Michael Cox 权力转移、经济变革与西方的衰落？

Michael Cox 权力转移、经济变革与西方的衰落？

2012年11月28日

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/power-shifts-economic-change-and-the-decline-of-the-west/power-shifts-economic-change-and-the-decline-of-the-west

迈克尔·考克斯教授，伦敦政治经济学院

0.1 摘要
21世纪初，我们熟知的西方世界正在迅速失去其主导地位，取而代之的是一个新的国际体系，这个体系要么由所谓的“金砖四国”塑造，要么由“其他国家”塑造，或者更通俗地说，由定义非常广泛的亚洲塑造。至少，许多经济学家、历史学家和世界政治学者现在是这样看待更广阔的国际体系未来的。本文并不质疑一些不言而喻的经济事实，也不假设50年后的世界仍将与现在一样。然而，它确实质疑了“权力转移”正在不可抗拒地发生，以及西方和美国正在急剧衰落的观点。具体来说，它对这种新叙事提出了一些批判性论点。首先，它指出，这种叙事合理地聚焦于世界正在发生的明显变化，却不幸地忽略了那些没有发生变化的事物；因此，它低估了美国及其主要西方盟友仍然享有的、可以笼统地称之为持续的结构性优势。其次，虽然许多新兴国家确实在世界经济中扮演着更重要的角色，但它们的崛起需要比以往更加谨慎地审视；事实上，当我们进行这样的审视时，就会越来越清楚地看到，包括中国在内的其他国家的崛起仍然受到诸多内外因素的阻碍。第三，尽管亚洲地区以及作为其一部分的中国正在更广泛的世界经济中扮演着越来越重要的角色，但这种发展本身并不对西方构成重大挑战。事实上，正如我在文章结尾所言，过去五到十年间作家们所关注的那些转变，与其说是对西方的挑战，不如说是对西方的补充。

0.2 引言
即使是最有历史头脑的人，记忆也常常会捉弄人，尤其是那些经历过过去十年动荡的人。事实上，现在几乎不可能回想起，在那场最出乎意料的、震惊世界的事件——被统称为“冷战结束”——发生之后的十年里，西方有多少人显得多么自信。平心而论，一些观察家确实感觉到，后冷战新秩序中存在着某种明显的不真实感，甚至可能是暂时的。1 一些人甚至预测，我们很快就会怀念冷战。2 但当时大多数评论家的看法并非如此。恰恰相反。在目睹苏联计划的迅速瓦解以及随后十年的全球市场扩张（亦称全球化）之后，大多数专家开始相信，自由市场、民主扩张和美国实力的成功结合将确保下一个千年的秩序。3 诚然，当时的西方似乎正处于绝对的上升期，重组曾经的计划经济，开放先前封闭的体系，吸纳昔日的敌人，并打破一度关闭的政治和经济大门。诚然，西方有时未能采取行动，例如在卢旺达；而且，西方常常忽视这样一个事实：一些行为体（后来因“9·11”事件而声名鹊起）显然尚未融入那个被称为“国际社会”的传说中的实体。但随着一个世纪的更迭，从美国太平洋沿岸到新统一的欧洲中部的西方世界似乎可以期待数十年充满自信的繁荣与和平。

这种乐观情绪在最后一个超级大国的土地上最为盛行。事实上，美国似乎正处于一个尤其令人羡慕的地位。一些人继续怀疑“单极时刻”是否真的只是幻觉。4 一两位分析人士甚至猜测美国实力的极限。5 偶尔也有特立独行的人继续重复保罗·肯尼迪的老话，认为美国正在衰落。6 除了最悲观的人之外，很少有人预见到未来会有任何其他大国崛起来平衡其强大的实力。相反，在击败苏联，并经历了自身八年的经济繁荣之后，美国和美国人可以合理地期待下一个完全属于美国的世纪。7 事实上，到20世纪90年代末，这种情绪如此高涨，以至于一些作家开始将美国描述为波托马克河上的新罗马，甚至是一个现代“帝国”，拥有全球影响力、无限的软实力和庞大的军事机器，可以

比赛。对某些人来说，美国的确已经成为历史上最强大的国家，并且拥有一个非常明显的特征：与从罗马到英国的历代强国不同，美国永远不会衰落。8

人们常说，每一次衰落之前都会有一段宽限期。或许，二十世纪最后一个狂妄自大的十年也是如此。但衰落到来之时，其影响之深远；以至于后来一家美国杂志不得不承认，2000年至2010年简直就是“地狱般的十年”。9 这十年当然始于“9·11”事件以及布什政府应对此事件的战略失误。10 随着经济确定性的逐渐丧失，情况持续恶化，最终导致西方金融危机在地缘政治上遭遇巨大挫折。11 而当西方自身日益明显地面临来自世界资本主义经济中其他非西方参与者的巨大挑战时，一些人认为情况每况愈下。2001年，高盛提出“金砖国家”的概念时，只有经济学家（而且数量不多）认真对待。12 但随着时间的推移，经济数据开始涌现，人们开始意识到，最初提出这一概念的吉姆·奥尼尔似乎有着非凡的先见之明。13 事实上，他基于严谨的经济研究的核心思想——即未来的经济秩序——东亚将不再像巴西、俄罗斯、印度和中国等经济体巨头那样受西方主导——这似乎提供了无可辩驳的证据，表明世界正处于一场全球革命之中。14 造成这种情况的原因是多方面的。但有一点是显而易见的。几个世纪以来一直围绕大西洋运转的国际体系的轴心正在向其他方向移动——要么转向亚洲地区，15 要么更笼统地转向被著名专栏作家费雷德·扎卡里亚含糊地称为“其他地区”的地区。16 这不仅仅是扎卡里亚或奥尼尔的观点。2004 年，时任《外交》杂志编辑警告西方，一场潜在的令人不安的“权力转移正在酝酿中”。17 几年过去了，一位在世界政治方面颇具影响力的自由派作家也提出了同样的观点。根据约翰·伊肯伯里的说法，问题不再是财富和权力是否正在从西方和北方转移。这一点是不言而喻的。他现在继续思考的问题是“由此将出现什么样的全球政治秩序”。18 自由主义倾向不那么强的尼尔·弗格森对此表示赞同。但在他看来，不仅仅是曾经“充斥着应用程序”的西方正在衰落。19 他所选择的“移居国”也是如此。“超级强国”不再是超级强国。20 美国的黄金时代已经过去，帝国正在衰落。21

不出所料，这些翻天覆地的变化在世界各地引发了激烈的争论，尤其是在西方国家。22 观点摇摆不定，一边是极度悲观的——他们认为所有权力转移都只会导致全球冲突加剧，23 另一边则坚持认为，新兴经济体只有将更多国家纳入世界市场，才能增加世界财富。然而，引发最热烈讨论的却是中国的崛起，正如罗伯特·阿特所观察到的，其原因非常充分。24事实上，几乎在一夜之间，似乎每个人都对中国发表了一些重要的看法。25观点分歧很大，一两位作者声称中国正迅速成为国际社会负责任的利益相关者，26少数人认为中国快速的经济扩张是西方避免全球经济衰退的唯一障碍，另一些人认为中国对美国霸权构成了真正的威胁，27还有更多的人认为，如果中国在西方从低增长跌至零增长的同时继续增长，它可能很快就会统治亚洲，28甚至统治世界。29但无论如何评价中国，有一件事是显而易见的。这个“不安分的帝国”30在经历了相对平静的十年（1999年一位作者甚至建议我们不要太认真地对待中国）31之后终于从沉睡中醒来，现在正准备登上世界霸主的宝座。一场重心转移正在发生32——或者至少有人如此认为——无论人们是否将中国的经济崛起视为必然结果33、将其视为对其19世纪屈辱时期的必要纠正34、是否担心其对全球经济和政治秩序的影响35，或是否认为其崛起必然会导致“激烈的安全竞争”36，有一件事是肯定的：国际体系正在经历一场甚至连西方政府现在都认为将永远改变世界的变革37。

接下来，我想探讨一下许多人现在认为的世界秩序不可逆转的变化所引发的问题。我这样做的目的并非探究所有这些

他的方法，如果有的话，是为了国际关系理论（这在其他地方已经做过）38，而是质疑现在流行的我们已经进入“后西方世界”的观点是否属实。39 显然，我并不质疑一些不证自明的经济事实。40 然而，正如卡尔多年前指出的那样，事实并不总是不言自明的；即使有些人似乎认为事实如此，它们仍然可以以某种方式被排列组合，从而描绘出一幅不完整的现代世界图景。

