I think you misread Barnett and misunderstand his argument. Most assessments on China I’ve read, be they in Foreign Policy journals or even NPR and other such venues, have put the figure anywhere from 10-50 yrs. I am simply taking those assessments and using the one closer to your point of view. Regardless of how long, the fact is that right now we are stronger than China and hence should use that leverage to bring China into the system. Tie it to the system and it becomes less likely to want to change it. Why? China will benefit too much from that system to want to take it down. That is one of the basic premises of Barnett’s argument. Barnett doesn’t argue that China is not a rising power, he acknowledges that it is. He doesn’t argue that we should just sit idly by while it rises, but rather that we manage the threat. What this means is using our power and leverage to tie it to the system, to recognize that China and we share similar problems (i.e. scarce energy resources, terrorism) that we can address together now before they become crises.
You think confronting China right now and going to war is going to achieve any of that? No, all it is likely to do is tear down a system from which we both benefit and allowing another power to take our place, in a similar manner in which WWI and WWII allowed the US to rise in the vacuum left by the European powers that were destroyed by both wars. In fact, this is a driving force in Barnett’s thinking, rather than allow passions and “human nature”Â? if you will to drive us over the precipice why not recognize the challenges ahead of us now so that we can develop the strategies to manage them now and in the future and hence prevent a similar outcome. As Barnett is fond of saying, history repeats itself, just not in the same manner.
On another note, you are correct to say that their strength relative to their neighbors is extremely relevant; however even then we are still more than a match for the Chinese navy. Additionally we have enough allies in the region to offset that threat in the time being. The challenge now is getting the Chinese to recognize that an arms race or conflict are self-defeating and hence to be avoided. Again, a call to manage the threat, without engaging in self-defeating strategies or self-fulfilling prophecies like the one you are advocating. I mean, how much of a strategy is it to build up our forces and threaten the Chinese, to have them react to our actions in an equal manner, just so that we can react to their reaction to our original action, and so on and so forth until we reach a point were the only answer is war even if neither of us intended to get there in the first place. I’d choose to manage the threat, than what you are proposing.
That said I think there are valid arguments against Barnett’s thesis, it’s just that yours isn’t one of them. First it isn’t well formulated and relies far too much on “human nature”Â? something I consider a red herring unless backed up by real analysis and data to support that analysis.
As for my statement regarding your reading of Barnett’s blog and PNM, you obviously did not pay attention to that either, because I did not only say that you had not read his book or blog (too limiting), rather I said that even if you had, you failed to understand it fully.

My original quote “Reading your post, I don’t think you have read Barnett’s blog on a regular basis, and if you have, you’ve missed a few things.”Â?

Curzon—I communicated with them in Chinese.

There is an excess of capital relative to natural resources in the world economy now. This capital is being utilized productively to reduce the use of energy,eg. the use of winglets on commercial airplanes that reduce the use of kerojet fuel by 9-14%. This is going on in all sectors of the economy. In China, which is far less energy efficient, these investments have a far faster payback.
In other words, regarding resources – DON’T PANIC.

The troubling aspect of China’s relations with Japan, at least to me, is that it seems to be a mechanism to focus dissent on the distant neighbor. While that beats dissent vs. the government (from the government’s point of view), it also points to the prospect that when economic times get tough it wouldn’t be too far from the current playbook to start a war with someone to focus the people on something other than their own problems.

With respect to US relations with the PRC, it should be kept in mind that economic growth, and the clear sense that the Chinese people have a future to build, is incompatible with a wartime mentality. Taking the temperature of the relationship when times are more difficult should be the test. Hopefully this will be a long way off, but… in the meantime, don’t beat all of your swords into plowshares.

Anyways, I’d just like to conclude on the note that while Barnett’s rebuttal was indeed rude, yours is somewhat misguided and borderline childish?

“Whadaya say Dr. Barnett? Care to engage those points based on a rational argument sans mention of my intelligence and illicit drugs? GO ON, I DARE YOU!”

