The arrival of China as a major power marks the end of Western universalism. Western norms, values and institutions will increasingly find themselves competing with those of China. The decline of Western universalism, however, is not solely a product of China ’s rise, because the latter is part of a much wider phenomenon, an increasingly multipolar economic world and the proliferation of diverse modernities. Nor will the decline of the Western world be replaced in any simplistic fashion by a Sinocentric world. The rise of competing modernities heralds a quite new world in which no hemisphere or country will have the same kind of prestige, legitimacy or overwhelming force that the West has enjoyed over the last two centuries. Instead, different countries and cultures will compete for legitimacy and influence. The Western world is over; the new world, at least for the next century, will not be Chinese in the way that the previous one was Western. We are entering an era of competing modernity, albeit one in which China will increasingly be in the ascendant and eventually dominant.
But all this lies some way off. For the time being, the world is preoccupied by the onset of the biggest recession since the Great Depression. At the time of writing, the consequences of this remain unknown. Depressions are a bit like wars: they test societies in a way that normal periods of prosperity and growth do not. They reveal weaknesses and vulnerabilities that otherwise remain concealed. They give rise to new political ideologies and movements, as the world learnt to its great cost in the interwar years. On the face of it, China is much better equipped to deal with this crisis than the West. Its financial sector is in a much superior condition to that of the West, having avoided the hubristic risk-taking that hobbled the Western banks; nor is China confronted with the kind of de-leveraging which threatens deflation and a major shrinkage of demand in the West and Japan. While the developed world faces the prospect of shrinking economies for perhaps two or more years, China is still looking forward to considerate growth, albeit of uncertain magnitude. The unknown for China is the effect that a growth rate which falls below 8 per cent, perhaps to 6 per cent or much lower even, would have in terms of unemployment and social unrest. This will prove to be by far the biggest test Chinese society has faced since 1989. The world is entering a new political era. Despite regular Western warnings that the Chinese model was unsustainable and needed to be Westernized, the financial crisis in 2008 marked the demise of neo-liberalism and the failure of the Western free-market model as practised since the late seventies: the Chinese rather than the Western approach has been affirmed. [1337] At the same time, the departure of George Bush and his replacement by Barack Obama has kindled enormous global interest, not least in the developing world, which should serve to increase the standing of the United States in the eyes of many. But it is the effect of the global recession that is likely to have the most serious impact. If China continues to grow at 6–8 per cent and can avoid debilitating social unrest, while the Western economy enters a period of negative or near zero economic growth, then the global recession is likely to significantly accelerate the trends discussed in this book and result in an even more rapid shift of power to China.
It has become evident that China is prepared to take a more proactive and interventionist role in international financial affairs. Given that the global financial crisis is presently at the top of every agenda and that reform of the existing global financial order is now irresistible, this has far-reaching implications: China will be a central player in whatever new architecture emerges from the present crisis. This represents an extraordinary change even compared with two years ago, let alone five years ago, when China was not even included in discussions on such matters. But it also has a much wider significance. The rise of China and the decline of the United States will, at least during this period, be enacted overwhelmingly on the financial and economic stage. And China is demonstrating that it intends to be a full-hearted participant in this process. It is not difficult to predict some of the likely consequences: the G20 will effectively replace the G8 and the IMF and the World Bank will be subject to reform, with the developing countries acquiring a greater say.
The most audacious proposal that has so far emanated from Beijing is the suggestion for a new de facto global currency based on using IMF’s special drawing rights, which might in time replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Whether such a proposal would ever see the light of day, or indeed work, given that reserve currencies hitherto have always depended on a powerful sovereign state, it offers an insight into the strategic financial thinking that informs the Chinese government’s approach. It suggests that the Chinese recognize that the days of the dollar as the dominant global currency are now numbered. At the same time, the Chinese government is actively seeking ways to progressively internationalize the role of the renminbi. It recently concluded a number of currency swaps with major trading partners including South Korea, Argentina and Indonesia, thereby widening the use of the renminbi outside its own borders. It is also in the process of taking steps to increase the renminbi’s role in Hong Kong, which is significant because of the latter’s international position, and has announced its intention of making Shanghai a global financial centre by 2020. There are, thus, already strong indications that China ’s rise will be hastened by the global crisis.
Appendix — The Overseas Chinese
For a number of reasons it is difficult to estimate the number of overseas Chinese. In some instances, migration remains highly active, for example to Africa and Australia. There are also problems of definition as to precisely who the category should include, those of mixed race being an obvious example. The statistics also vary greatly in their reliability and accuracy for various reasons, including illegal immigration, the quality of censuses and definitional issues. Notwithstanding these difficulties, the table below gives a rough idea of the total size of the Chinese diaspora and the main countries where it resides.
