China and the New Century

Time via RCP.

Michael Elliot provides a surprisingly balanced and realistic view (coming from Time, anyway) of the growing importance of China in the world, the challenge to the West it poses, and the challenges it has to faces, both internally from its citizens and externally as it seeks the raw materials to feed its growing economy. Read the whole thing, it's actually pretty insightful.

"China is now so significant a player in the global economy that the alternative--waiting until China changes its ways--won't fly. There is still time to hope that China's way into the world will be a smooth one. Perhaps above anything else, the sheer scale of China's domestic agenda is likely to act as a brake on its doing anything dramatically destabilizing abroad.
On the optimistic view, then, China's rise to global prominence can be managed. It doesn't have to lead to the sort of horror that accompanied the emerging power of Germany or Japan. Raise a glass to that, but don't get too comfortable. There need be no wars between China and the U.S., no catastrophes, no economic competition that gets out of hand. But in this century the relative power of the U.S. is going to decline, and that of China is going to rise."

Elliot has some interesting notes on Chinese leader's diplomatic efforts as well. Chinese President Hu Jintao was thought to be a pretty conservative pick, with a decidedly domestic focus, but he has been pretty active in Chinese diplomatic efforts.

"While Wen Jiabao, China's Premier, was visiting 15 countries last year, Hu spent time in the U.S., Russia, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Nigeria and Kenya. In a three-week period toward the end of 2006, he played host to leaders from 48 African countries in Beijing, went to Vietnam for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, slipped over to Laos for a day and then popped off for a six-day tour of India and Pakistan. For someone whose comfort zone is supposed to be domestic affairs, that's quite a schedule."

Bottom line is that China, (and in my opinion, India and possibly Brazil as well), is going to be a global power in the coming years. We're rapidly moving away from a unipolar world to a multipolar one. The question for U.S. policy makers is how to both maintain its influence in world affairs while at the same time carefully mananging its relations in a positive direction with the new powers to be.