Is It Possible For China to Rise Peacefully?

CHINA has long stressed that its rise as one of the world’s great powers will be “peaceful”. But it is also aware that, historically, peaceful rises are the exception. Speaking on a visit to Washington on September 20th, Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, referred to a study of 15 different countries. In 11 cases “confrontation and war have broken out between the emerging and established powers.” So the stakes are high when Chinese leaders speak of their hopes for a “new type of great-power relations”, or, in the humbler phrase they now prefer as a translation for the Chinese formulation, “a new model of major-country relations”. American officials echo the “new model” talk. Since neither side wants confrontation and war, they can be assumed to be sincere. Less certain is whether they mean the same thing.

Xi Jinping unveiled the concept on a visit to the American capital last year, before he took over the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. His informal “Sunnylands” summit with Barack Obama in June was portrayed as the “model” in action. As elaborated by the smooth Mr Wang in Washington, it is an admirable idea, based on Mr Xi’s formula of “no conflict or confrontation”, “mutual respect” and “win-win co-operation”. Nor is there much disagreement about how to achieve this: by reducing strategic mistrust through building habits of co-operation.

Although America and China seem to line up on the opposite sides of so many international issues, optimists can point to progress in some areas of co-operation. The two countries have in recent months avoided the periodic crises that used to test their ties. China has reacted calmly to allegations of American cyber-espionage against it, for example, enjoying the chance to turn the tables thanks to the revelations of Edward Snowden, a disaffected American former security-services contractor.

Military co-operation is also being stepped up. Next year China’s navy is to join those of America and a score of other countries in a big maritime exercise. China is negotiating an investment treaty with America. It also wants to join one American-led free-trade negotiation, the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), and has said it is studying another, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, once seen as part of an American effort to contain China.

On some international hotspots, too, China and America find themselves closer than for some time. America will have been pleased that China this week showed its anger with North Korea, banning a long list of items for export there. China has welcomed the agreement between America and Russia on destroying Syria’s weapons. Mr Wang raised Afghanistan, which he predicted might next year overtake Syria as a global concern, as another area with “great potential” for enhanced co-operation. This is true both because co-operation has so far been minimal, but also because, as Mr Wang pointed out, both have an interest in the country’s stability after most foreign troops leave in 2014. China worries about Islamic extremism seeping across the border to infect its own Muslim minorities, and about the security of its massive proposed investment in the Aynak copper mine.

In all these areas, however, co-operation is hampered by strategic distrust and profound differences.

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I have been wondering for some time if China's rise ought to be compared with Japan's.  During the 1980s, there was a profound gnashing of teeth over Japan.  We were going to be overshadowed by the rising Japanese and they would be running the world.  And yet, two decades after the economic stagnation of Japan, we look back and see the fears as being far from justified. 

Now, some of the hind sight reasons for Japan's stall don't quite apply here; frex, China has a population far in excess of Japan's and a longer way still (!) until that population is as rich as Japan or America is. 

On the other hand, China has a demographic problem, which even with the easing or outright dismissal of the One Child Policy, will cause it a lot of problems in less than a decade.  It is also facing a banking crisis on the other of the Lehman Brother's fiasco here in the US.  They have a very different structure to deal with it, but from what I have been told, its frightening to watch from the outside.  Additionally, they have a huge real estate bubble like we, and back in the day, Japan, had.  Finally, their current model of purely manufacturing for the world has hit its limits and they need to change course with their economy to keep from stagnating.

I, personally, China failing to rise.  China will definitely rise to a superpower status and take at least a peer status with the US, if not greater.  However, I do have to wonder if China will hit a 'mature' economy status, and drop to the same growth rates as America and Europe about 2023.  If China and the US are neck and neck economically from there on out, it will be mighty interesting.