Chinese migration has a long history, dating back to the Ming dynasty in the case of South-East Asia. The global Chinese diaspora began in the nineteenth century, when there was a surplus of labour in the southern coastal provinces of China and Chinese workers were recruited for the European colonies, often as indentured labour. The biggest migratory movements were to South-East Asia, but the Chinese also went in large numbers during the second half of the nineteenth century to the United States, notably in search of gold and to build the railroads, and also to Australia and many other parts of the world including Europe and South Africa. Over the period 1844-88 alone over 2 million Chinese found their way to such diverse locations as the Malay Peninsula, Indochina, Sumatra, Java, the Philippines, Hawaii, the Caribbean, Mexico, Peru, California and Australia. In the second half of the twentieth century there has been a big expansion in Chinese migration to North America, Australia and, very much more recently, Africa, as well as elsewhere.
There is a voluminous literature on the subject, including: Lynn Pan, ed., The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999); Lynn Pan, Sons of the Yellow Emperor: The Story of the Overseas Chinese (London: Arrow, 1998); Robin Cohen, Global Diasporas: An Introduction (London: UCL Press, 1997); Susan Gall and Ireane Natividad, eds, The Asian American Almanac: A Reference Work on Asians in the United States (Detroit: Gale Research, 1995); Wang Gungwu, China and the Chinese Overseas (Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1991); Wang Lingchi and Wang Gungwu, eds, The Chinese Diaspora: Selected Essays, 2 vols (Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1998); Wang Gungwu, The Chinese Overseas: From Earthbound China to the Quest for Autonomy (London and Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000).
Guide to Further Reading
It is difficult, a little invidious even, to select a relative handful of books from the vast range of sources — including books, academic and newspaper articles, lectures, talks, seminars, personal conversations, conference proceedings and countless interviews — that I have used in writing this book. Nonetheless, having spent years burrowing away, I feel it is my respo
nsibility to offer a rather more selective list of books for the reader who might want to explore aspects of the subject matter a little further. I cannot provide any titles that offer the same kind of sweep as this book but no doubt in due course, as China ’s rise continues, there will be several and eventually a multitude.
I have mainly used three general histories of China, though others have been published more recently. The best is John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman, China: A New History (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006), but I also found Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China, 2nd edn (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), and Jacques Gernet, A History of Chinese Civilization, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), very useful. Julia Lovell, The Great Wall: China against the World 1000 BC-AD 2000 (London: Atlantic Books, 2006), is a highly readable account of the Wall as a metaphor for the long process of China’s expansion, while Peter C. Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005), is a formidable account of the huge expansion of Chinese territory that took place under the Qing dynasty. Edward L. Dreyer, Zheng He: China and the Oceans in the Early Ming Dynasty, 1405-1433 (New York: Pearson Longman, 2007), examines one of the most remarkable achievements in Chinese history. Although Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years (London: Vintage, 1998), only has a little about China, in a few short pages he demonstrates just how untypical Chinese civilization is in the broader global story.
There are many books that deal with Europe’s rise and the failure of China to industrialize from the end of the eighteenth century. Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2000), and R. Bin Wong, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2000), have been amongst the most prominent recently in arguing that Europe’s rise was largely a consequence of contingent factors; Pomeranz’s book has become a key book in this context. Mark Elvin, The Pattern of the Chinese Past (London: Eyre Methuen, 1973), still remains essential reading for those seeking an explanation of why China lost out on industralization. I also found C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World 1780-1914: Global Connections and Comparisons (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), by taking a global frame of reference, useful in arriving at a broader picture.
Göran Therborn, European Modernity and Beyond: The Trajectory of European Societies, 1945-2000 (London: Sage, 1995), offers a powerful argument on the exceptionalism of European modernity. Deepak Lal, Unintended Consequences (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998), raises interesting questions concerning long-running cultural differences between diverse peoples and civilizations and what lies behind them. There is one outstanding book on the nature of Japanese culture, and that is Ruth Benedict’s The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture (London: Secker and Warburg, 1947), which, though written over sixty years ago, remains a classic on how to analyse cultural difference. Kosaku Yoshino, Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary Japan (London: Routledge, 1992), offers interesting insights into Japanese identity, while Michio Morishima, Why Has Japan ‘Succeeded’: Western Technology and the Japanese Ethos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), is an excellent general history.