我在下面提出了几个论点。其一，这个现代故事虽然令人兴奋且有趣，但它往往几乎完全关注正在快速变化的事物，而很少提及没有变化的事物——而变化远低于一些人现在认为的变化的是美国在世界上的地位。41 术语上也存在混淆。没有一个严肃的人会否认过去几年世界经济形态发生了可衡量的变化。然而，太多的作家要么假设经济重心的转移与权力转移是一回事（事实并非如此）； 42 或者，他们得出结论，随着这些经济变化的持续，要么导致权力从一个霸权国转移到另一个霸权国（这一点值得怀疑），43 要么创造一个现在经常（并且可疑地）被称为新“亚洲世纪”的时代。44 我将努力表明，这些断言包含严重的分析缺陷。我坚持认为，同样有缺陷的是我们能够对世界未来走向做出大胆预测的想法。但正如丹·加德纳令人信服地表明的那样，正确预测未来在过去已被证明是愚蠢的。45 我想说，这为那些现在自信地预测未来几十年将发生重大权力转移的人提供了重要的教训。46 “其他国家”现在可能正在快速增长，而美国和欧盟则在萎靡不振。然而，正如更多冷静的分析人士所指出的，西方的危机可能不会永远持续下去，而其他国家（包括印度47和中国48）面临的诸多问题，可能会阻碍它们在经济排行榜上看似势不可挡的崛起。当然，没有什么是永恒的。一个新的世界或许正在形成。但它可能并非如今世界各地热议的那个世界。

0.3 美国经济衰退？
正如我们已经指出的，支持“权力转移”正在发生这一观点的大部分理由都基于这样一个假设：西方的领头羊——美利坚合众国——正面临着一场不可阻挡的经济衰退。如果这种衰退持续下去，要么会让其他国家趁虚而入，要么会削弱其领导能力。当然，许多普通美国人以及那些评论当今美国的人都相信情况确实如此。49 当然，这个故事可以用，而且已经用非常不同的方式讲述过。对于一些人来说，这个过程可能会很缓慢，并且可以相当容易地、甚至“礼貌地”进行处理。50 对于其他人来说，它必然会产生巨大的影响，不仅对美国外交政策的实施，而且对整个世界。当然，如果有人接受霸权稳定理论（并认为霸权正在衰落），那么世界的未来看起来确实非常棘手。51 无论如何，鉴于美国在世界贸易中的份额下降、中国经济崛起、债务增加、经济自2008年以来放缓，以及其对外国债务购买者的依赖程度不断上升，许多分析人士认为，至少美国要么“需要收缩”，52 要么更棘手地将接力棒交给其他更强大的大国。53

关于美国经济衰退的争论由来已久。54 事实上，自20世纪60年代末以来，一位又一位专家一直在预测美国将面临可怕的局面，理由是，正如一位作家在1977年所言，美国正在变成一个非常普通的国家。55 十年后，保罗·肯尼迪也提出了类似的观点，56 伊曼纽尔·沃勒斯坦在2002年也提出了类似的观点，57 随后大卫·卡莱奥也提出了类似的观点。几年后。58 事实上，自20世纪60年代末以来，几乎没有一个时刻——除了20世纪90年代的“单极时刻”（甚至那时也没有）——人们不曾对美国经济的未来进行猜测。但这一次，我们可以放心，衰退是“真实的”。根据最近一项研究（由一位英国记者撰写），由于教育体系不再适用、中产阶级正在倒退、政治体系陷入僵局，美国正处于自由落体状态，几乎没有时间恢复。59

当然，美国存在诸多经济问题，这一点毋庸置疑。同样不容置疑的是，它今天在世界GDP中的份额远低于，比如说，25年前，更不用说二战结束时，它是世界资本主义体系中唯一重要的参与者了。60 但这绝不等同于暗示美国正处于不可逆转的经济衰退之中。

认为美国经济正在衰退——现在是一种普遍观点——或者认为中国已经赶超美国——同样流行的观点。即使以最简单的 GDP 衡量标准，美国也远远领先于中国。因此，人口约占世界总人口 20% 的中国创造了全球 GDP 的七分之一到十分之一，而人口仅占世界人口 6% 的美国仍然创造了全球 GDP 的 20% 到 25%。事实上，按照简单的 GDP 衡量标准，美国经济仍然比接下来的四个最大经济体（即中国、日本、德国和英国）的总和还要强大。比较世界各地的平均生活水平，尤其是与金砖国家相比，差距更大。显然，这些国家数百万人的生活正在改善；贫困正在减少；新的中产阶级正在形成。尽管如此，金砖国家（最明显的是印度和巴西）仍然存在大量贫困人口。此外，就生活水平而言，美国仍然遥遥领先，其总体平均水平比巴西高出四倍，比中国高出六倍，比印度高出十五倍之多。61

对于发展经济学家来说，这一切或许并不令人意外。然而，奇怪的是，这却让美国公众感到震惊，因为他们在2012年得出了一个略显奇怪的结论：美国在经济上已被中国超越，而且很可能将越来越落后于太平洋彼岸的中国这个经济劲敌。62 事实上，《经济学人》最近的一项研究巧妙地阐述了认知与现实之间的差距。在此，作者们对“衰落论者”的挑战并非将美国与其他国家经济体进行比较，而是将其他国家经济体与联邦内的特定州进行比较。结果很有启发。举个例子：加利福尼亚州。以GDP计算，它仍然略微比巴西和俄罗斯富裕，几乎是土耳其和印度尼西亚（这两个经济体现在受到越来越多的赞扬）的两倍。与此同时，德克萨斯州的经济规模几乎与俄罗斯相当，略小于印度。63 这听起来不像是一个正在衰落的经济体。

如果说美国并非当今许多文献中所描述的那个正在衰落的经济超级大国，那么它仍然能够做到其他国家梦寐以求的事情。这部分是由于它的规模；部分是由于地理位置的运气（美国拥有大量的石油、天然气、煤炭和粮食）；部分是由于它在更广泛的世界经济体系中的根深蒂固的地位。正如卡拉·诺洛夫最近所指出的，尽管自二战结束以来经济逐渐衰退，但美国仍然拥有一些关键特征，使其拥有她所谓的“区位优势”，超越所有其他国家。她甚至挑战了如今盛行的美国霸权负担大于收益的观点。她提出了相反的观点：华盛顿在提供公共产品方面实际上获得的收益大于其付出的收益。64 美国还有另一个非常特殊的优势：美元。正如道格·斯托克斯令人信服地指出的那样，这种特殊的“金融实力赋予美国广泛的特权”，归根结底，这是“其他国家愿意购买、持有和使用美元”的副产品。他们这样做当然并非因为他们特别爱美国人，而是为了维护一个经济体系，而他们的自身繁荣仍然依赖于这个体系的健康。此外，正如斯托克斯继续指出的那样，即使是金融危机也没有像一些人认为的那样削弱美国的地位。事实上，在一个充满不确定性的世界（最明显的是欧盟），最纯粹的“货币”已经逃往安全之地，而没有哪个地方被认为比美国更安全。讽刺的是，从这个意义上来说，金融危机非但没有削弱美国的金融实力，反而巩固了它。 65

我们评判经济实力，不仅要看经济规模，还要看“竞争力”这一定性标准。像中国、印度和巴西这样的经济体无疑规模庞大，而且随着时间的推移，规模无疑会越来越大。但这并不一定意味着它们与大多数西方国家或美国相比具有竞争力。最近的一项调查显示，美国在15个国家中位列世界第四。此外，这15个国家中有11个国家明确属于西方国家，而其他4个国家包括日本、台湾、香港和新加坡——这些国家都与西方和美国关系密切。至于金砖国家，它们的排名则靠后。中国排在第27位，印度排在第51位，巴西排在第58位，俄罗斯排在第63位。66 其他研究也得出了类似的结论。

得出的结论大体上与此类似，即一些“新兴”经济体与许多较为成熟的经济体（尤其是美国）之间仍然存在着质的差距。在尖端科技研究方面，美国仍然保持着明显的领先地位。2008年，美国占全球研发支出总额的40%，占全球专利新技术发明的38%。更重要的是，美国的科研成果占全球引用总数的49%，占被引用次数最多的论文的63%。美国还继续聘用了全球约70位诺贝尔奖获得者，并拥有其被引用次数最多的科技研究人员的三分之二。67

