National Interest: Can China Rise Peacefully?
If the China continues growing rapidly, the US will once again face a potential peer competitor, and great-power politics will return in full force.
With the end of the Cold War in 1989 and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union two years later, the United States emerged as the most powerful state on the planet. Many commentators said we are living in a unipolar world for the first time in history, which is another way of saying America is the only great power in the international system. If that statement is true, it makes little sense to talk about great-power politics, since there is just one great power.
But even if one believes, as I do, that China and Russia are great powers, they are still far weaker than the United States and in no position to challenge it in any meaningful way. Therefore, interactions among the great powers are not going to be nearly as prominent a feature of international politics as they were before 1989, when there were always two or more formidable great powers competing with each other.
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WNU Editor: When it comes great-power competitions, it always comes down to economics and who are your allies. I have doubts that China's economy .... driven by exports and foreign investments .... will continue to grow at the pace it has for the past 25 years. China's $400 billion plus trade surplus with the U.S. is now threatened, and many other countries are putting up protective barriers against Chinese exports. There is also the problem of having allies. China is currently in dispute with almost all of its neighbors over borders, a dispute that is made worse by Beijing's willingness to use its military to enforce it's point of view .... as in the case of the South China Sea. This is causing resentment that will not go away anytime soon .... and it will certainly not build alliances. So bottom line .... China is not rising peacefully now, nor will it in the future. But its Achilles Heel is its economy, and the lack of having committed allies that do not need to be bought off and/or coerced. This I predict will limit China to be a regional player, even though its ambitions are to be a great power.
Update: This is good analysis (especially on the cultural factors) .... China Is Not Ready to Become a 'Great Power' (Liang Xiaojun, National Interest)