On the nature and extent of East Asia’s Westernization discussed in Chapter 5, I would mention K. C. Chang, Food in Chinese Culture: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), and especially Nicholas Ostler, Empires of the Word (London: HarperCollins, 2005), which tells the story of world history through languages and makes some illuminating points about Mandarin in this context. Lucian W. Pye, Asian Power and Politics: The Cultural Dimensions of Authority (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985), provides a perceptive account of the distinctive characteristics of East Asian politics, though it is much stronger on North-East than South-East Asia.
Moving into Part II, many books have been published on China ’s rise but the great majority tend to deal with its economic aspects, with surprisingly few taking a more general approach. One of the most useful of these is James Kynge, China Shakes the World: The Rise of A Hungry Nation (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2006), which is highly readable and has a distinctive take. I would also mention David M. Lampton, The Three Faces of Chinese Power: Might, Money, and Minds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008). Paul A. Cohen, Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), raises interesting questions about the nature of American writing and interpretation of contemporary China. Although arguably a little dated, Lucian W. Pye, The Spirit of Chinese Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), displays a remarkable ability to grasp some of the underlying characteristics of Chinese politics, in a very accessible manner which has few if any peers. On the civilization-state and related matters, I would highly recommend William A. Callahan, Contingent States: Greater China and Transnational Relations (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004). Callahan is one of the few Western writers who does not view China through a mainly Western prism, but seeks to understand it on its own terms.
The speed of Chinese economic growth means that books inevitably tend to become a little dated rather quickly. Barry Naughton, The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth (Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press, 2007), is a comprehensive review of Chinese economic development after 1949 and subsequently during the reform period, while Peter Nolan, Transforming China: Globalisation, Transition and Development (London: Anthem Press, 2005), offers an interesting assessment of the global prospects for Chinese companies. Elizabeth C. Economy, The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China’s Future (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004), discusses China’s environmental challenge, which can explored in more topical fashion on www.chinadia- logue.net, a website devoted to China’s environment.
Zheng Yongnian, Will China Become Democratic?: Elite, Class and Regime Transition (Singapore: EAI, 2004), is a very useful assessment of political trends in contemporary China, while Suisheng Zhao, A Nation-State by Construction: Dynamics of Modern Chinese Nationalism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), provides an excellent analysis of the development of the Chinese nation-state. Christopher R. Hughes, Chinese Nationalism in the Global Era (London: Routledge, 2006), is one of a number of recent books exploring Chinese nationalism.
As explained in Chapter 8, all too little has been written about race and ethnicity in China, though there is more on the Chinese sense of cultural superiority. In the parched territory of the former, Frank Dikötter, The Discourse of Race in Modern China (London: Hurst and Company, 1992), remains, alas, something of an oasis. I would like to be able to mention books by Chinese writers but there is really only one, the important essay by Chen Kuan-Hsing in his forthcoming book Towards De-Imperialization (Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press). For the time being, a version of this, revised in 2009, can be found at www.interasia. org/khchen/online/Epilogue.pdf. Wang Gungwu, The Chineseness of China: Selected Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), is, as the title suggests, a perceptive and informative study of China ’s distinctiveness.
As for China ’s relationship with East Asia, there remains no better book on the tributary-state system than John King Fairbank, ed., The Chinese World Order: Traditional China’s Foreign Relations (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968). The best survey of China’s present relations with its neighbours is David Shambaugh, ed., Power Shift: China and Asia’s New Dynamics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).
On China ’s relationship with the wider world, John W. Garver’s two books — China and Iran: Ancient Partners in a Post-Imperial World (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006) and Protracted Contest: Sino-Indian Rivalry in the Twentieth Century (Seattle: University of Washington P
ress: 2001), are models of their kind. There are many books on the Sino-American relationship, with David M. Lampton, Same Bed, Different Dreams: Managing US- China Relations, 1989-2000 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), being the most comprehensive.
On a contemporary note, Mark Leonard, What Does China Think? (London: Fourth Estate, 2008), provides an interesting guide to present thinking across a range of subjects amongst Chinese intellectuals and policy-makers.
Finally, for those of a statistical persuasion, there are two books by that doyen of historical statistics, Angus Maddison, namely Chinese Economic Performance in the Long Run, Second Edition, Revised and Updated: 960- 2030 AD (Paris: OECD, 2007) and The World Economy (Paris: OECD, 2007). The latter combines two volumes originally published separately: 1: A Millennial Perspective and 2: Historical Statistics.
Select Bibliography
Acharya, Amitav, ‘Containment, Engagement, or Counter-dominance? Malaysia’s Response to the Rise of China’, in Alastair Iain Johnston and Robert S. Ross, eds, Engaging China: The Management of an Emerging Power (London: Routledge, 1999)
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