The twenty-first is likely to be China’s century. Over the period since I first started visiting and living in China in the mid-1960s, the global balance of power has shifted enormously in China’s favour. The US and the West have not declined, but China has grown more quickly, in economic, technological, infrastructure and political terms. This trend is likely to continue.
One turning point was 1971 when US President Richard Nixon’s National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger visited Beijing and arranged for Nixon himself to visit before May the next year. Nixon himself called the days he spent in China (21 to 28 February 1972) “the week that changed the world”. He was right in the sense that what in effect eventuated from this week was that the US would help China’s modernization in return for its willingness not to disturb the American-led liberal international order.
However, a more important turning point was Deng Xiaoping’s introduction of reform policies at the end of 1978. These allowed for the modernization and acceleration of China’s economy and world standing, such as in the United Nations and other international agencies. The main credit for China’s rise should go to the Chinese people and Deng’s leadership. American and other international cooperation certainly helped but was not the crucial factor.
Another turning point was 2001 when the September 11 Incidents in New York and Washington highlighted the destructiveness of Islamist terrorism. They led on to fruitless and counterproductive attempts by the US and its allies to turn back this evil through wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Meanwhile, China joined the World Trade Organization at the end of the year (2001), enabling it to strengthen its economic ties with the rest of the world more than before.
Xi Jinping became Party Secretary-General in 2012 and President in 2013, and his leadership has introduced a new dynamism and even assertiveness into the expansion of China’s economy and infrastructure, and its foreign relations. The Belt and Road Initiative he initiated has greatly increased China’s influence across the great Eurasian continent and into Africa.
Meanwhile, what of technology? In 2015, China’s leaders introduced a plan called “Made in China 2025”, aspiring to upgrade China’s labour-intensive manufacturing industries to technology-intensive. The US and Western Europe are used to their status as the world’s technological front-runners and have resisted the challenge from China. In 2018, the American think-tank the Council on Foreign Relations declared China’s plan as “a threat to US technological leadership”.
The best example of China’s technological advance is the telecommunications company Huawei Technologies, founded in 1987 and centred in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province. This has done extraordinarily well and in 2012 overtook Ericsson as the world’s largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer.
The West has recently gone out of its way to block Huawei’s technological advantages. Most of the main Western telecommunications systems have banned or resisted Huawei in their fifth-general (5G) telecommunications networks, claiming it as a threat to national security, while African and Central Asian have adopted it. China has responded by trying to manufacture all essential technology inside China. At the end of 2020 overall success is far from clear, but Huawei is extremely unlikely to succumb to American blandishments.
And in various other respects, China has advanced technologically beyond what would have been conceivable not so long ago. Examples include artificial intelligence technology, space research and medical advance, with China being one of the front-runners in developing and manufacturing vaccines against the COVID-19 pandemic. China’s high-speed railway system is now the best in the world.
The year 2020 has seen massive changes in the world order. The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted heavily on already existing trends. Many of these are crucial for the world, such as climate change and the environment, world population and health and global economic trends. However, here the focus is on the global balance of power, especially Sino-American relations.
The most important factor is the attempts by the Trump Administration, especially since 2018, to decouple from China, launch a trade war against it and damage its economy. This has completed reversed the Nixon understanding of 1972. In 2020, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been actively travelling around the world trying to persuade the leaders of every country to cooperate in opposing China and even in overthrowing the Chinese Communist Party. The US has gone out of its way to exacerbate the ideological divide, and to thwart China’s rise.
As far as the Anglophone world is concerned, it has been broadly successful. To a greater or lesser extent, China has become “the enemy”, even though such a position is clearly against the interests of those countries. Continental Europe is also moving away from China, though the situation there is much more complex and fragmented.
The ability to deal with COVID-19 has varied greatly throughout the world. After an initial period of great difficulty, China has been able to manage the pandemic very well. By the end of 2020, life is more or less back to normal in most places.
Meanwhile, in the United States and Europe, life is anything but normal. Trump directly blamed China for the pandemic, calling COVID-19 “the China virus” and “the Wuhan virus”, many of his supporters believing him with a consequent devastating impact on China’s image. Lockdowns remain common at the end of 2020, with many countries actually banning travel from Britain due to the emergence of a new COVID-19 strain there.
