Reluctant superpower?
China's growing economic might is indisputable, but whether it has the ability, or even desire, to usurp the US in military or diplomatic terms is far less certain

 Cary Huang

As the sun is setting on the West, it will rise in the East. So predicted the late leader Mao Zedong in the heyday of global socialism. The Great Helmsman foresaw a glorious new era in which the proletariat would eliminate the bourgeoisie and socialism would toss capitalism onto history's junk heap.

Well, at least Mao got the geography right. In many quarters, the big debate now is whether the 21st century will be known as the Pacific Century or the Asian Century. The shift of global gravity from West to East is just that obvious.

But in a sudden spate of diplomatic activity, Washington is saying: "Not so fast". In a series of regional summits last month, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton asserted that the world's sole superpower - the United States - is in Asia to stay, and outlined a slew of policies to make sure the next decades are "America's Pacific century".

"When I talk to my Asian counterparts," Clinton wrote in last month's issue of Foreign Policy, "one theme consistently stands out: They still want America to be an engaged and creative partner in the region's flourishing trade and financial interactions. And as I talk with business leaders across our own nation, I hear how important it is for the United States to expand our exports and our investment opportunities in Asia's dynamic markets."

Yet, while America seeks to shore up its position in Asia-Pacific, the larger question is stirring lots of debate: just how big a threat to the US is a rising China, anyway?

Harvard historian Niall Ferguson says the US today resembles 17th century Spain or Britain circa 1900: dominant empires that underestimated the rise of new powers. In Britain's case, it was Germany; for the US, it is China.

"When China's economy is equal in size to that of the US, which could come as early as 2027... it means China becomes not only a major economic competitor - it's that already - but a diplomatic competitor and a military competitor," Ferguson said.

In US President Barack Obama's nine-day Asia-Pacific trip - visiting Indonesia and Australia, chairing the Apec summit in his home state of Hawaii, and attending, in Bali, the first Asean Summit and East Asian Summit by a US president - he moved on several fronts to buttress US influence in the region. His initiatives ranged from forming a trade and investment bloc that excludes China, to consolidating the US military presence with a new US Marine base in Australia and isolating Beijing in the South China Sea dispute.

To Asian leaders, Obama clearly meant to establish a counterbalance to China's growing diplomatic, economic and military might. And to a home audience, Obama emphasised that a US recovery from the financial crisis depends on tapping into Asia's dynamism. It's not just because of his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia that he calls himself "America's first Pacific president".

Since taking office in early 2009, Obama has enunciated a back-to-Asia strategy but analysts say the execution has become possible only recently as the US winds down its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But for the decade that Washington threw its military and diplomatic weight into those two conflicts, the nation that Napoleon called "the sleeping lion" was awakening in a big way. China rose from the world's seventh-largest economy in 2003 to the second-largest, now trailing only the US. No wonder so many people are convinced - and so many Americans downright worried - that US predominance is fading.

Whereas the American Century was used to describe the 20th century after the US emerged as the strongest power after the second world war, the Pacific Century became an early descriptor of the 21st. Today it looks more like the Asian Century, with greater emphasis on the rising power of China, not to mention India.

Asia-Pacific - stretching from the Indian subcontinent to the western shores of the Americas, spanning two great oceans increasingly linked by trade and strategy - has become a key driver of global politics. Long home to more than half the world's population, it now boasts more than half the world's trade and economic output.

To many Americans, especially on the right, there is no doubt that China's rise is a mortal threat. In their just-published book, Bowing to Beijing: How Barack Obama is Hastening America's Decline and Ushering a Century of Chinese Domination, Brett Decker, the Washington Times editorial page editor, and William Triplett, a former Republican counsel to the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, argue that Obama is helping to put Beijing on top. As their publisher, Regnery Publishing, puts it: "Despite Chinese leaders showing their hostile intentions in every realm, the Obama administration refuses to take action or even acknowledge the threat."

The topic dominated the Republican presidential debate on CNN on November 22, with candidates scrambling to air their fears over China's rising clout. Michele Bachmann said the US was paying to make China militarily stronger. Texas Governor Rick Perry called China the major threat to America. Jon Huntsman, the Putonghua-speaking former US ambassador to Beijing, said that based on his knowledge of China, the communist giant will find itself in big trouble in several years.

The "rise of China" has been named the top news story of the 21st century by the Global Language Monitor, a US-based media analytics company, as measured by number of appearances in the global print and electronic media, on the internet and in social media.

