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Is China "acting like a great power?"
The Economist magazine is often a source of clear-eyed, trenchant, and moderately conservative analysis, usually written with a wit and verve that puts most of the content in Time and Newsweek to shame. But nobody's perfect, and the latest issue offers a remarkably obtuse leader on the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China. The author complains that "China does not always act like a great power," and concludes that we ought to be especially worried by a rising power whose government "is so insecure."
If you read the piece carefully, however, it's clear that their real complaint is that China actually is acting like a great power, which means that some of its policies aren't to the liking of the Economist's editors. They point out that China is not a "status quo power" -- which is correct -- but neither are most great powers most of the time. The European great powers of a bygone era competed more-or-less constantly, punctuating their rivalries with sometimes long and bloody wars. The United States spent the Cold War trying to both contain and bring down the Soviet regime (and Moscow hoped to do the same to the United States), and while neither side wanted to fight a nuclear war to do it, neither side was interested in "preserving the status quo" either. After the USSR collapsed, George Bush Sr. spoke of "standing alone at the pinnacle of power, with the rarest opportunity to remake the world," which is not exactly a "status quo" sentiment. And has the Economist forgotten that Bush's son subsequently decided it was a good idea to "transform" much of the Middle East at the point of a rifle barrel? By those standards, Chinese revisionism looks mild indeed.
Similarly, the magazine is worried because China put on a big military display as part of its 60th anniversary celebration, is gradually modernizing its armed forces, and isn't telling us everything about its plans to build aircraft carriers and the like. Again, is there anything very surprising about this behavior? All great powers like to brandish their military hardware (e.g., there are over 150 military airshows in the United States this year, and the Air Force does a fly-over at the Super Bowl), and one would expect any rising economic power to translate some of its growing wealth into greater military strength.
They also charge that China "still seems to pick and choose the issues where it is willing to help." Shocking, isn't it? No, I guess not, because other states do that too. They are on safer ground criticizing China for overreacting when others criticize its human rights conduct or when foreign governments allow a visit from the Dalai Lama, but China is hardly unique in reacting harshly to outside criticism.
Lastly, China is said to "put its perceived economic self-interest ahead of strategic common sense," most notably in its response to Iran's nuclear program. Once again, what great power doesn't think first and foremost about "self-interest?" Not only did the United States turn a blind eye when the UK, France, and Israel acquired nuclear weapons (the latter outside the confines of the NPT), but it responded to India and Pakistan's nuclear tests in 1998 by imposing some meaningless and short-lived economic sanctions and then returning to business as usual. In fact, India eventually got rewarded with a strategic cooperation agreement and a forgiving nuclear deal. According to a recent article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, "intensive lobbying by corporate sectors in both the United States and India helped overrule the concerns of the arms control community." I guess other great powers worry about "economic self-interest" too.
In short, what's bugging the Economist is not that China isn't "acting like a great power"; it is that China isn't defining its interests the way some conservative Englishmen would like them to. Sorry, folks, that's just not how great powers act. As China's power grows, it will press its own perceived self-interests vigorously, just as other great powers do. It will continue to join and participate in a wide array of existing institutions, but it will use them to advance its own interests and will also try to shape those institutions according to its own preferences and values. Expecting them to conform their behavior to someone else's idea of what is right and proper is ... well ... not very realistic.
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“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.”
Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations at Harvard University.
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why this makes sense
My greatest challenge in reading this kind of realistic analysis is imagining why anyone could disagree with it.
The reason it makes so much sense is that the analysis is systematically unsentimental, yet so many of our modern ethical pieties are deeply sentimental. I think this is why the realists get into so much trouble with everyone else, and why in my view they make so much sense.
Great article. Thanks.
http://senseorsensibility.com
You've got to be pretty far
You've got to be pretty far to the left to think of the Economist as conservative.
Even its own editors say it's a leftist publication:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist
The reason why the Economist
is so popular in America is that it allows people who smoke pot to feel good about owning stocks and working in management consulting or banking. It's 'nerdy' cool...plus it has great writing and a decent sense of humor even if their fact-checking leaves a lot to be desired. But 'left wing'?...maybe compared to Hayek or Strauss.
The Economist's Politics
Blue - Frankly, that's a very ignorant comment. Just because the Economist doesn't fit quite so neatly in the incestuous and blindingly self-referential American "political spectrum" does not mean it is in any sense "left-wing".
Lets try to translate the Economist into American. The Economist is socially rather "liberal" with its positions on gay marriage, gun control and religion. It is however, "fiscally conservative" and you will find no better paper than that in the 1980s, 1990s and beyond to support the neoliberal international agenda of globalization and unfettered capitalism.
I hesitate to call it "libertarian" however, because the Economist does not really have the messianism and insularity of that American sect.
Haha, not the first time
You have to love how the Economist can freak out in typical English snobery whenever someone in the world does not behave as Old Mother England or her proud American son would like them too.
The author is right to give The Economist credit though. They are usually pretty good, and put all other mainstream newspapers to shame.
I do have to say Foreign Policy has ascended the ranks of my news reading in the last few months. With the exception of one entirely idealistic and unrealistic issue on Women, this magazine has been doing a great job!
good article
i read that economist post too, and another one on BBC. they were critisizing china alot. when i want to see if there is bias in an article, i change the country/person/religion from "china" to "US" and see if it makes sense.
there are military parades, airshows, gun shows in the "US". no mention of this (on the economist)
france has an annual parade (bastille day) where tanks, apcs, planes, etc, are shown to the public. these weapons are more advanced than china's. no mention of this.
the US has been in conflict/war for more than half the months since WW2. china has been to war in tibet (50 yrs independent, 2000 yrs part of china) and india (over land taken by British india). no mention of this.
frankly, walt, your not a racist, and your a good, fair, writer.
