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The rise of China is assured, but never as a Military hegemony

(2018-04-30 03:54:06) 下一个

 

China’s rise is assured in our new world order, but not as a hegemony

 

Jean-Pierre Lehmann says though one major power dominated the past two centuries – Britain in the 19th and America in the 20th – in the 21st century, no single country will be calling the shots. Instead, the tussle for influence will be fiercest on the Asia-Pacific stage

Image result for Jean-Pierre LehmannJean-Pierre Lehmann

Jean-Pierre Lehmann is emeritus professor at IMD, Lausanne, Switzerland, where he was appointed to the chair of international political economy in 1997. He has worked intensively and extensively across Asia for 50 years. He is founder of the Evian Group, an international coalition of corporate, government and opinion leaders united by a common vision of enhancing global prosperity for the benefit of all. He is currently visiting professor in the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Hong Kong and at NIIT University in Neemrana, Rajasthan, India

PUBLISHED : Friday, 13 October, 2017, 3:32pm
UPDATED : Saturday, 14 October, 2017, 3:20pm
 
 

During most of my working life, I have commuted physically and intellectually between western Europe and East Asia, where I spent part of my childhood and where I have over the years lived, studied, worked and taught. Of course, to get from one to the other, one has to traverse the Eurasian continent. Which is what I did. In the late 1960s/early 1970s, for example, I would take a ship from Portsmouth to Leningrad (as it then was), a train from Leningrad to Moscow, a plane from Moscow to Khabarovsk, a train from Khabarovsk to Nakhodka, a boat from Nakhodka to Yokohama, then, the final leg, a train from Yokohama to Tokyo.

I would occasionally stop for a few days along the way. The icy cold war atmosphere notwithstanding, the warmth (and liquidity: lots of vodka!) of Russian hospitality lived well up to its reputation. I had read in my teens lots of Russian literature, and was enthralled when I read 15 years ago that splendid history of Russian culture, Natasha’s Dance by Orlando Figes. That was 15 years ago, a year after China acceded to the World Trade Organisation. In the meantime, academically I remained an East-West guy.

I watched, totally bedazzled, the transformations occurring in the Asia-Pacific, especially the awesome developments in China. As a product of the mid-20th century, I was influenced by the view that the words “poor” and “Chinese” were synonymous. This was true not only in the West – whether in Europe or the United States – but also in Japan. The Chinatown in Yokohama, which I occasionally visited in the 1950s with my parents (who lived at the time in Tokyo), was poor. In the second half of the 1980s, when I was based in Tokyo, as rumours of a potential Chinese growth story began circulating and Japan was experiencing stratospheric growth, I found Japanese I spoke to quite dismissive.

By the beginning of this century, the China narrative has been dramatically transformed, as has its impact on the world. The global balance of economic power is moving from West to East, as the Atlantic centuries seem to be entering their concluding chapters and an Asia-Pacific century emerges in the 21st.

I have made a considerable effort over the past four years to become more immersed in Eurasian and Central Asian historical patterns, contemporary dynamics and future prospects. I have travelled not just physically, but also intellectually across much of the Eurasian continent. This has included most recently an intensive week of discussions in Moscow with Russian interlocutors from different professions and generations (including a high-school class of 15-year-olds) to hear how they see the world.

Here, I wish to emphasise the concept that Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Centre, introduced me to, and which I found very useful in constructing my new view of the world. Whereas recently, there has been much talk of whether Russia is pivoting to the East or maintaining its historical ties with Europe, Trenin speaks of a “360-degree vision, where Moscow serves as the central element of a new geopolitical construct: Eurasia writ large, aka Greater Eurasia”.

In this Greater Eurasia are the former great civilisations and great powers: China, India, Mongolia, Korea, Japan, the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations(especially Indonesia), the countries of Central Asia and the Levant, RussiaTurkey and the European Union. The EU’s past was integrated into that of Eurasia, and so, it would seem, will be its future. As Merkel implied in her speech in May, with Brexit and the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the Western alliance has reached its twilight.

In this Greater Eurasian space, China clearly dominates. Its gross domestic product is roughly 10 times the size of Russia’s and more than five times the size of India’s. But for a number of reasons, there will be no Chinese hegemon comparable to the UK or US. China is unlikely to match the US in hard power, and its soft power is weak.

The UK and the US gained hegemony in part by waging brutal imperialist wars and enforcing exploitative subjugation on much of the world – in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Whether China can be different, whether it can achieve its “peaceful rise”, will be the dominant question this century. Greater Eurasia is full of exciting potential. It is also, however, a geopolitical cauldron. Whatever happens, the narrative of the 21st century will be written there.

Jean-Pierre Lehmann is emeritus professor at IMD, founder of The Evian Group, and visiting professor at the University of Hong Kong

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