China Is Looming

American president Barack Obama and his counterpart, Xi Jinping, met last week in California in a first attempt to restructure relations between the U.S., hegemonic superpower since halfway through the last century, and China, which is globalizing rapidly to become a great 21st century power.

Taking place at a time when the U.S. presidency had hit an all-time low with the government surveillance scandal, the subtext to the talks was that China could one day draw level with the U.S., both economically and politically. The Chinese gross domestic product is set to equal America’s in 2016 and surpass it by double in 2030. A further concern is that the transition period between those dates could be a traumatic one for the current leading power if it descends into a new version of the “who lost China” debate of the 1950s, which followed the defeat of Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist forces by Mao Zedong’s communists in 1949. The new debate would be asking, “Who lost us our superpower status?” — think Kishore Mahbubani’s “The Great Convergence.”

Joseph S. Nye makes a distinction between transformational and transactional presidents. The American political scientist points out that it is exceptional circumstances that tend to impel presidents from one category to the other. This was the case for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who began as a transactional leader, but the Depression and World War II transformed his mandate.

Barack Obama is going the other way: Though he started out from a determinedly transformational stance, day-to-day politics — exemplified by the universal surveillance fiasco — have reduced him to just another transactional president. His goals are still considerable: putting an end to what Bush II crudely called the anti-terrorist crusade, withdrawing U.S. troops from conflicts in Central Asia and, at his most optimistic, marking some measure of progress in the Middle East conflict. Achieving these objectives would ease the process of realignment with China and transform his presidency.

But is such a “reset” plausible when it would mean not a new bipolarity but rather an unprecedented cooperation, which proved impossible between Rome and Carthage — and very difficult between the USSR and the U.S. itself?

Bill Emmott, former editor of The Economist, is optimistic when he writes that China, known to the Chinese as the Middle Kingdom, has never been imperialistic, and if it has come to dominate the greater part of the continental Far East, it has done so through defense of its borders. Take the Great Wall as a constituent idea.

In a reverse interpretation, the arguments are equally powerful. Washington is reproaching Beijing for alleged surveillance, infiltration and theft of information from U.S. government computer networks and for the displacement of its military pivot in the Asia-Pacific. China’s growing assertiveness in its efforts to annex the South China Sea Islands,* also claimed by Japan, the Philippines and Taiwan — all great U.S. allies — is arousing similar concern in Washington, as is Beijing’s sudden interest in Latin America, till recently the Americans’ backyard. Lastly, in those same waters so recently plied by Beijing, Chinese ships are coming within 200 nautical miles — 370 kilometers — of Guam and Hawaii, both important U.S. military support points. China is looming ever nearer, as remarked on in Marco Bellocchio’s 1967 movie “China Is Near.”

Not all is in Beijing’s favor, however. The exploitation of shale gas could make the U.S. energy self-sufficient in the future, while China will have to go on importing crude oil from the Middle East. This and China’s growing elderly population — the result of the One Child Policy — are both factors that discourage imperial pretensions. Nonetheless, one day in this 21st century, swords could be held high. We just have to hope that they are never brought down.

*Translator’s Note: The Spratly and Paracel Islands.