Dear Walt. The Economist is old hat
And has been so for many years. I was impressed with it 20 years ago. It thrives alone due to the 300.000 Americans who buys it every week. As everyones knows Americans love some raffined upper-class English language, and are willing to pay to be a part of it. Then they feel they are part of something exclusive. This could very well be the whole business-idea. Think of it this way: All news-papers has to write something in order to fill up every issue.
Great post
Great read Mr. Walt.
I'm always amused when I hear complaints reflected in the Economist article from American (or British, or French) officials, namely that other powers such as Russia and China act in their own self-interest rather than for the common good (this is usually code for their actions on Iran). While I think it is abhorrent that some of these self-interest policies result in doing business with Omar al-Bashir's Sudan or placating Mugabe, Western powers did this for years in the 70's and 80's by doing business with monsters like Saddam Hussein or letting people like Pinochet run wild. They are hardly in any position to lecture the Chinese now, or at least the Chinese are in a position to politely dismiss those criticisms.
US/China comparison
Good article Stephen, and some fair criticisms. Still, I think it's important to distinguish between the American military parades and air shows and China's recent display of hardware, which was pointedly geared towards an international audience, not a domestic sporting event, as the Super Bowl's fly-overs are. In sharp contrast to previous parades, all the hardware was Chinese made, and demonstrates remarkable technical achievement; good for them. However, during Bastille Day and American airshows, entertaining the public is The Point, as opposed to forbidding the public, under pain of imprisonment, of opening windows to observe, let alone attend the display of firepower. This contrast speaks volumes about the nature of China as a great power.
Furthermore, the previous post about China avoiding wars, whereas the US acts as a belligerent superpower, is somewhat uninformed. While I'd agree the US has had a quite a post-WWII track record, China has been intimately involved in a significant series of wars and conflicts, conflicts which include Nepal, India, Korea, Vietnam, Myanmar, the USSR, and others. Pretending otherwise is naive.
Finally, one of the most appealing elements of The Economist is the great deal of civility present in its pages, a degree of civility that America all too often lacks in its political and economic debates. I am disappointed to see here the few juvenile put-downs of The Economist's readers as "people who smoke pot" and, at the other end of the spectrum, a bunch of pretentious, upper-class wannabes.
Greetings
Happy 60th Anniversary..
Horse Racing
Mr. Walt, you are a "good" plagiarist
Mr. Walt, reading this article, I couldn't not to notice the similarity of your arguments to the entire Chinese readership of The Economist. I guess you just put all those Chinese angry comments on The Economist's website and the result was this article :-)
But here is one mistake -- those comments are made by a couple of Chinese students, who use different user names to marginalize other views and opinions. Plus, there is always state-run propaganda from Politburo that infiltrates the western media. I can't believe you fell for that. I guess it's because you are not from the Communist country and, therefore, you don't know about all the tricks.
China's super-power status is NOT welcomed worldwide for various reasons, mostly because of its government's repressive nature. Ask its dictatorial friends like North Korea or Iran, and even they will tell you that China's world leadership is a disaster for the humanity.
Observations.
I don't think that China is as harmless as the writer seems to portray:
China's defensive spendings have risen by double digit percentages for about the past 20 years. True, the US spends massive amounts on it's military... but is also pretty transparent about it. Nobody seems to know with any degree of accuracy what China is now spending on defence. Estimates vary wildly. China pursuing aircraft carriers is of particular interest... because they are used to PROJECT POWER. And even a dollar for dollar comparison means little as China can purchase many, MANY of it's new J-10 (looks like the Eurofighter to me) for what the US spends on one F-22.
I also think that China places economy concerns over all others. To the expense of common horse sense even. China is more than willing to risk Islamic extremists in the Middle East getting the bomb (re: Iran) if it means that their business is not interupted. I think that this is incredibly dangerous.
Yes, the US and other countries have done this before in the past as well. But never this bad and this naively I think.
Technically speaking, nobody knows definitively that Israel has the bomb. I think that it's a safe guess that they do... but until they actually explode one... that's all that that is... a *guess*. A blast is definitive proof. And Israel was one of the few countries not to have signed off on the NPT.
India as well didn't sign the NPT. They have definitively had the bomb since 1974. During which time they appear to have been pretty responsible with the technology. Not proliferating. So, well after the fact... I don't see any issue with opening up to them after 25 years.
As well, part of the rationale of normalizing business with India from my understanding is strategic. Just a few short years ago, China and Russia singed a strategic pact with one another to help offset the power of the US. The US was motivated to offset this with it's own strategic partnership with India. There is a bigger picture to think about here.
Nouveau Riche Commie
China is a strange animal. Its frenzied and anapologetic export of everything from toxic seafood to the USA to missiles to Iran palstic toys to the whole world has paid off financially. Millions of Chinese have been lifted out of poverty rather suddenly. Both the leadership and the people find it hard to readjust themslves.
With the new found wealth do I throw my weight around or moderate the conspicusness consumption and take up lessons in ettequett. that is the struggle of the Nouveau Riche.
Streetwise and pennypinching tendencies of the recent past also pops up at the most awkward moments.
China is becomming a wealthy nation and it needs more wealth as millions are still in poverty.
But a Dictatorship that has absolute power over 1.3 Billian people can never be a Great Power in any humane sense of the word.