China’s economy remains the only major one to register growth in 2020. On the other hand, the world economy and those of the Western countries have fallen into recession, with the strong possibility of worse to come.
In political terms, the divergence is also widening. China has certainly experienced tensions, especially in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, but it has remained stable, and the CCP shows no signs of succumbing to attempts to overthrow it. At the same time, the United States is more divided than ever. Not only have racial tensions worsened, but Trump has really shown himself as little better than an overgrown spoilt boy in his reaction to his loss in the 2020 presidential elections. His narrative that the election was stolen has not withstood any testing by the courts. Yet not only has Trump refused to concede defeat, but reports suggest he has widespread support for his stand. What this says is that the American political institutions are under serious question in much of society. That will not be fatal to American democracy, but cannot help but be very damaging.
The overall conclusion is that the global balance of power has again shifted in China’s favour by the end of 2020.
So will the situation change with Joe Biden as US President? In domestic politics he will try to reduce divisions and show some graciousness to political enemies. In foreign relations, his will be a less abrasive Administration, less willing to offend allies, less generally bullying and demanding. He will be more willing to offer leadership on matters like climate change and trade. But on China, any change will be marginal, not essential. He is not going to bring the US back to the position of leadership it occupied in the years following World War II.
This does not mean that the US is on its last legs. But with the pandemic still rampant, its institutions under suspicion and its race relations worse than ever, there would be no surprise if Chinese people thought its much-vaunted freedom and democracy vastly overrated.
So what of the medium-term future, meaning the next few decades? World tensions could well worsen, though apocalyptic change is unlikely. The trends that have brought about the rise of China are likely to continue, while those that are pointing towards the decline of the US and the West will persist, or even intensify.
For Australia, we need to accommodate this situation. Unlike some others, I don’t take an alarmist view of this. China does not constitute a threat to Australian security. It does not want to colonize Australia or undermine its current political system. It will certainly want greater influence vis-à-vis the United States. Unfortunately, Australia seems keener to fawn on the US and allow the relationship with China to slide. This is flatly contrary to our interests.
We are moving into a different world, which will see China more influential and the US less so, especially in our region. That is not necessarily worse than our present situation. Given China’s demonstrated unwillingness to go to war, in stark contrast to the American tendency to drag us into wars that don’t concern us, it could even be an improvement.
COLIN MACKERRAS, AO, FAHA is Professor Emeritus at Griffith University, Queensland. He has visited and worked in China many times. He is a specialist on Chinese history, theatre, minority nationalities, Western images of China and Australia-China relations and has written widely on all topics. His many books include Western Perspectives on the People’s Republic of China, Politics, Economy and Society, World Scientific Publishing, Singapore, 2015.
Comments
32 responses to “The long-term global balance of power is favouring China”
Happy new year to everyone here, may 2021 bring about peace and good health.
As an overseas Chinese born and raised in Singapore, I don’t have real skin in the spat between China / Australia. What I could contribute to the conversation though is the observations I made in Chinese forums and medias, by virtue of having the abilities to read Mandarin Chinese.
2014 was a year of great joy to Chinese in terms of relationship with Australia, where their President Xi was invited to Canberra to deliver a speech. The enormous amount of pride for Chinese was highly obvious and perception of Australia was extremely positive, which translates to boom of tourism / education and purchasing of Australia produces.
Before I go further, one would be hard pressed to find a Xinjiang / Hong Kong / Human Rights / SCS etc in Australia MSM, before the Murdoch controlled media really dialed up the rhetorics in tandem with ASPI. Even ASPI’s articles, by today’s measures, were considered mild and investigative back in 2014 when it comes to Sino-Australia relationship. (So what changed?)
Therefore the sharp deterioration in bi-lateral relationship caught many Chinese by surprise (again from what I read in the forums) and many were inquiring what happened?
Why does Australia suddenly hate us (China Chinese)?
Today’s the shift in perception is almost completed and I am afraid it will take ages to even restore to the level of Sino-Australia relationship to what it was, prior to 2014, if its even possible.
Happy new year to everyone here, may 2021 bring about peace and good health.
As an overseas Chinese born and raised in Singapore, I don’t have real skin in the spat between China / Australia. What I could contribute to the conversation though is the observations I made in Chinese forums and medias, by virtue of having the abilities to read Mandarin Chinese.