创新也是美国的一大优势。68 其他国家显然正在迎头赶上。然而，美国仍然是一个在各个领域持续创新的国家。批评人士无疑会指出，美国的排名正在下滑。然而，它仍然位居世界第四。与此同时，中国在2009年仅排在第54位，印度排在第56位，巴西和俄罗斯则落后得更远。当然，这还没有考虑到长期的变化，也没有考虑到像中国这样的国家正在齐心协力建设更具创新性的经济。69

但正如中国人也承认的那样，它还有很长的路要走。事实上，尽管官方努力鼓励中国所谓的“自主创新能力”，但中国政治经济仍然存在一些弱点。其中最突出的是“知识产权执法不力、教育体系强调死记硬背而不是批判性思维，以及缺乏能够评估科学进步的独立机构”。70 此外，还有更广泛的政治限制。创新通常需要公开辩论、挑战既定真理的能力以及思考不可想象之事的动力；坦率地说，这些在当今的现代中国都鲜有体现。71

最后，就全球经济实力而言，美国在另一个重要方面仍然遥遥领先：企业实力。72一些新兴经济体正在开始迎头赶上；美国在欧洲和亚洲的一些最亲密的盟友则位居第二。73 但美国显然仍处于“民意调查位置”，美国公司占据全球前 10 名公司中的 4 家，前 30 名中的 14 家，前 50 名中的 25 家。西方公司总体上仍然超过所有其他公司，美国和欧盟加起来在全球前 10 名公司中占据 6 家，前 30 名中的 22 家，前 50 名中的 37 家。金砖四国的一些经济体确实有一些非常大的公司，其中中国毫无意外地处于领先地位，在前 10 名中占据 4 家，前 50 名中占据 8 家，在前 500 名中占据 61 家；对于一个仅在25年前在世界经济中几乎无足轻重的国家来说，这无疑是一项非凡的成就。74 然而，正如布鲁金斯学会最近的一项研究表明，这并不意味着这些公司在国际上活跃，甚至不应被视为真正意义上的“跨国公司”。事实上，中国排名前57位的大陆公司中，有49家仍然处于国家控制之下；除极少数例外，绝大多数公司主要在国内运营——原因有很多，包括缺乏具备必要语言技能和海外工作经验的管理人员、缺乏透明度、全球品牌影响力较弱，以及难以轻松适应外国的法律、税收和政治环境。75

0.4 硬实力——软实力：什么是实力？
如果美国保留了一些非常强大的经济资产，那么它在更广泛的国际体系中仍然非常强大的地位也同样如此。当然，这种观点已不再是流行的观点。事实上，正如我们已经指出的，伊拉克战争的失策、“反恐战争”中的酷刑、2008年美国金融体系的濒临崩溃以及此后美国经济的缓慢复苏，这些因素共同导致许多人质疑美国领导其他国家或争取其对外政策支持的能力。布赞或许对此做出了最深刻的阐释。他早在2008年就宣称美国代表着自由主义的未来，如今却“破灭”了。与此同时，美国模式不再令人钦佩。想要效仿它的州的数量正在迅速减少。他继续说道，更普遍地说，霸权在国际社会中变得越来越“不合法”。结果，美国在世界上的地位变得越来越“脆弱”。76

显然，这种说法有其道理，这也是为什么这种论点在那些认为我们正处于“权力转移”之中的人中如此受欢迎的原因之一。

但显然，该报告的一个问题在于，它严重低估了美国在奥巴马总统提议的非常有限的削减之后仍能动员的硬实力。77 在弱者可以对强者造成巨大伤害的非对称战争时代，军事力量的重要性日益降低，这种观点在学术界或许颇为流行。然而，美国能够动员尽可能多的军事人力（目前美国陆军的男女士兵人数比“9·11”事件前夕还要多），78 能够将军事力量投射到地球的每个角落，仍然是亚洲和欧洲安全的主要提供者，并且在“国防”上的支出也依然如此——约占世界国防总支出的45%——这些事实本身就表明，美国距离成为超级大国还有很长的路要走。其他国家的军事实力也无法与其相比，即使是中国，也拥有庞大的常备军（自 1979 年灾难性的入侵越南之后就没有再打过仗）79 和日益壮大的远洋海军，现在拥有一艘航空母舰80。事实上，当中国的第一艘航空母舰终于在 2011 年首次进行海试时，该地区的警钟就响了起来。81 然而，中国的一艘航空母舰根本无法与美国的 11 艘航母战斗群相比。中国军队的持续现代化也远未达到美国的水平。最新数据显示，美国在国家安全方面的支出不仅是中国的五倍，而且其在该地区的许多盟友（其中包括日本、韩国、印度和澳大利亚）的军费开支也高于中国，而且差距很大——美国近 2000 亿美元，而中国为 1150 亿美元。 82

这反过来又应该警示我们美国在世界上的显赫地位的另一个方面：其极其广泛的联盟体系。布赞或许是对的。或许现在愿意像冷战时期那样“追随”美国的国家越来越少。此外，巴基斯坦、土耳其和埃及等一些“问题”国家与华盛顿的关系也日益紧张。尽管如此，即使是那些对美国领导能力心存疑虑的人，也发现他们别无选择，只能与美国结盟。对于那些除了美国之外看不到其他安全保障的欧洲人来说，情况显然如此。但对于拉丁美洲、非洲和亚洲的一些关键国家来说，情况也是如此。更确切地说，在亚洲，情况尤其如此；事实上，随着中国的崛起，大多数亚洲国家（包括共产党领导的越南）都要求美国在该地区加强而非削弱其存在。因此，中国如今陷入了一种矛盾的境地：在亚洲，经济影响力日渐增强，但朋友却越来越少。83 从这个意义上讲，其不断增长的经济实力并没有转化为更大的政治影响力。84 其在亚洲的强硬政策也于事无补。恰恰相反，中国宣称对南海拥有主权，85 并对其唯一盟友朝鲜的侵略行为保持沉默，这实际上增强了美国的地位，而不是削弱了美国的地位。86 事实上，正是因为中国并不“令人信服”，该地区大多数国家才有可能将美国视为众所周知的“不可或缺的国家”，其自身的安全最终取决于其持续存在。87

美国在亚洲的持续存在引发了一个更广泛的问题：广义上的“权力”是否真的像现在经常声称的那样，正在从西方倾斜。中国很可能成为推动世界经济的新引擎。它在非洲、巴西和澳大利亚的经济作用可能已经变得至关重要。中国的新兴中产阶级或许正在购买越来越多西方乐于出售的高端产品。然而，迄今为止，中国在赢得其他国家友谊和建立信任关系方面远未成功。说中国在世界范围内“普遍受到怀疑”或许有些夸张。88 但中国在与世界互动时确实面临一些严重困难。部分问题在于文化。尽管中国已经迈出了新的开放步伐，但仍然对“外国人”心存疑虑。此外，绝大多数中国人的观念极其封闭，对中国境外的世界缺乏经验，也几乎不了解。89 事实上，许多中国高级决策者也面临同样的境况，他们中的大多数人很少出国，外语也不太流利，而且都是在中国共产党的隐秘世界中长大的。但还有一个更大的意识形态和政治问题。中国或许是一个贸易超级大国。但它缺乏远见，也不知道如何才能成为一个严肃的

担任领导职务，承担随之而来的所有责任和风险。如果说中国有什么不同的话，那就是它极不具备领导能力，因为它对世界抱有防御性、近乎怀疑的态度，并且不断重申威斯特伐利亚的旧咒语：国家应该管好自己的事情。而且，也没有太多迹象表明它愿意这样做。当然，中国人自己也非常坦诚。他们重申，我们的外交政策目标是创造一个国际环境，使我们能够专注于国内事务和经济增长；任何干扰我们完成这项需要数十年才能完成的长期任务的因素都应该不惜一切代价避免。90 中国甚至不确定自己是否认为自己是其他国家效仿的榜样。事实上，在一个民主——无论多么不完美——已经成为政治常态的世界里，它怎么能做到这一点呢？国外人士可能会钦佩中国取得的成就；一些人甚至希望中国的崛起能够为国际体系带来一定程度的平衡。但当中国囚禁异见艺术家，反复攻击备受敬仰的达赖喇嘛，然后又试图惩罚另一个主权国家，因为一个完全独立的委员会向其公民颁发和平奖时，这很难在更广泛的世界范围内赢得它的拥护。91

