In fact, if we enjoy our modern world pattern of relative equality between nations, I'll say the "Free World" would do well to delay China's rise to dominance by a decade or two, even at a fairly heavy short term price (such as by instituting a devastating trade war that will hurt us but knock them back 10 years).
China's rise has to happen - you can't keep the world's most populous nation suppressed forever. However, our world will probably change a lot, and in a way we would not like, if we change from what is effectively an American suzerainty to a Chinese one at its present pace.
While for its time, Chinese suzerainty was relatively even-handed, it is a far sight from America's, at least as far as the "First World" nations are concerned,. Leaving their human rights record aside, their international behavior says they are still too close to 1979 when they attacked Vietnam - the most galling thing there is not so much that they attacked Vietnam (America attacks plenty of countries it dislikes), but when Deng Xiaoping described it to the Americans as "hitting the butts of naughty children". And there, we see that they are still linked to the ancient pattern of Sinocentric suzerainty.
Of course, the Chinese themselves are (though slowed by Chinese censorship), slowly absorbing Western thought, so there's hope of change to the Chinese people's zeitgeist, enough to make their new suzerainty a palatable experience. But their economic and military growth is going a bit too fast for it.
Of course, one disadvantage of democracies is that they are almost entirely incapable of taking such strategic action - short term interests or worse impulses always comes first.
Maybe we'll get lucky. Maybe the Chinese will do a massacre that we can't ignore. But they learned from Tianammen, so I'm not holding out hope.
|