Under the theory of "lateral pressure", promulgated by political scientists Nazli Choucri and Robert North in their 1975 book Nations in Conflict, countries seek to expand their reach as their populations and technologies grow. Major powers inevitably come into conflict when their spheres of influence intersect.

If the theory holds, China and the US are destined to collide, for China is on course to overtake the US as the world's largest economy within, if not years, then a few decades. Meantime, the US economy is faltering, China has stockpiled more than US$3 trillion in foreign reserves and stands as the US's largest creditor, holding over US$1 trillion in Treasury bills.

On November 21, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus, wrote in the editorially conservative Washington Times that "a government that loses its sovereignty to its bondholders cannot guarantee prosperity or freedom".

"And at the end of the day," he added, "an economy that is controlled by China cannot possibly compete with China."

Beijing is none too happy about this kind of talk. "The escalating rhetoric is putting pressure on US politicians to stand up to China, particularly during an economic downturn and a politically sensitive election year," said Liu Ming, deputy director of Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies.

Shi Yinhong , director of Renmin University's Centre of American Studies, likened Obama's recent offensive to the Cold War, when then US president Harry Truman announced his Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan after the second world war to rebuild Europe and "contain" Soviet communism. But few analysts who look at the wider political, diplomatic or military perspectives think China has posed any serious challenge to US leadership, let alone replaced it.

"China has seriously weakened the US influence in the region, but the Chinese gains in Asia-Pacific have been largely economic," said Ben Simpfendorfer, managing director of Silk Road Associates, a political and economic consultancy.

"However, its continued success will depend greatly on whether other Asian countries prioritise economic or political issues."

Politically, Washington is still the moral leader in a world dominated by free-market economies and democracies, while the Communist Party of China is still struggling for survival due to its lack of legitimacy, Simpfendorfer said.

In her book, Fragile Superpower, Susan Shirk, a former US State Department China specialist, says the political situation in China may be too unstable to survive the transition to superpower status. Minxin Pei, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in California, believes China is neither a superpower nor will be one soon, given the daunting political and economic challenges it faces.

Conversely, the US has forged solid diplomatic ties with most nations in the region, many of whom fear a rising communist giant.

Professor Edward Friedman, a specialist in Chinese politics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that while some might see a rising East replacing a stagnant West, no Asian nation nor Russia wants to be subordinated to authoritarian, Sino-centric Beijing. "In short, while China's rapid rise is awesome, its domination seems impossible," Friedman says.

Liu Kang, professor of Asian and Middle Eastern studies at Duke University, said China's own perception of its place in the world was a major stumbling block on its road to world leadership. "The country up until now considers itself a defensive and inward-looking nation rather than a mover and shaker of world affairs," Liu said.

"The absence of a clearly defined strategic vision is indicative of China's vital weakness. China's journey to becoming a truly global power will certainly be a long one."

As one of the world's largest nation's, China shares borders with 14 countries. Ties have been shaky with many of these neighbours and others around the South China Sea, most of which Beijing claims as its own territory. Border and maritime disputes continue with Japan, India, Vietnam and the Philippines. At times these have sparked deadly military clashes. In recent years, China has been building a blue-water naval fleet with new submarines and surface ships equipped with anti-ship ballistic missiles, and conducted sea trials of a refitted Soviet aircraft carrier in August.

Meanwhile, the US maintains tens of thousands of troops in Japan and South Korea, and stations some of it most sophisticated aircraft at bases in the western Pacific. Constant patrols of US aircraft carrier battle groups maintain the military dominance Washington has enjoyed in Asia since 1945. Singapore will provide facilities for the US Navy's new littoral combat ships, and Vietnam has offered the use of Cam Ranh Bay port for provisioning and repairs. More announcements to let US ships and planes operate out of bases across the region can be expected.

While the world believes that China is seeking to check and challenge the US, China's political leaders realise the immense opportunity costs of such relations, because economic integration has become a major theme in Chinese diplomacy.

"The US still plays a dominant role in regional and global affairs, and it is not in China's interest - nor is it positioned - to challenge it now," said Liu Ming.

Simpfendorfer says China's one-party communist rule - and that system's lack of appeal to other nations - will play an increasingly important role in defining its relations with Asia-Pacific. "But it's much harder to predict long-term political change than economic ones," he added.

Still, many Chinese expect the Middle Kingdom to return to the status it held in its glory days from the 11th-18th centuries, when it was the world's largest economy and a global centre of civilisation.

There's a Chinese saying that captures that thought: every star has its turn to shine, like the sun in daytime and the moon at night.