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What Would Chinese Hegemony Look Like?
East Asia is becoming, in the language of international relations theory, “bipolar.” That metaphor, from magnetism, suggests two large states with overlapping spheres of influence competing for regional leadership. The Cold War was a famous global example of bipolarity. Most states in the world tilted toward the United States or the Soviet Union in a worldwide, zero-sum competition. Although analysts have hesitated for many years in applying such strong language to East Asia, this is now increasingly accepted. A lengthy twilight struggle between China and Japan, with U.S. backing, seems in the offing.
Until recently, Asia was arguably “multipolar”—there was no one state large enough to dominate and many roughly equal states competed for influence. China’s dramatic rise has unbalanced that rough equity. China is now the world’s second largest GDP. Although its growth is slowing, it is still expanding at triple the rate of the U.S. economy and six times the rate of Japan’s. By 2020 China is predicted to be the world’s largest economy. Its population, 1.35 billion, is enormous. One in seven persons on the planet is Chinese. Were China’s GDP per capita to ever reach Japanese or American levels, its total GDP would match that of entire planet today. These heady numbers almost certainly inspire images of national glory or a return to the “middle kingdom,” in Beijing. They help account for China’s increasingly tough claims in the East and South China Seas.
Until recently, China pursued a “peaceful rise” strategy, one of accommodation and mutual adjustment. This approach sought to forestall an anti-Chinese encircling coalition. China’s rapid growth unnerves many states on its perimeter, from India, east to Vietnam, Indonesia and Australia, north to Taiwan, Japan, and Russia. Were these states to align, they might contain China in the same way the Japan, China, and NATO all worked to contain the U.S.SR. The peaceful rise seemed to work, especially in southeast Asia, where Chinese generosity has successfully blocked a united ASEAN position on South China Sea issues.
Since 2009 however, China has increasingly resorted to bullying and threats. The 2008 Olympics appears to have been read in Beijing as a sign of China’s newfound might and sway. In the South China Sea it has pushed a very expansive definition of its maritime zone of control, and it recently faced down the Philippines in a dispute over the Scarborough Shoal in that sea. Indeed, one possible explanation for China’s expansion of its air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea is that a hard line seems to be working in the South China Sea. But China’s northeast Asian neighbors are far stronger and more capable than its southeast Asian ones. Most observers expect Japan, South Korea and the U.S. to push back, as indeed they have. The U.S. flew bombers through the new ADIZ without warning, and both Japanese and South Korean civilian airlines have been instructed by their respective governments not to comply.
All this then sets up a bipolar contest between China and Japan, in the context of China’s rapid rise toward regional dominance.
Chinese Hegemony?
A common theme in the literature on China’s rise is its apparent inevitability. Westerners particularly tend to get carried away with book-titles such as Eclipse (of the U.S. by China), When China Rules the World, or China’s New Empire. History is indeed filled with the rise to dominance of powerful states. China and Japan both sought in the past to dominate Asia. Various European states including the U.S.SR, Germany, and France did the same. But frequently these would-be hegemons collided with a counter-hegemonic coalition of states unwilling to be manipulated or conquered. Occasionally the hegemonic aspirant may win; Europe under Rome was “unipolar,” as was feudal Asia now-and-again under the strongest Chinese dynasties. But there is nothing inevitable about this. Hegemonic contenders as various as Napoleon or Imperial Japan have been defeated.
To be fair, it is not clear yet if indeed China seeks regional hegemony. But there is a growing consensus among American and Japanese analysts that this is indeed the case. By Chinese hegemony in Asia we broadly mean something akin to the United States’ position in Latin America. We do not mean actual conquest. Almost no one believes China intends to annex even its weakest neighbors like Cambodia or North Korea. Rather, analysts expect a zone of super-ordinate influence over neighbors.