What are we? 6 year olds on a playground?

While traveling via hard seat on Chinese trains, and while dwelling in dirt-floor hotel rooms, and while meeting with various students (middle school, high school, college, and postgrad students) outside class, I’ve asked the same question about the USA many times. And the most popular response by far has been that the USA is a “very, very good country.”Â?

Wonderful—my only concern is your survey sample. Are you communicating in English? How many in China speak English? What of the 750 million peasants, how do they feel? Do you think their outlook is influenced by who they are talking to? And what do these people think about Taiwan? Or Japan?

Do you have any reason for believing this?

I am a student of history—Kissinger’s Diplomacy, the Muqadimmah, the Cartoon History of the Universe Volume III, Gibbon’s Rise and Fall, Kaplan’s Surrender or Starve, Pinker’s The Blank Slate, Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel…

Can you name any examples of countries that underwent gigantic popular economic development (“popular”Â? meaning the money mostly goes to actual citizens, not a wealthy few) and DIDN’T also develop more moderate governments? Especially with our current level of economic and political interdependence, do you really think it’s even possible?

Yes. I recommend Kaplan’s The Coming Anarchy!

GABRIEL: Yes, Barnett floored me at first. My problems? I am turned off by the rude denouncement of his critics, and his evisceration of any opinion other than his own (he should take a page from Kaplan’s book), and his blog tends to be too much about his personal life.

I’m another newbie, a young one (17), and I also would like to thank you all for engaging in this intelligent, civilized, and productive debate. Having lived in China for a little while now (I’m of the English teacher variety. I teach about 800 students), I’ve studied this issue very intently, and am trying hard to figure out what’s going to happen next.

Most of what I was going to say has already been covered, but I do have a few short (methinks) comments.

Curzon—”College students spray bile about Japan in an inarticulable rage. Civil engineers tell me over beers how they long for a chance to kick the US’s fanny.”

Japan is a whole nother issue, so let’s talk about the latter comment.

While traveling via hard seat on Chinese trains, and while dwelling in dirt-floor hotel rooms, and while meeting with various students (middle school, high school, college, and postgrad students) outside class, I’ve asked the same question about the USA many times. And the most popular response by far has been that the USA is a “very, very good country.”

Despite recent attempts by the government to curb their enthusiasm, the best Chinese students still want desperately to study in the USA, the land of opportunity. Despite differing positions on various issues such as Japan, Taiwan, North Korea, Burma, etc. Chinese people still view the USA as a very good place, and try hard to establish connections with Americans (my email inbox is flooded with emails from Chinese people whom I hardly know). Despite their uncommonly (sometimes uncomfortably) strong nationalism/patriotism, most Chinese with whom I’ve conversed wish—paradoxically, in a sense—that they could go to the USA.

It’s no secret that foreign investment is fueling the extremely speedy economic development of China. We know this, they know this—it doesn’t go unappreciated. The most common view of Americans isn’t, “I want to kick their country’s fanny,” it’s more like, “man, they probably have a lot of money. I hope I can get rich too! (maybe I’ll rip them off a few hundred kuai)”

The fact that most Chinese don’t actually hate Americans having been established, I have two more questions.

1. “Globalization, integration, elected governments, liberal democracy, integration and technology have not eliminated the desire in humanity to get hot-blooded and kill each other.”
Do you have any reason for believing this? Any recent examples? I recognize that this is your side’s “assumption,” but I’d still like to know why you think so, because I don’t.

2. Can you name any examples of countries that underwent gigantic popular economic development (“popular” meaning the money mostly goes to actual citizens, not a wealthy few) and DIDN’T also develop more moderate governments? Especially with our current level of economic and political interdependence, do you really think it’s even possible?

(Personally, I doubt the motivation for a war is/will be there, and even if the government wants to go for it, I doubt there’s a will among the people anyway, and by now they can’t be brainwashed into it)

Keep up the good work all. I may just become a regular reader.

