day now.
- China has america in its back pocket. They are the sellers, we’re the buyers, which essentially makes us their bitch. Wake up america!
The reality is more mundane: they aren’t going to take over and they aren’t going to fall apart either.
China has actually just followed a similar path to many south east asian countries; initially building an economy through sweatshop like cheap labour, then economies of scale, finally moving towards more high-end products, services and domestic demand. The difference with china is simply that as a vast, heavily-populated country, per capita GDP didn’t need to go up much before it was a superpower.
It’s definitely something to cheer; more people pulled out of poverty in 20 years than the world has ever seen.
And I am optimistic for the future. Unlike some of the culture of, say, Japan, Chinese people strike me as quite humble and quite willing to learn from other countries (apart from in politics!).
My mother believes the big cities, such as Beijing where I now live, is still chock-full of nothing but bicycles during rush hour as though the city is stuck in the 1950s. I gave up on explaining to her and some other people that there’s progress, even in the People’s Republic.
Also shocking to some of them is that I have had friends in this country who just happen to be Chinese cops.
As you say, China is not the way so many people in the West think it is.
I’d like to ask, how many non-Chinese immigrants do you see who are actively working on becoming citizens of the PRC?
I think the fact that the US has millions of immigrants coming here everyday and wanting US citizenship says alot.
Well more and more American high schools are offering Chinese language as a choice and its replacing French and German. But your right few people in the world speak Chinese and even fewer can read it.