如果说中国在展现自身或它想要构建的世界的积极自信形象方面真的存在问题，那么美国很难说存在同样的问题。92 伊拉克战争或许已经让美国在世界上的地位大幅下降；而更普遍的西方经济模式也可能因经济危机而遭受打击。然而，前者因2008年奥巴马当选而受到部分损害；而后者至今尚未引发任何人认真地提出替代方案。此外，“西方”尽管存在种种缺陷——日益加剧的不平等、道德标准下滑等等——但看起来仍然比其他任何方案都更具吸引力。最近的一项研究表明，“软实力”几乎完全是西方国家，或者更确切地说是民主国家的专利。在包括大多数西欧国家以及两个亚洲国家——日本和韩国——的排行榜上，美国仍然位居榜首。另一方面，在接受评估的30个国家中，中国排在第20位，略高于第21位的巴西，其次是第27位的印度和第28位的俄罗斯。93

西方国家在软实力方面持续保持高分有几个原因，最明显的是西方国家拥有多元化的政治文化，持有不同政见的人通常不会被判处长期监禁或更糟的后果。但另一个原因——显然与之相关——与其开放的高等教育体系有关。即使是备受诟病的美国，也仍然具有强大的吸引力，而中国本身的吸引力尤其强大，因为每年都有大量中国学生寻求进入美国高校深造。他们中的许多人最终可能会回到中国。然而，他们显然相信，在美国大学接受教育将改善他们在日益严峻的中国就业市场中的就业前景。94 这种暂时的“人才流失”并非历史偶然。事实上，西方和美国持续强大的一个更明显的标志就是其大学部门。95 其他国家和大洲当然也有大学。但其中很少有在国际上排名特别靠前的。96 金砖国家在提高标准方面似乎面临着几乎无法克服的困难。例如，巴西和印度没有一所大学进入前100名，俄罗斯只有一所，中国仅有5所——其中3所位于香港。与此同时，美国拥有世界排名前十的大学中的8所，前五十的37所，以及前一百的58所。即使是英国，也有17所大学上榜，而整个亚洲只有13所。97

如果高等教育的标准仍然由西方制定，那么更普遍地规范国际关系的规则和相关机构也同样如此。诚然，当今世界上许多最重要的机构并未发挥应有的作用：随着时间的推移，国际经济的变化显然必须反映在世界治理方式中。因此，关于世界是否应该从八国集团转变为二十国集团的争论仍在持续。但事实是，几乎所有管理全球经济的关键规则，以及处理核不扩散、贸易自由化、妇女权利和知识产权保护等极其重要问题的大多数规则，都是由西方国家制定的，而且更有可能由西方国家遵守。98此外，

虽然许多新兴经济体或许对西方过去的行为以及美国现在的行为有很多完全合理的抱怨，但它们中没有一个真正有意愿或能力以任何有意义的方式挑战西方。这在很大程度上与它们仍然高度依赖西方市场和西方外国直接投资有关。但更重要的是，它们意识到过去25年的成功在某种程度上取决于它们广泛采用西方的经济规则。这并不是要贬低它们对自身成功的贡献。我们也不应该认为像中国和印度这样的国家已经采用了纯粹的西方模式。它们并没有。尽管如此，它们备受瞩目的崛起，只有在它们放弃一种相当自给自足的经济模式，开启漫长的旅程，迈向一个设计西化、视野自由、以市场为导向的全球经济时，才真正开始。

0.5 一个新的亚洲世纪？
如果如我所言，西方的全球影响力远超许多近来作家的设想，那么，我们该如何解释如今许多分析人士似乎不言而喻的事实：我们正在进入一个新的亚洲世纪，在这个世纪里，传统意义上的西方将拥有更少的财富，总体上也更加弱小？99 这仅仅是无知、一厢情愿，还是一种误解？又或者，正如保罗·肯尼迪等作家所坚持的那样，100 而美国公众现在似乎也相信了这一点？至少有一项民意调查显示，大多数美国人现在认为亚洲比欧洲重要得多。101 这似乎也是许多美国政策制定者的观点——尤其是奥巴马政府，他们并没有完全忽视欧洲，而是对亚洲表现出了比世界其他任何地方都更大的积极性和兴趣。

在许多与现代亚洲相关的问题上，人们不可能存在严重的分歧。亚洲在世界经济中的比重显然已经增强。亚洲拥有两个金砖国家——中国和印度。它提供了巨大的投资机遇，也是东盟这一日益重要的区域组织的所在地。过去二十年，亚洲的快速增长也伴随着贫困人口的大幅减少。仅在东亚和太平洋地区，目前日生活费不足1.25美元的人口比例就已从1990年的55%下降到2006年的17%。仅中国就在过去二十五年里使近2亿人摆脱了贫困。102

这些成就都是实实在在的。此外，与欧洲许多地区目前糟糕的经济形势相比，这些成就简直堪称奇迹。但我们应该谨防夸大其词，尤其是在宣布尚未到来的“亚洲世纪”时。亚洲在世界上的比重确实上升了。但我认为，上升幅度远低于人们普遍的预期。事实上，仔细观察这些数据就会发现，经济实力从西方向东方的转移可能被夸大了。例如，1995 年亚洲占世界 GDP 的比重（按市场汇率计算的名义值）已达到 29%。十五年后，这一比例并未提高。至于现在普遍接受的观点，即亚洲生产商正在快速获得越来越大的全球出口份额，数据表明，1995 年整个地区可占到总出口的 28%，但到 2009 年却只达到 31%，十五年间仅增长了 3%。这些基础数字也没有考虑其他重要指标，其中许多指标都指向亚洲经济体的重大缺陷。例如，没有一个亚洲巨人拥有内生的技术进步。中国产品的质量与世界标准不符。而在硬件和软件技术等关键的尖端领域，美国仍然占据主导地位。103简而言之，亚洲要赶上西方还有很长的路要走——顺便说一句，西方的总产出仍然是东方的两倍。 104

如果我们距离所谓的“亚洲世纪”还很遥远，那么另一个原因是，我们称之为亚洲的这个实体几乎不存在一个集体行为体。正如许多观察家指出的那样，亚洲政治格局最显著的特征之一就是其碎片化程度。因此，许多亚洲国家（尤其是中国）对日本怀有深深的怨恨。反过来，日本也对中国的崛起心怀怨恨。印度与几乎所有亚洲邻国，尤其是中国，都存在问题。大多数亚洲国家也都拥有非常强烈的后殖民认同感。这不仅加剧了彼此之间的猜疑，也削弱了任何共同目标的意识。

最后，在我们谈论新的亚洲世纪之前，我们应该提醒自己，世界上还有其他地区，国家之间的关系

各国之间的关系更加稳定和友好——尤其是在跨大西洋关系的各国之间。亚洲可能正在崛起，“金砖四国”也正在兴起。然而，我们不应低估构成更广阔跨大西洋空间的主要国家所拥有的诸多优势。即使在危机中，美国和欧盟仍然占全球经济的 40% 以上。105 最重要的国际银行也位于欧洲和美国。此外，欧洲和美国是其几乎所有主要商学院的所在地；在石油勘探、航空和化工等领域，它们仍然处于领先地位。两国也是世界上最重要的外国直接投资来源，也是迄今为止世界上最重要的市场。它们还大量投资于彼此的未来。事实上，2010 年，美国在欧洲的投资远远超过其在亚洲或中国的投资——准确地说是三倍。与此同时，欧盟在美国的投资是其在整个亚洲的投资的八倍。如今的美国人或许并不觉得欧洲有什么特别令人兴奋之处。毫无疑问，欧洲人仍会担心自己在华盛顿的现状，因为华盛顿几乎把所有事情都放在欧盟之外。但这并不会降低双方经济关系的重要性。正如一位作者所言，尽管新兴经济强国的崛起被大肆炒作，西方国家即将衰落的论调也甚嚣尘上，“跨大西洋区域间经济联系依然是世界上最大的……”。作者或许还会补充说，如果没有这种持续的联系及其带来的繁荣，“其他地区”可能根本不会出现。106

0.6 结论
我在本文中提出了一个强有力的论断，挑战了“我们正处于某种更大规模的权力转移之中”这一观点。在我看来，这不仅误解了构成“权力”这一复杂概念，而且在经验上也值得怀疑。正如我试图在此表明的那样，美国仍然拥有强大的实力，无论现在还是在可预见的未来，都远超世界上任何其他国家。与此同时，中国在国内外面临着一些基本问题（正如所谓的“金砖四国”的其他成员一样）。而认为我们正不可避免地走向一些人所认为的……所谓的“亚洲世纪”是不可持续的。我这样说，并非暗示世界完全静止不动，也并非主张维持现状。相反，我试图透过新闻标题，正确解读事物。这不仅出于纯粹的理性原因，在我看来，也具有战略意义。毕竟，如果像中国这样的国家真的相信有一天它会真正统治世界，而美国人担心情况会变得更糟，除了以他们认为必要的任何方式与之抗争之外别无选择，那么这很容易导致这两个非常强大的国家之间紧张局势的升级，在我看来，这是完全不必要的。