2014 was a year of great joy to Chinese in terms of relationship with Australia, where their President Xi was invited to Canberra to deliver a speech. The enormous amount of pride for Chinese was highly obvious and perception of Australia was extremely positive, which translates to boom of tourism / education and purchasing of Australia produces.
Before I go further, one would be hard pressed to find a Xinjiang / Hong Kong / Human Rights / SCS etc in Australia MSM, before the Murdoch controlled media really dialed up the rhetorics in tandem with ASPI. Even ASPI’s articles, by today’s measures, were considered mild and investigative back in 2014 when it comes to Sino-Australia relationship. (So what changed?)
Therefore the sharp deterioration in bi-lateral relationship caught many Chinese by surprise (again from what I read in the forums) and many were inquiring what happened?
Why does Australia suddenly hate us (China Chinese)?
Today’s the shift in perception is almost completed and I am afraid it will take ages to even restore to the level of Sino-Australia relationship to what it was, prior to 2014, if its even possible.
One is aware that according to some analysis, the US is overly paranoid due to idoeology, and under the Trump administration this also includes isolationism via immigration law and trade restrictions.
However, withstanding the Trump and white nationalist immigration policies being a blip, demographics do not look good for China with below replacement fertility rates, ageing population and no immigration. Conversely the US would continue to expand modestly with a younger population; China will become older before it becomes richer (compared with the developed world).
Although, there is a concern about the surplus of males vs. females in China, not just the demographic impact, but the socal impact of many single men.
Mark my words: As American imperial power wanes, there will be even more bullying of their Stockholmed vassals like Oz as anti-China cannon fodder. Hell, even they can’t stand their own vassals for being too competitive in an industrial sector, which is why they crippled Japan’s semiconductor industry and France’s Alstom etc.
The recent trade spats are just the beginning of what is to come, if Oz still can’t get it’s vital priorities right now you guys will be swimming with the fishes when this is over.
The hook is set too deep, there is no possibility of our changing anything, we’ve been owned and controlled for decades. The vassal state indeed.
The UK too, now it is outside of the EU, thanks to long term disruption by libertarian US led think tanks/media, and vulnerable to manipulation from Trump’s White House, and now non cooperation from the Biden White House?
Last Century America was almost continuously at war somewhere on the globe – John Menadue points this out among others. So far for 19 years this current Century, its been the same. Yet the fact is that the USA has held all of these wars in far away places, in other countries, and left a shocking mess behind to clean up. Meanwhile the US has never been invaded, nor has it experienced an international war within its own mainland borders that was triggered by another country. Even at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, there was no invasion by the Japanese, only an attack, mainly on US war machines to throw them out of action. Ironically that was only 48 years after the US had stolen Hawaii from its traditional owners. Annexation it was called, a nice euphemism.
I don’t think China will take potshots from Murderin’ Molan, the lunatic major.
Good to see “technological advance” mentioned in the article. The aim to maintain technological dominance is fundamental in US policy regarding China. Technological developments rest in turn on broad based, high quality, research in STEM areas (and that in turn on quality education). Here China excels. A few specific areas are mentioned (in some: high speed rail, cell phone communications, China has refined and developed existing technology) but analysis of output of research papers for the past 20 years, over almost all areas of science and engineering, shows a dramatic and clear pattern.In 2000 the US was the nation with biggest output in every field, accounting for about 25% of global total. By 2019 China had become the nation with largest research output in almost every field, typically about 25% of global total and in many cases two or three times that of the US.
This lays the basis for China’s material development in coming decades.
I concur with Prof Mackerras that the rise of China does not mean the US has declined. If there is no threat of attack or colonization from China, then these irrational fears of China are manufactured to feed the Cold War 2. Unlike Cold War 1, CW2 is poorly planned and executed with no contigency plan in any adverse consequences happening. It is totally an exclusion game and will only bring conflict & tension in the Asia Pacific for another 10 years.
Such fears are surely not irrational in Australia. Anthony, you must have noticed what China is doing to Australia. Very much a cold war attitude. China is undoubtedly excluding Australia.
Australia declared cold war on China, and China adjusted its trade policy accordingly.