My one specific response is to the Glittering Eye’s post on the subject arguing for us to lean back and do nothing.

1. China has problems of its own.

2. China is focused on China in a way that Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States have never been.

3. We should be encouraging China to solve its problems rather than worrying about what China’s plans for us might be.”

No—do both! Regardless of China’s own internal problems that, our encouragement aside, they will try and solve, those who would not prepare for an invasion of Taiwan or some other challenge to US presence in influence in the west Pacific are being dangerously optimistic.

And I’m glad to say again that our discussion here is purely academic. No one here mentioned what I argued was the unfolding reality: a shifting balance of power unfolding before our eyes.

Do I think it is likely that China will take such drastic measures? No. Am I willing to trust our confidence in China’s better nature to be enough to prevent terrible outcomes? Absolutely not.

Si vis pacem, indeed. We must approach China and the rest of the world with Locke in one hand and Hobbes in the other. We must engage and prepare as if we had learned the lessons of centuries and finally understood that life questions do not always have one simple answer. Let us proceed on both lines, and choose to create the outcome we desire.

We are yet in the global lead, well ahead of China and any other rivals. Our weaknesses are obvious to us, but often we forget that those who would overtake us have many exploitable weaknesses as well. The only reason I see to fear China or anyone else catching us is our current obsession with our own self-rejection. Our populace is not dedicated much today to it’s own vigorous growth. The education of our young, of which I am one, is a miserable failure. We look at and wonder about the young Chinese so full of anger and looking for a fight, but what of our own young and future leaders so ready to blame ourselves for everything wrong in the world? The battle as usual is everywhere. Military, economic, diplomatic… but who will carry it forward in the years to come? If you want to see the best of outcomes, provoke our own young minds to see more of the world and become stronger, because that is our fatal weak link right now.

This is surely the time for an effective refereeing system – isn’t the General Council of the United Nations due to consider reform in a few months time?

Second, I probably shouldn’t have included the reference to “lebenraum” because it does not connote the thought I intended convey and I am not sure that the issues inherent in the concept of lebenraum exist much at all any more. The world is much more flexible in the movement of peoples for a true lebenraum to be an issue. What might cause a war is something of the same kind but of a different species—movement of a people to an extent that subsequent recollectivization becomes an issue.

Tensions large and small exhibit this tendency now within the context of the American southwest, and the latent attitude recent reminesced about by Putin regarding the Baltics. With the Chinese it is there as well but, I think it has a different quality to it, one of “you may not think you are Chinese but we think you are, so you must become part of China. This blends to an extent with Nationalism, but in an extraordinary way.

I haven’t seen this considered in the scheme of things and I wonder if it ought to be, say, with regard to N. Korea. I quit counting the number of times, in casual conversations not necessarily with respect to geopolitical considerations, that I have heard Chinese say the Koreans are really Chinese. It doesn’t fit in totally with the the current subject of the competition for influence and a possible cold war, but I do think it can be a factor.

Regarding the link you provided on the reliance on oil for the food system (meaning the entire process from tilling to eating), I think that is a function of a system’s evolution based on a plentful resource (oil) assisting food more plentiful. I do not think the survivibility of presently (or future) plentiful food availablility is dependent on oil and the food system will adapt to the the changing circumstances of oil availibility. But don’t take that to mean I’m implying there can’t or won’t be problems as the system adapts.

And I am not sure that oil-based agriculture ought to be credited to such a degree for the world’s population growth. I think, rather, advances in medicine, surging also in the mid-1800’s, had a greater impact, and, later, advances in the field of, what, botony(?), which with intense research into hybridization to allowed for both more bountiful harvests and longer storage and less waste from handling during transport. (The taste of tomatoes suck now, though.)