For example, in 1823, U.S. president James Monroe proclaimed the Monroe Doctrine, which warned all non-American powers to stay out of the Western Hemisphere on pain of U.S. retaliation. This has worked reasonably well for almost 200 years. The U.S. has variously used force, aid, covert CIA assistance, trade, and so on to eject foreign powers from what Washington (condescendingly) came to call “America’s backyard.” Today, of course, such language seems disturbingly neocolonial, but many assume that the fundamental illiberalism of such spheres of influence do not worry non-democracies like China. A Sinic Monroe Doctrine would likely include some mix of the following:
– the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Japan and Korea,
– U.S. naval retrenchment from east Asia, perhaps as far back as Hawaii,
– a division of the Pacific into east/U.S. and west/China zones with a Chinese blue-water navy operating beyond the so-called second island chain running from Japan southeast to New Guinea,
– an RMB currency bloc in southeast Asia and possibly Korea,
– a regional trading zone,
– foreign policies from China’s neighbors broadly in sync with its own.
This is not going to happen soon of course. This is a project for the next several decades, just as U.S. power over Latin America came slowly through the nineteenth century. But such goals would broadly fit with what we have seen in the behavior of previous hegemons, including Imperial Japan and China, Rome, the British Empire, the U.S. in Latin America, and various German plans for Eastern Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. The era of U.S. preponderance in Asia is coming to an end.
13 Comments on "What Would Chinese Hegemony Look Like?"
Arthur on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 1:48 pm
Where others like to study chess openings, I love these geopolitical articles.
How is the 21st century going to look like? Rather than make claims ‘from intuition’, what arguments can be made? First some facts:
1- China is growing rapidly, has by far the most people, which is an advantage, militarily, but a disadvantage, from a resource point of view.
2- Average Chinese IQ is 100, about the same as Europeans (both in EU and US). Average IQ is strongly correlated with the level of economy/technology a population can carry.
3- As far as we know, China does not have a globalist agenda, unlike the US (and USSR of former fame), China certainly has a level of nationalism. For China, Chinese are Chinese and Japanese, well Japanese. There is no mentality of ‘why can’t we all get along’, that prevails in the ‘anti-racist’ (read globalist) US. Although China would love to see Japan as a satellite, there are no plans to merge the two. There are no signs that China is willing to give up on it’s ethnic/racial identity. This is extremely good news for Europe b.t.w., because as a consequence, European identity can be preserved, because China (and Russia) are more than powerful enough to block the US (read: Zionist) lead NWO from happening. America is going to fail to deliver the world to their ruling Zionist class, and because of this failure, this ruling class is doomed, just like was the case in the USSR, when in 1945, the USSR failed to reach the Atlantic coast and as such failed to make entire Eurasia communist, which would have implied world communism.
– The current top dog, the US, a position it acquired as a result of the outcome of WW2, is becoming more and more divided in itself. The still European majority is observing with dismay that the US is slowly turning into a third world country, as a result of the immigration policies, as pursued by the Zionist Overlords, ever since 1965. The Zionist grand strategy was (and by and large still is) that the US should become a blueprint of the NWO, a world without borders, with all races mixed and nations abolished. A second attempt of implementing the century old communist dream of One World, now not via Bolshevism, but a mixture of capitalism, central banking and the Frankfurter Schule for the definition of the ideological foundations of society (multiculturalism, feminism, anti-family, emancipation, gay rights, anti-racism). The victory in the West of the Frankfurter Schule was complete, but so was communism 1.0 in Russia/Eastern Europe in 1986. Five years later it was evaporated.
So how is this going to be played out?