Barney do you ever take a look at Chinese newspapers? The ones said to be the propaganda of the CCP by our journalists, like the Global Times. It has been attempting to communicate with Australia for a long while now. It’ s been expressing its views very clearly and also telling us about what Australia has done to bring about cold war conditions. Don’t say we were not warned. Shutting the door in China’s face has been largely our doing, and I think they are still wondering why this has happened. They also claim to have been shut out of $14 billion of trade by Australia, not counting Huawei.
And in any case, the US and Britain created the cold war conditions against Russia, especially after the Russian revolution, and now we are doing exactly the same nonsense again with China. Russia has also always been considered an Asian country by Britain, and never a Western country. Anti Russian sentiment was a alive and well during the 19th Century in Britain.
Much later in the 20th Century this is what the US’s General Paton of WWII fame wrote:
“The difficulty in understanding the Russians we do not take cognizance
of the fact he is not a European, but an asiatic therefore thinks deviously.
We can no more understand a Russian than Chinese or a Japanese.
From what I have seen of them I have no particular desire to understand
them except to ascertain how much lead or iron it takes to kill them.
In addition to his other amiable characteristics, the Russians have
no regard for human life and they are all out son of bitches,barbarians
and chronic drunks.”
One of the things China has been clearly saying in the GT is that we’ve been the US’s mouthpiece more than the US has been. They see us as the leading country in the world running the anti-Chinese campaign.
“One of the things China has been clearly saying in the GT is that we’ve
been the US’s mouthpiece more than the US has been. They see us as the
leading country in the world running the anti-Chinese campaign.”
That reminds me of Billy Hughes representing Australia at the 1919 Versailles peace conference. Keynes regarded him as the most vindictive and obnoxious voice there, contributing most to its vengeful, failed outcome. Well, we selected him. 100 years have gone by, and its about time Australians who are not arseholes like Hughes put the boot into those that are.
Do you study physics in school ?
Newton’s law
Action ==> reaction
This is classic western hubris.
YOu hit somebody, when he strike back, you scream murder,
YOu’r Blaming the victim.
The Chinese say it better….
A bandit crying robbery.
Well that’s certainly one way of looking at, and you have a lot of supporters on this website. From my perspective, it’s the greedy fat boy telling Australia give me all your food or I’ll punch you to the floor.
Cold War 1 was able to unite the world’s property interests against their declared enemy, communism. Cold War 2 is different. Far from being a threat to capital, China has opened its arms to it, and for long term security and profit, has become the best place for Americans and others to invest their capital. The West has become a threat to investment because you are more likely to lose money there. Hard-headed international capitalists are easily tempted to shift their money out of shrinking economies into a growing one. Cold War 2 is the work of nationalist/militarist elements in the West fighting to stop that happening. Nationalists in America, and pan-European “nationalists” in the EU are hostile to China because their countries will decline economically as capital shifts to where it is used more efficiently. Their hostility is in many respects playing to a local audience: frightening capital out of moving to China and getting it to invest at home.
Of course that is not the whole story. Another major aspect is the Christian West’s traditional desire to convert other cultures to its own way of life, or if that fails, punish them as heretics. For that I recommend Voltaire’s brilliant piece on China tacked on as the last chapter to his “The age of Louis XIV” published in 1751.
President Duterte in the Philippines has just raised the stakes on the US. He is demanding that the US supply 20 million vaccines, failing which the Visiting Forces Agreement will be terminated. The VFA is critical to permission for the US Navy to sail through the West Philippines Sea. Predictably not reported in the Australian media. PRC and Russia are supplying vaccines to the Philippines now.
https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/09/14/20/duterte-prefers-covid-19-vaccines-from-china-russia
This is of enormous significance to the waning US influence in the Philippines. Just love Rodrigo.
This report is from Rappler an anti Duterte so called news outlet. For that joker who reckons i am in the pay of the PRC. LOL
https://www.rappler.com/nation/duterte-dangles-vfa-us-made-vaccine-december-2020
For most in the West, Duterte is seen as a human rights violator over his drug policy on mainly heroin addicts, but if you actually listen to what he says on other issues, he knows America’s appalling history with the Philippines after the Spanish American War in great detail, and is far from their ally. He leans more towards Beijing now, and unlike US glove puppet Australia, has been getting the best out of the US and China for the sake of improving his own country.