我从上述分析中得出另外两个非常重要的结论。

第一个是关于我们应该从过去吸取的教训。冷战在我的思考中占据了重要地位。我不会天真地认为二战后美苏之间某种形式的竞争很容易避免。但同样毋庸置疑的是，西方基于对苏联崛起过度担忧而做出的最坏情况思维，确实使这场冲突比原本可能的情况更加激烈和持久。同样，尽管背景截然不同，涉及的国家类型也大相径庭，但如今仍存在一个非常现实的危险：如果政策制定者和分析人士开始大谈中国的优势，而没有意识到其真正的局限性，他们很容易最终造成又一个安全困境。107

这又让我想到了未来。正如我之前提到的，如今有太多新的口号预测世界政治将不可避免地发生一场革命，一部分国家衰落，另一部分国家崛起，而这些口号都基于一个完全值得怀疑的理念：我们可以轻易预测五年、十年、十五年甚至近五十年后世界和世界经济的走向。在此，我只想呼吁大家更加谦虚谨慎。毕竟，就在冷战结束前几年，人们预测苏联将保持不变——但事实并非如此。当时人们预测日本将成为世界“老大”，但其金融体系却崩溃了。2005年，时任美联储主席的美国决策者告诉美国市场永远不会崩溃——然而，仅仅三年后，市场就崩溃了，而且相当戏剧性。由此得出的结论显而易见：为什么市场应该崩溃？

当经济学家和专家告诉我们，金砖国家崛起已成定局，中国（就像之前的日本一样）成为世界第一只是时间问题时，我们还能更有信心吗？

最后，我想在此呼吁一种更为精妙的现代国际体系理论。过去几年，太多作家把世界描述成一连串台球，它们在某种类似零分制的比赛中互相撞击，世界某个地方的国家和地区崛起，而世界其他地区的国家和地区则衰落。对一些现实主义者来说，这种说法或许完全有道理。108 然而，它几乎忽略了其他所有因素，包括一个不言而喻的事实：现代国际经济如今相互依存度极高，即使我们接受这个完全合理的观点，即某些国家可以以牺牲其他国家为代价获得相对利益，但最终大多数国家——其中最明显的是美国和中国——的繁荣和安全已经完全依赖于彼此。从这个意义上讲，我们不再生活在一个由明确的朋友和明确的敌人组成的世界，而是一个伙伴关系成为必需的世界。这种世界观曾被批评者扣上自由理想主义的帽子。在我看来，在21世纪，它已成为现实主义的最高形式。

Power shifts, economic change and the decline of the west?

28 November 2012

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/power-shifts-economic-change-and-the-decline-of-the-west/power-shifts-economic-change-and-the-decline-of-the-west

Professor Michael Cox London School of Economics and Political Science

0.1 Abstract

It has become the new truth of the early 21st century that the western world we have known is fast losing its pre-eminence to be replaced by a new international system shaped either by the so-called BRICs, the “rest” or, more popularly by that very broadly defined geographical entity known as Asia. This at least is how many economists, historians and students of world politics are now viewing the future of the larger international system. This essay does not dispute some self-evident economic facts. Nor does it assume that the world will look the same in fifty years time as it does now. It does however question the idea that there is an irresistible “power shift” in the making and that the West and the United States are in steep decline. Specifically it makes a number of critical arguments concerning the new narrative. First, it suggests that this story by reasonably focusing on what is obviously changing in the world unfortunately ignores what is not; as a result it underestimates what might loosely be termed the continued structural advantages still enjoyed by the United States and its major western allies. Secondly, while it is true that many new states are assuming a bigger role in the world economy, their rise needs to be looked at more carefully than it has been so far; indeed, when such an examination is undertaken, it becomes increasingly clear that the rise of others - China’s included - is still hemmed in by several obstacles, internal as well as external. Thirdly, though the Asian region, and China as part of it, is assuming an ever more important role in the wider world economy, this development does not in of itself represent a major challenge to the West as such. Indeed, as I suggest at the end, the shifts which have so preoccupied writers over the past five and ten years might even be viewed less as challenges to the West and more as additions to it.

0.2 Introduction

Memory can often play tricks on even the most historically-minded of individuals, particularly those who have had to live through the last ten turbulent years. Indeed, it is almost impossible now to recall how self-confident so many in the West seemed to be during the decade immediately following that most unpredicted of world shattering events known generically as the “end of the Cold War”. To be fair, some observers did sense that there was something distinctly unreal, possibly temporary, about the new post-Cold War order. 1 A few even forecast that we would all soon be missing the Cold War.2 But that is not how most commentators viewed things at the time. On the contrary. Having witnessed the speedy collapse of the Soviet project followed by a decade of global market expansion (otherwise known as globalization) most pundits came to believe that a successful marriage between free markets, democratic enlargement and US power would guarantee order well into the next millennium.3 Certainly, the West at the time looked as if it was definitely in the ascendancy, restructuring once planned economies, opening up previously closed systems, incorporating former enemies, and smashing down political and economic doors that had at one been time been closed. Admittedly, it sometimes failed to act, as say in Rwanda; and very often it ignored the fact that some actors (who later made their name on 9/11) were clearly not becoming socialized into that fabled entity known as the “international community”. But as one century gave way to another, it appeared as if the western world from the Pacific coast of the United States to the middle of a newly united Europe could look forward to decades of self-confident prosperity and peace.

Nowhere was this mood of optimism more prevalent than in the land of the last remaining superpower. Indeed, the US appeared to be in an especially enviable position. Some continued to wonder whether the „unipolar moment? was really an illusion.4 One or two analysts even speculated about the possible limits of US power.5 And the occasional maverick continued to repeat the old Paul Kennedy line that the United States was in decline.6 Few but the most pessimistic envisaged that any other power would likely rise to balance its vast power in the future. On the contrary, after having seen off the USSR, and then having experienced an eight year economic boom of its own, America and Americans could reasonably look forward to another very American century.7 In fact, so buoyant was the mood by the end of the 1990s, that several writers began to talk of the United States as the new Rome on the Potomac, even a modern “empire” possessing global reach, an infinite surplus of soft power, and a vast military machine to match. For some indeed the US had become the greatest power in history with one very obvious distinguishing feature: unlike its great power predecessors from the Romans to the British, this one would never decline.8

It is often said that before every great fall there is a period of grace. So it was perhaps with the last hubristic decade of the twentieth century. But the fall when it came was profound indeed; to such an extent that one American magazine was later forced to concede that the years between 2000 and 2010 had been nothing less than „the decade from hell?.9 It began of course with 9/11 and the strategically inept response to this by the Bush administration.10 It continued with the gradual erosion of economic certainty which finally culminated with the great geopolitical setback of the western financial crisis.11 And it went from bad to worse in some eyes when it became increasingly clear that the West itself was facing a massive challenge from other non-western players in the world capitalist economy. When Goldman Sachs launched the idea of the „BRICs? in 2001, only economists (and not many of them) took the idea very seriously.12 But as the years passed, and the economic data began to flow in, it began to look as if the author of the original notion, Jim O?Neill, had been brilliantly prescient.13 Indeed, his core idea based on careful economic study – namely that the future economic order would be less dominated by the West than it would be by giant economies like Brazil, Russia, India and China – seemed to provide irrefutable proof that the world was in the midst of a global revolution.14 The causes of this were multiple. But one thing was obvious. The axis of the international system which had for several centuries revolved around the Atlantic was moving elsewhere - either towards Asia as a region,15 or more generally towards something vaguely referred to by the influential columnist, Fareed Zakaria, as the “rest”.16 Nor was this Zakaria or O?Neill?s view alone. In 2004 the then editor of Foreign Affairs had warned the West that there was a potentially disturbing “power shift in the making”. 17 A few years on and one of the more influential liberal writers on world politics made much the same point. It was no longer a question of whether wealth and power were moving away from the West and the North, according to John Ikenberry. That much was self-evident. The big question now he continued was “what kind of global political order” would emerge as a consequence.18 The less liberal Niall Ferguson concurred. But in his view it was not just the once “app-laden” West that was in retreat.19 So too was his adopted country of choice. The “hyper-power” was hyper no more.20 America’s best days were behind it. The empire was on the slide. 21