China clearly has the ambition to break the back of US aspirations for world hegemony. 180 million aging Euro-Americans, dominated by ca. 10 millions Jews, with a burden of tens of millions of ‘third worlders’, are not going to subjugate 750 million Europeans in northern Eurasia, 1.3 billions Chinese, 1.1 Indians and 1 billions muslims into that silly idea of the kosher inspired NWO. Everybody with a three digit IQ knows what the tipping point of the US empire is going to be: the dumping of the dollar, initiated by China, halting the ability of Washington of paying it’s bills by simply printing the money. That will initiated a struggle within the US for scarce resources and the country could easily start to disintegrate as a consequence Orlov-style. When this is going to happen, the geopolitical balance of power will change radical over night. Chinese ad hoc ally Russia, very vulnerable in sparsely populated, but resource rich Siberia, will bang on the European door for entry and shelter, using it’s resources as trump card. And while the last American troops will leave Europe, in similar fashion as the Soviets did in 1989 in Eastern Europe, Europe and Russia will complete the process of rapprochement since the demise of communism and form a full-fledged northern Eurasian economic and military alliance, with more than enough strength to ‘contain’ China. There is no reason why the remaining north-American European territories could not join the Greater European alliance at some point.
The 21st century is going to be a bipolarity of Greater Europe and China, dominating a post-globalist multi-polar world order.
Makati1 on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 1:50 pm
I concur with this assessment. I see China having a similar role in Asia as the US once had in the Americas, and soon.
Makati1 on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 1:58 pm
Arthur, I agreed with you until you got to the fantasy of Russia looking to the dying/bankrupt Europe for ‘shelter’. Russia wants to dominate Europe, not beg from it for something it doesn’t need. Russia is the strongest country in the world today as far as resources and nukes (12,000+ still in their arsenal) and they know it. And don’t rule out a nuclear war before then. The US will not go away without a fight.
So dream on, but Europe had it day in the sun and is now in it’s twilight years. This may be the year that even you realize it.
dsula on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 2:12 pm
Arthur, a couple of thousand of negros arrived on lampeduse just in January alone. Are you sure you can keep Europe alive? Last time I visited Frankfurt main train station I didn’t think I was in Europe at all.
Arthur on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 2:33 pm
Russia wants to dominate Europe, not beg from it for something it doesn’t need
give me some proof that that is the case. I will give you proof to the contrary:
http://deepresource.wordpress.com/2012/06/23/russia-plays-the-european-card/
Don’t believe me, I could a chauvinist pig, hell-bent of restoring 1492-1939 global European supremacy. Listen to Wladimir the Great himself.
True, Europe is again, just like the US and China b.t.w. But the EU is something fundamentally new. When Europe ruled the world, it did so as a bunch of five strongly competing nations. The only reason why former European colony US became independent, was because the French and the Dutch wanted to kick the British in the nuts, to deprive them of a lucrative colony and thus fighting Britain that was becoming too dominant in Europe. You make it sound as if Europeans & Euro-Americans are going to disappear from history, but nothing could be farther from the truth. The Germans did not disappear after WW2, so why should we Europeans disappear? And you are vastly overestimating Russian power. Oil and gas is the only thing they have, and as well know here, that is not going to last very long. Russia had the ambition to become European ever since Peter the great. Now the rising geopolitical constellation is becoming such, that this ambition will become reality. It is rising Chinese power that will force Europeans and Russians together, once the Americans have stepped down from their current top position. The EU + Russia will have a GDP of 18 + 4 = $22T, that’s three times the GDP of China. Some ‘twilight’. Draw your own conclusions. If we can draw a $7T post dollar US economy into European orbit as well, than it should be clear that China can’t threaten the ‘European world’ on both sides of the Atlantic.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 4:00 pm
Passé thinking. We are global, interconnected, and have a delocalized local support system. You cut off the finger you may survive. Rip out the heart, liver and or lungs and tell me what happens. There are critical nodes of trade, supply, and economic fabric. We are now in a situation of paralysis as far as growth and change to the socio-political world status quo BAU. Any changes lead to unintended consequences. We see catastrophic bifurcations from feedbacks and shocks. In an ecosystem as it reaches a peak it becomes brittle and change becomes extremely difficult. All niches have been occupied and prevent adaptation and growth. The system is primed for failure and regrowth. That is where we are. China and Asia missed the boat. In any case China and Asia have an exceptionally long list of amazing fascinating cultures in history. “BUT” we are now a global culture any geopolitical playfulness is noise or hum.
noobtube on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 4:59 pm
So, racist garbage has found a home on PeakOil.com?