Here we might as well fly the US flag over the top of Canberra’s parliament house.
Years ago when George W. Bush visited Canberra, I became part of the demonstration near the prime minister’s Lodge where John Howard was entertaining Bush with a good old Aussie barbecue luncheon. The only flag I could see flying above the lodge from wherever I walked was the Stars and Stripes.
The pernicious drug in Philippines is shabu or methamphetamine. It is estimated that the Philippines has 4 million shabu addicts. Duterte will lean even more strongly to PRC and Russia with the Biden “human rights champions” moving in. Considering that the Philippines was a neo-colony of the US under Aquino (like Australia) the shift towards PRC and Russia by the Philippines is a dramatic illustration of the weakening of the US in Asia. Of course Morrison and the Trumpists in Canberra have bet everything on the US.
I saw him giving a long talk where he referred to heroin being a problem that was out of control, but I’ll certainly accept your correction, I’m no expert on that and of course methamphetamine use is so widespread these days.
I was mainly impressed with his knowledge of US imperialism and the mass killings that the US carried out in the Philippines after the Spanish American wars. The man knows his history very well despite his unpalatable sides which we only ever hear about here.
He is from Mindanao. The US genocide against the Moro indigenous people of Mindanao was atrocious. In total perhaps 700,000 Filipinos were slaughtered by the US military led by MacArthur’s father from 1898 to 1910. That was one tenth of the population. Human rights claims against Duterte by the US and Australia are justifiably treated with contempt in Mindanao.
You’re one of only people I have met online that knows this story so well, and also that Duterte is not subservient lickspittle to the US. Yet the Philippines is always cited as an opponent to China over the South China Sea issues to bolster the US case.
The issue of the West Philippines Sea is a fascinating story of US provocation and Philippines corruption. The claim to the Spratleys originated with the Marcos dictatorship when both Vietnam and the PRC where distracted (to put it mildly) with the Vietnam War in the 1970’s. Marcos illegally and criminally established Pag-Asa Island as the Philippines’ northernmost frontier. Marcos issued Presidential Decree (PD) 1 596 that defined the extent of Philippine territory including the Kalayaan Island Group with Pag-AsaIsland as its municipality. When the Philippines became signatory to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in 1981 , Marcos issued Executive Order (EO) 738 establishing a Cabinet Committee on the Treaty of the Law of the Sea (CABCOM-LOS). Marcos with a few cronies did this with the Chevron Oil company. So we have Australia now staunchly defending the kleptocracy legacy of Marcos in the West Philippines Sea. Duterte to the chagrin of the US and its puppet Australia will not sacrifice one Filipino in a war over the Marcos claims in the West Philippines Sea. But Morrison has a gunboat chugging around there. Its a joke.
Thanks Skilts
As usual all of the history behind this is omitted in the rotten and lazy media so eager to press for another war, stir up controversy to increase sales, or just willing to be the mouth piece for the US and our ignorant prime minister who appears devoid of genuine diplomacy skills.
I’ve never read the story behind this like you have recorded here. Thanks again.
Thank you mate for your interest. The Australian media apart from here and a few honorable exceptions is a disgrace.
If I remember correctly, as soon as the 1st Gulf War was decided, PM Bob Hawke called President George HW Bush to inform him that ‘We are coming!”—- BEFORE even being asked! How good are we? What do you call a canine who knows the master’s wishes even before the master himself?
That was a broad coalition of like minded nations with a limited mandate to support Kuwait after invasion. 2nd Gulf War was confected, a broad or undefined mandate (e.g. WMDs….) and automatic support for a limited coalition, by Howard and the LNP without a need to consult.
Thinking about the next few decades we need to factor in climate change. Which means getting some ideas about regional and national impacts. If the Chinese state responds well it will likely strengthen the Party’s legitimacy.
Another aspect is the “green economy” supply chains which will have a growing economic significance. The green energy supply chains are dominated by PRC with 73% of the worlds global lithium cell manufacturing capacity.PRC lithium reserves in 2018 were one million metric tons, nearly 30 times U.S. levels.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2019/08/04/why-china-is-dominating-lithium-ion-battery-production/?sh=2d2313143786
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02464-5
The grand irony is that elected members of Australias parliament have very close ties to Australian commercial interests, yet Australia remains an economic basket case.