Unsurprisingly, these seismic alterations generated much intense debate around the world: nowhere more so than in the West itself. 22 Here opinion veered between the deeply pessimistic – all power transitions it was assumed could only lead to intensified global conflict 23 - through to those who insisted that the new emerging economies could only add to the stock of the world’s wealth by bringing more states within the fold of the world market. It was the rise of China however that occasioned the greatest discussion of all, and for very sound material reasons as Robert Art has observed.24 In fact, almost overnight, it seemed as if everybody had something significant to say about China.25 Opinion differed sharply with one or two writers claiming that China was fast becoming a responsible stakeholder in international society, 26 a few that its rapid economic expansion was the only thing standing between the West and a global depression, others that it constituted a real threat to US hegemony,27 and many more that if it continued to grow while the West lurched from low growth to no growth at all, it might soon be running Asia28 or possibly even the world.29 But however one assessed China, one thing looked startling obvious. This “restless empire” 30 had at last been aroused from its slumber following a relatively uneventful decade (one writer in 1999 even suggested that we should not be taking China too seriously) 31 and was now set to take its seat at the top of the world?s table. A gravity shift was taking place32 – or so it was argued - and whether or not one viewed China?s economic rise as a foregone conclusion,33 necessary corrective to its nineteenth century period of humiliation,34 worried about its impact on the global economic and political order,35 or assumed that its rise was bound to lead to increased „intense security competition?, 36 one thing was certain: the international system was undergoing what even western governments now believed was a transformation that would alter the world for ever.37

In what follows I want to address the issues raised by what many are now assuming to be irreversible changes in the world order. I do so not by asking what all this means, if anything, for IR theory (this has been done elsewhere)38 but rather by wondering whether the now popular argument that we have moved into a “post-western world” is in fact true.39 Clearly I do not dispute some self-evident economic facts.40 However, as Carr noted many years ago, the facts do not always speak for themselves; and even if some seem to think they do, they can still be arranged in a certain way to paint a less than complete picture of the modern world.

I make several arguments in what follows. One is that this modern story, exciting and interesting though it is, tends to focus almost entirely on what is rapidly changing but says little about what is not – and what is changing much less than some are now suggesting is America’s position in the world. 41 There has also been a confusion about terms. Nobody serious would want to deny that there have been measureable changes in the shape of the world economy over the past few years. However, too many writers have either assumed that a shift in economic gravity is the same thing as a power shift (it is not); 42 or, they have concluded that as these economic changes continue, they will either lead to a transfer of power from one hegemon to another (this is questionable), 43 or to the creation of something now regularly (and dubiously) referred to as a new “Asian Century”.44 As I will seek to show, these assertions contain serious analytical flaws. Equally flawed, I would insist, is the idea that we can make bold predictions about the where the world will be in the future. But as Dan Gardner has convincingly shown, getting the future right has in the past proven to be a fool’s errand.45 This I would want to argue, has important lessons for those now confidently predicting a major power shift over the coming decades. 46 The “rest” may now be growing fast while the US and the EU languish. However, as more sober analysts have pointed out, the crisis in the West may not last for ever, while the many problems facing some of the rest – including India47 and China48 - could derail their apparently irresistible rise up the economic league table. Nothing of course endures for ever. And a new world might indeed be in the making. But it might not be the one now being talked about so feverishly around the world today.

0.3 American economic decline?

As we have already suggested, a large part of the case in favour of the notion that a “power shift” is underway rests on the assumption that the leading western player – the United States of America – faces an irresistible economic decline that will, if it continues, either allow others to take advantage of its weakness or reduce its ability to lead. Certainly many ordinary Americans, and those who comment on the United States today, believe this to be the case.49 Of course, the story can be, and has been, told in very different ways. For some the process is likely to be slow and can be managed rather easily, “politely” even.50 For others, it is bound to have enormous consequences, not only for the conduct of US foreign policy but for the world at large. Certainly, if one accepts the theory of hegemonic stability (and believes that the hegemon is now in decline) then the future of the world looks very problematic indeed.51 Either way, with its share of world trade falling, China rising economically, its debt increasing, its economy in slowdown since 2008, and its dependency on foreign purchasers of its debt on the rise, it looks to many analysts at least as if the United States will either “need to retrench”52 or, more problematically, pass on the baton to other more capable powers.53

The debate about US economic decline is hardly a new one.54 Indeed, ever since the late 1960s, one pundit after another has been forecasting dire things for the United States on the grounds that it was becoming, as one writer put it in 1977, a very ordinary country.55 A decade later Paul Kennedy made much the same point, 56 as did Immanuel Wallerstein in 2002,57 and then David Calleo a few years later.58 In fact, there has hardly been a point in time since the late 1960s – with the possible exception of the “unipolar moment” in the 1990s (and not even then) - when there has not been speculation about America’s economic future. But this time, we are reassured, the decline, is for “real”. With an education system no longer fit for purpose, a middle class in retreat, a and a political system in gridlock, the United States according to one recent study (written by a British journalist) is in free fall with little time left to recover.59

There can of course be no doubting America’s many economic problems. Nor should there any doubt either that in simple its share of world GDP is much less today than it was, say, twenty five year ago, let alone at the end of the Second World War when it was the only serious player in the world capitalist system.60 But this is hardly the same thing as suggesting that the US is in irreversible economic decline – now a common view – or that China has now overtaken it - an equally popular view. Even on the simplest of GDP measures the United States is still well ahead of China. Thus whereas China with a population of around 20% of the world’s total generates something between one seventh and one tenth of global GDP, the United States with only 6% of the world?s population still manages to produce between twenty and twenty five per cent. Indeed, by a simple GDP measurement, the US economy remains more powerful than the next four biggest economies combined: that is to say China, Japan, Germany and the UK. Comparisons between average living standards around the world reveal an even grater gap, especially when the comparison is made with the BRIC countries. Clearly life is improving for many millions of people in these countries; poverty is falling; and a new middle class is being created. Still, in each of the BRICs (India and Brazil most obviously) there are still vast pools of poverty. Furthermore, in terms of living standards, the USA continues to be ahead by a long way with an overall average four times higher than that of Brazil, six times higher than that in China, and as much as fifteen times higher than in India.61

Now none of this would come as any great surprise to a developmental economist. Oddly though it would come as something of a shock to the American public who by 2012 had come to the somewhat bizarre conclusion that the United States had been economically overtaken by China, and would, presumably, fall further and further behind its great economic rival on the other side of the Pacific. 62 Indeed, the gap between perception on the one hand, and the facts on the ground on the other, was cleverly illustrated in a recent study by The Economist. In this the authors challenged the „declinists? not by comparing the United States with other national economies, but comparing other national economies with specific states within the Union. The results were telling. To take one example: California. In GDP terms it alone remains slightly more wealthy than Brazil and Russia respectively, and almost twice as wealthy as both Turkey and Indonesia (two economies now discussed in increasingly glowing terms). The Texan economy meanwhile is nearly as big as Russia?s and just slightly smaller than India?s. 63 This hardly sounds like an economy on the wane.

If the United States is hardly the declining economic superpower portrayed in much of the literature today, it also continues to be able to do things that others can only dream of. In part this a function of its size; in part a function of geographical luck (the US possesses enormous quantities of oil, gas, coal, and food); and in part a function of its embedded position in the wider world economic system. As Carla Norloff has recently shown, despite a gradual economic decline since the end of the World War II, the United States still possesses critical features that give it what she calls “positional advantages” over all other states. She even challenges the now fashionable view that America’s hegemonic burdens are outweighing the benefits. She suggests otherwise: Washington actually reaps more than it pays out in the provision of public goods.64 The United States also has one other, very special, advantage: the dollar. As Doug Stokes has convincingly argued, this particular form of “financial power affords the US a broad range of privileges”, a by-product, in the last analysis, “of others willingness to purchase, hold and use the dollar”. They do this of course not because they especially love Americans, but in order to hold up an economic system upon whose health their own prosperity continues to depend. Furthermore, as Stokes goes on to argue, even the financial crisis has not weakened the position of the US anywhere near as much some have assumed. Indeed, in a world where uncertainty reigns (most obviously in the European Union) “money” in its purest form has fled to safety, and nowhere is regarded as being as safe as the United States. To this extent the financial crisis, ironically, has only affirmed US financial power rather than weakened it. 65