According to the ‘World Energy Outlook’: “The transport sector will account for 54% of global primary oil consumption in 2030 compared to 47% now and 33% in 1971. Transport will absorb two-thirds of the increase in total oil use. Even with new fuels, transport is still expected to use 95% oil products. . . The scope for increase in China’s fleet of cars is huge: there are only 10 cars for every thousand Chinese compared with 770 in North America and 500 in Europe.”

And then there’s food: “Oil based agriculture is primarily responsible for the world’s population exploding from 1 billion at the middle of the 19th century to 6.3 billion at the turn of the 21st.”
Link

However, if you read my post carefully you will see that I did not try to establish anything. I merely indicated the indisputable fact that the United States has not wiped China out. Nor did I conclude anything, most certainly not that the United States has a greater desire for peace. (Indeed, reading some of the comments on CA suggests otherwise.) Rather, I was asking for Curzon to elaborate on his original post.

Younghusband – I think you are right in thinking that China could go either way, and I do not object to planning accordingly. If Barnet’s model holds true, the I suppose the key question is whether or not China will play by the rules.

Chirol – Excellent point there. I could not agree more.

Eddie – You may very well be correct that China would invade another country for its resources. But should it do so in the interest of joining the developed world, the effort would be pointless because I should hope that the developed world would never stand for such behavior. I think it is impossible to deny that a large source of China’s strength has been economic growth that would not be possible without some form of interaction with the rest of the world, and that includes the United States in a major way. If the leadership of China (whatever leadership that may be) decides that risking the loss of this type of connectivity is worth gaining access to petrol, natural gas, or some other natural resource, then again, you may be correct and the world may have to face a territorially expantionist China. But, should they play by the same rules as the rest of the developed world, and obtain their resources via markets, is the opposite not equally plausible?

I think Younghusband and Saru have covered a lot important aspects of China as it is rather than as ” China the Enemy” of Kaplan’s assumptions. Perhaps, if Kaplan is looking for an advanced state that consistently attempts to thwart American interests, we should discuss containing France.

In general, I find it dubious that China’s government will be in twenty-five years what it is today. The enormous, pent-up, demand for services by the mass of peasantry is going to force Beijing toward internal development and ever greater levels of systemic accountability – if they wish to continue developing their market economy in urban areas. Even Curzon must agree as he referred to these Chinese as ” future voters” rather than say, robotic slaves of some new Evil Empire.

Secondly, in terms of preparedness in case a nasty, neo-fascistic, Party-PLA faction were to seize power, it is kind of important to note that the United States is at least somewhat well-armed with a defense budget approaching 500 billion dollars annually.

While China’s defense budget is many times larger than they officially admit, their military capabilities and budgetary resources are not in the same league by a long shot. So much so, that the PLA appears to be trying to find anything but a ” head to head” strategy to confront the U.S. – that kind of arms race is simply too expensive for China. Similarly, China’s leadership has eschewed a Soviet style nuclear arms build-up as pointless in terms of achieving China’s strategic objectives.

China presents a set of strategic challenges to the United States but also some opportunities. It has been American policy since at least The McKinley Administration – that’s right, McKinley, go read the ” Open Door Note” – to ” re-connect China to the rest of the world. Kaplan would have us turn away from that now at the cusp of success because he misses the intellectual security of the Cold War paradigm.

They really don’t care about Taiwan, Vietnam, Mongolia, Siberia, or the Pacific isles”¦ That’s just to keep our eyes off their big prize, the moon. They’re planning to build the first permanently manned moon base in the next twenty years. Then all they have to do is delcare it Chinese property by imminent domain. They plan to drill into it like moles and create huge underground structures and arm the moon with giant laser devices that will dominate Earth… its easier than throwing rocks using mass drivers (“The Moon is a harsh Mistress” by Robert Heinlein). Sounds like Sci-Fi, but according to the Air Force that is the most likely scenario. I don’t which one is scarier, nuclear limited war over taiwan or Chinese food on the moon.