The racist mind is a deranged mind, and has spread its derangement over the face of the Earth after its escape from the racist paradise in Far West Asia (aka Europe).
The end is near but the hate intensifies. A centuries-long bill is coming due that the racist filth cannot pay.
I wonder if they will keep screaming about their racial superiority as they lose it all.
Arthur on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 5:08 pm
“BUT” we are now a global culture any geopolitical playfulness is noise or hum.
You are missing the point that we have a globalized system in the first place because of a resource we are running out off.
No Airbus/Boeing, no globalization.
After the ‘globalist’ Roman empire, we had a ‘dark age’ that lasted ten centuries, until the Portuguese decided to embark on global discovery trips, one century before the Spanish, English and Dutch did.
I am not buying Kunstler’s ‘World made by hand’, but I am certainly not buying your ‘globalism is here to stay’ either.
I do agree that a certain globalist awareness is probably here to stay because of the emerging global infosphere, but not even that is certain, as a fracturing of the internet is very well possible in the new reality of the multipolar world order. The BRICS are contemplating an internet, circumventing Anglosphere and their all-seeing spy agencies. But this kind of ‘awareness globalism’ will be restricted to entering URL’s in a browser. You are not going anywhere yourself, so to speak, or not further than the range of your bicyle.
And one thing is going to remain the same in international relations: power and the intensifying struggle for resources.
DC on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 5:21 pm
Indeed, there are two distinct flavors of ‘globalism’. One is based on mutual respect,the rule of law, fair(not free) trade, and negotiations as the norm, not overt and covert warfare for resources and ‘market share’.
The other, is US backed military-corporate globalism. Ie terrorism, propaganda,a globalized police state, and govt sanctioned market cartels on a massive scale.
One of these models requires massive inputs of subsidized fossil fuels and a equally massive FF powered war-machine to sustain itself. Only one of type of ‘globalism’ will survive the coming energy cliff, the other, will not. Can you guess which one is going to consigned to ‘ the trash heap of history’ as it were?
Arthur on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 5:34 pm
Last time I visited Frankfurt main train station I didn’t think I was in Europe at all.
I changed trains in Frankfurt last Sunday, returning from Vienna, but I can’t confirm what you observed. Germany has 9% foreigners, most of them Europeans and Turks. Frankfurt and Berlin have a lot of foreigners, but that is about it, but certainly are still European cities.
Yesterday on the news: Switzerland (one of the very few real democracies on this planet) had a referendum about halting immigration and won. They now have 25% foreign workers (most of them Europeans, I worked there myself, several times) and now they said enough is enough. Good for them. ‘Germans, go home’.lol Obviously the ‘French’ foreign minister Laurent Fabius resented this democratic result…
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/10/french-minister-swiss-vote-immigration
… but he will flee to Israel, once the US goes belly up and western Europe will be subjected to exactly the same transformation as Eastern Europe went through, when their local globalist hegemon evaporated.
Interesting about the Guardian article, as always, are the readers comments, because they are the best indication of what is coming, not what the article writer, a mere government mouthpiece, says.
Talking about the train from Frankfurt… if you travel south-west to Munich and Austria, make sure you sit on the left side of the ICE 200 mph train, to observe the renewable energy miracle in status nascendi unfolding in Bavaria. Solar panels where ever you look.
Arthur on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 5:54 pm
I mean south-east…
J-Gav on Wed, 12th Feb 2014 12:04 am
Sorry, I haven’t read the above comments here – I just wanted to address the question posed by the title of this article: in short, at this historical juncture, it would look like shit on a stick.
PrestonSturges on Wed, 12th Feb 2014 3:03 am
>>>So, racist garbage has found a home on PeakOil.com?
Are you referring to our resident Holocaust denier up-thread?.