We also have to judge economic power not just in terms of the size of an economy but by the qualitative criteria of „competitiveness?. Economies like China, India and Brazil are undoubtedly large, and will no doubt get larger over time. But this does not necessarily make them competitive in relationship to most western countries or the United States. In a recent survey, the United States came fourth in the world in a group of fifteen countries. Moreover, eleven within the fifteen were definably western, while the other four included Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore – countries all closely tied to the West and to the US. As for the BRICS they came well down the list. Thus China came in at twenty seven, India at fifty one, Brazil at fifty eight, and Russia at sixty three.66 Other studies have arrived at not dissimilar conclusions concerning the qualitative gap which continues to exist between a number of the “rising” economies and many of the more established ones, the United States in particular. In terms of cutting edge research in science and technology the US continues to hold a clear lead. Thus in 2008 the United States accounted for 40 percent of total world R&D spending, and 38% of patented new technology inventions. More significantly, scientific research produced in the US accounted for 49% of total world citations and 63% of the most highly cited articles. The United States also continued to employ around seventy of the world’s Nobel Prize winners, and could lay claim to two thirds of its most-cited individual researchers in science and technology.67

Innovation is also an American strength. 68 Other countries are clearly beginning to catch up. The United States however is still a country that continues to innovate across the board. Critics would no doubt point to the fact that the US is slipping down the league table. However, it still ranks 4th in the world. China meanwhile only came in at 54th in 2009, India at 56th, and Brazil and Russia even further behind. Of course, this does not take account of change over the longer term, or of the fact that a country like China is making a concerted effort to build a more innovative economy.69

But as even the Chinese would accept, it still has very long way to go. Indeed, in spite of official efforts to encourage what is termed in China a “capacity for independent innovation”, there remain several weaknesses in the Chinese political economy. Amongst the most significant, it has been noted, are “poor enforcement of intellectual property rights, an educational system that emphasizes rote learning over critical thinking, and a shortage of independent organizations that can evaluate scientific progress”.70 There is also wider political restraint as well. Innovation usually requires open debate, a capacity to challenge established truths, and incentives to think the unthinkable; and none of these, to be blunt, are much in evidence in modern China today.71

Finally, in terms of global economic power, the United States is still well ahead in one other vital respect: corporate strength.72 Some of the emerging economies are beginning catch up; and some of America?s closest allies in Europe and Asia run it a good second.73 But the US clearly remains in ‘poll position? with American companies constituting 4 of the top 10 corporations in the world, 14 of the top 30, and 25 of the top 50. Western companies more generally still out-perform all others, with the US and the EU together representing 6 of out of the top 10 global corporations, 22 out of the top 30, and 37 out of the top 50. Some of the BRIC economies do have some very large companies with China, unsurprisingly, leading the way with 4 out of the top 10, 8 of the top 50, and 61 out of the top 500; a remarkable achievement for a country which only twenty five years ago was virtually irrelevant in the world economy.74 Still, as a recent Brookings study has shown, it does not follow that these companies are internationally active or should even be regarded as “multinationals” in the true sense of that word. Indeed, 49 of the top 57 mainland companies in China remain under state control; and with a very few exceptions the overwhelming all operate predominantly within the country – and for several good reasons including a shortage of mangers with the necessary linguistic skills and experience of working abroad, a lack of transparency, poor global brand presence, and a very real difficulty in adapting easily to foreign legal, tax and political environments.75

0.4 Hard Power - Soft Power: What is Power?

If the US retains some very formidable economic assets, the same can just as easily be said about its still very powerful position within the larger international system. This is no longer a fashionable view to defend of course. Indeed, as we have already suggested, a combination of an ill-judged war in Iraq, the use of torture in the “war on terror”, the near meltdown of the American financial system in 2008, and the slow recovery of the American economy since, has led many to question America’s capacity either to lead others or garner support for its policies abroad. Buzan has probably theorized this best. America?s claim to represent the liberal future he argued back in 2008 was “blighted”. At the same time. the American model no longer inspired admiration. The number of states who wanted to follow it was fast declining. More generally, he continued, hegemony had become increasingly „illegitimate? in international society. As a result America?s position in the world was becoming more and more “fragile”.76

Obviously, there is something to this, which is one of the reasons why this kind of argument has proved so popular amongst those who now hold to the view that we are now in the midst of a “power shift”. But one of the problems with it, clearly, is that it seriously understates how much hard power the United States can still mobilize, even after the very limited cuts proposed by President Obama.77 It might be intellectually fashionable to argue that military power is becoming less and less salient in an age of asymmetric war where the weak can do a great deal of damage to the strong. However, the very fact that the United States is able to mobilize the military manpower it can (currently it has more men and women under arms than it had on the eve of 9/11)78, can project power to every corner of the earth, is still the main provider of security in Asia and Europe, and spends as much as it still does on “defence” – about 45% of the world’s total – suggests that the country has a very long way to go before one can talk about it becoming less of a superpower. The military power of other states moreover does not compare, even China’s with its huge standing army (which has not fought a war since the disastrous invasion of Vietnam in 1979)79 and its increasingly large blue water navy that now includes one aircraft carrier.80 Indeed, when its first aircraft carrier was finally given its first sea trials in 2011, the alarm bells went up in the region.81 However, China’s one aircraft carrier hardly compares with America’s eleven carrier groups. Nor has the ongoing modernization of China’ss military brought it anywhere close to US levels. The most recent figures show that the US not only expends five times more on national security than China. Taken together its many allies in the region (including amongst others Japan, South Korea, India, and Australia) also spend more on their military forces than China, and do so by a significant margin - nearly $200 billion compared to China’s $115 billion. 82

This in turn should alert us to yet another aspect of America’s impressive position in the world: its formidably wide alliance system. Buzan may be right. There might be fewer states willing to “follow” the US in ways that they did during the Cold War. There are also a few “problem” countries like Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt that have increasingly difficult relations with Washington. Nonetheless, even those who have doubts about American leadership skills, still find that they have no alternative but to ally themselves with it. This is obviously true of the Europeans who can see no other security guarantor than the US. But it is also true of key states in Latin America, Africa and Asia. If anything, it has become even more true in Asia; in fact, as China has risen, most Asian countries (including communist-led Vietnam) have demanded more, and not less, of an American presence in the region. China as a result now finds itself in the paradoxical position of having greater economic influence in Asia but fewer friends.83 To this degree, its growing economic power has not translated into it having more political influence as well.84 Nor have its heavy- handed policies in Asia helped. On the contrary. By laying claim to the South China Seas85 and remaining silent about the aggressive behaviour of its single ally North Korea, it has actually made America?s position stronger rather than weaker.86 Indeed, precisely because China does not “inspire confidence” , it has been possible for the US to be viewed by most countries in the region as that well known “indispensable nation” upon whose continued presence their own safety ultimately depends.87

America?s continued presence in Asia raises a wider question about whether “power” in the broader sense is in fact tilting away from the West as is now so often claimed. China may well be the new engine puling along the world economy. Its economic role in Africa, Brazil and Australia may have become crucially important. And its new middle class may be buying more and more of the high end products that the West is only too happy to sell it. Yet thus far, China has been much less than successful in winning friends and building relations of trust with other countries. It might be an exaggeration to say that China “is generally held in suspicion” around the world.88 But China does confront some serious difficulties when interacting with the world. In part the problem is cultural. This is still a country after all that for all its new openness continues to harbour a suspicion of “foreigners”. The overwhelming majority of its people moreover are deeply insular in outlook and have little experience, and hardly any understanding of, the world outside of Chinese borders.89 Indeed, this is even true of many of its senior policy-makers, the bulk of whom travel abroad infrequently, do not speak foreign languages with any degree of fluency, and who have been brought up politically in the hidden world of the Chinese Communist Party. But there is also a larger ideological and political issue. China might be a trading superpower. But it has no vision and no sense of what it might take to become a serious superpower in a leadership position with all the responsibilities and dangers that would entail. If anything, China is extraordinarily ill-equipped to lead with its defensive, almost suspicious view of the world, and its constant reiteration of the old Westpahalian mantra that states should keep their noses out of other people?s business. Nor is there much sign that it is keen to do so. In this of course the Chinese themselves have been perfectly candid. Our foreign policy goal, they repeat, is to create an international environment that will permit us to focus on domestic affairs and economic growth at home; and anything disturbing that derails us from this very long-term task stretching over several decades should be avoided at all costs.90 It is not even certain that China even regards itself as a model for others to follow. Indeed, how could it do so in a world where democracy – however imperfect – has become the political norm? People abroad may admire China for what it has achieved; a few may even hope that its rise will lead to a degree of balance in the international system. But when it imprisons dissident artists, repeatedly attacks the much admired Dalai Lama, and then seeks to punish another sovereign state for an entirely independent committee awarding a peace prize to one of its citizens, this is hardly likely to win it converts in the wider world.91

If China has a real problem in projecting a positive and confident picture of itself or of the world it would like to build, the same can hardly be said of the United States.92 The republic may have lost good deal of standing in the world because of the Iraq War; and the western economic model more generally might have suffered a blow because of the economic crisis. However, the first was partially vitiated by the election of Obama in 2008; and the second has not led to anybody serious proposing an alternative. Moreover, the “West” for all its faults – growing inequality, ethical standards in decline and all the rest – still looks a more attractive proposition than anything else on offer. As a recent study has shown, “soft power” is almost entirely the preserve of western, or more precisely democratic, countries with the United States still leading a league table that includes most West European countries as well as two countries from Asia – Japan and South Korea. China on the other hand comes in 20th, just ahead of Brazil at 21st , followed by India at 27th,and Russia 28th out of a total of 30 countries assessed.93

There are several reason why the West continues to score well in terms of soft power, the most obvious being that western countries have a pluralist political culture where having dissident views, will not, by and large, end up with one spending a rather long-term in prison or worse. But another reason – clearly connected – has to do with its open system of higher education. Here even the much-maligned US continues to have great magnetic pull, nowhere more so than in China itself judging by the enormous number of Chinese students who every year seek a place in US institutions of higher learning. Many of them may in the end return to China. However, they clearly believe that getting an education in a US college will improve their job prospects in an increasingly tough Chinese job market.94 Nor is this temporary “brain drain” a mere accident of history. Indeed, one of the more obvious signs of continued western and American strength is its university sector.95 Other countries and continents obviously have universities. But very few of them rank especially high in international terms.96 The BRIC countries in particular seem to face almost insuperable difficulties in raising standards. Brazil and India for example have no universities in the top 100, Russia only one, and China a mere 5 – three of these being in Hong Kong. The United States meanwhile is home to 8 of the top 10 ranked universities in the world, 37 of the top 50, and 58 of the top 100. Even the United Kingdom does well having 17 ranked universities compared to a total of 13 in the whole of Asia.97

If standards in higher education are still being set in the West, the same can also be said about the rules and associated institutions that govern international relations more generally. Admittedly, many of the most important institutions in the world today are not functioning as well they might: and over time, it seems clear that changes in the international economy will have to be reflected in the way the world is managed. Hence the ongoing debate about the world moving from being a G-8 world to a G-20 world. The fact remains however that nearly all of the key rules governing the global economy, and most of those dealing with critically important issues such as nuclear non-proliferation, trade liberalization, women?s rights, and the protection of intellectual property rights, have been laid down by, and are still more likely to be upheld by, countries in the West.98 Furthermore, while many of the emerging economies might have many entirely legitimate complaints about how the West has behaved in the past, and how the US still behaves now, none of them have either the desire or the capability of really challenging the West in any meaningful way. This in large part has much to do with their still very high dependency on western markets and western Foreign Direct Investment. But more importantly, it is because they realize that their own success over the past twenty five years has been in some part determined by them adopting broadly western economic rules. This is not to play down their own contribution to their own success. Nor should we assume that countries like China and India have adopted a pure western model. They have not. Nonetheless, their much-heralded rise only began in earnest when they abandoned one, rather self-sufficient way of doing economics, and started the long journey towards a global economy that was western in design, liberal in outlook, and market-oriented in fundamentals.

0.5 A New Asian Century?

If, as I have suggested, the West has far more global influence than many writers of late have suggested, how, then, do we explain what now seems self-evident to many analysts: that we are moving into a new Asian century in which the West as traditionally understood will have far less wealth and altogether less power?99 Is this merely a matter of ignorance, wishful thinking, or simply a misunderstanding? Or is it in fact true as writers like Paul Kennedy have insisted, 100 and the American public now seem to believe? According to at least one opinion poll, the majority of Americans now view Asia as being of much greater importance than Europe.101 This too would seem to be the view of many US policy-makers - the Obama administration in particular, which without ignoring Europe altogether, has shown a much greater degree of activism and interest in Asia than probably any other part of the world.

On a number of issues concerning modern Asia there can be no serious disagreement. Its weight in the world economy has clearly got bigger. It can boast two of the BRICs - China and India. It presents major investment opportunities. And it is home to an increasingly significant regional organization in the shape of ASEAN. Asia?s rapid growth over the last two decades has also been accompanied by a dramatic reduction in poverty. In East Asia and the Pacific region alone, the percentage of the population now living on less than $1.25 day has dropped from 55% in 1990 to only 17% in 2006. China alone has taken nearly 200 million people out of poverty over the last twenty five years.102

These achievements are all real enough. Moreover, when set alongside the miserable economic situation currently pertaining in many parts of Europe, they look almost miraculous. But one should beware hyperbole, especially when it comes to announcing an “Asian Century” that has not yet arrived. Asia?s weight in the world has certainly risen. But I would suggest by much less than is commonly assumed. Indeed, a closer look at the figures indicate that the shift in economic power from West to East can be overstated. In 1995 for instance Asia?s total share of world GDP (in nominal terms at market exchange rates) was already 29%. Fifteen years later it was no higher. As for the now widely accepted view that Asian producers were fast acquiring an ever-larger slice of global exports, the figures indicate that the region as a whole could lay claim to 28% of the total in 1995, but only 31% by in 2009, a rise of only 3% over fifteen years. Nor do these base figures take account of other significant indicators, many of which point to important flaws in the Asian economies. None of the Asian giants for example is yet blessed with endogenous technical progress. The quality of Chinese products does not match world standards. And in crucial cutting edge areas such as hardware and software technologies, the United States still dominate.103 In short, Asia still has long way to go before it catches up with the West – a West by the way, whose combined output is still double that of the East. 104

If we are nowhere near arriving at a so-called “Asian Century” one of the other reasons for this is that the entity we call Asia hardly exists as a collective actor. As many observers have pointed out, one of the more remarkable features of Asian political landscape is how fragmented it happens to be. Thus many in Asia (China in particular) harbour deep resentments towards Japan. Japan in turn bitterly resent China?s rise. And India has problems with nearly all of its Asian neighbours, China especially. Most Asian nations also have a very powerful sense of post-colonial identity. This not only fosters quite a degree of suspicion of each other; it also weakens any sense of common purpose.

Finally, before we can talk of a new Asian Century we should remind ourselves that there are other parts of the world where relations between states are a good deal more settled and amicable – most notably between those countries making up the Transatlantic relationship. Asia may be rising and the BRiCs emerging. However, one should not underestimate the many strengths possessed by the key states constituting the wider Transatlantic space. Even in the midst of the crisis, the United States and the European Union still account for over 40% of the global economy.105 The most important international banks are also to be found in Europe and the United States. Europe and the United States moreover play host to nearly all of its major business schools; and in areas such as oil exploration, aviation and chemicals, they still lead the way. The two together are also the world?s most important source of Foreign Direct Investment, and by far and away the world?s most important markets too. They also invest in each other?s future in vast amounts. Indeed, in 2010, the United States invested far more in Europe than it was ever likely to do in Asia or China - three time more to be precise. Meanwhile the EU had eight times more invested in the United States than it had in the whole of Asia. Americans today may not view Europe as being terribly exciting. And no doubt Europeans will continue to worry as to their current status in a Washington fixated on nearly everything else except the European Union. But that does not make the economic relationship any the less significant. As one writer has put it, for all the hype about the emergence of new economic powers, and talk of the West?s imminent decline, „the transatlantic economic inter-regional link remains easily the largest…in the world?. The author might also have added that without this continued link and the prosperity it has engendered, the “rest” might never have emerged in the first place. 106

0.6 Conclusion

I have made the strong claim in this article which challenges the notion that we are in the midst of some larger power shift. This in my view not only misunderstands the complex notion of what constitutes “power”. It is empirically dubious too. As I have tried to show here, the United States still has a great deal of power, much more than any other country in the world, now and for the foreseeable future. China meanwhile confronts several basic problems at home and abroad (as indeed do the other members of the so-called BRIC family). And the idea that we are moving ineluctably into what some have termed an “Asian Century” is unsustainable. In making this case, I am not implying that the world is an entirely static place. Nor am I making a plea for the status quo. Rather, I have tried to go behind the headlines and to call things by their right name. Not only is this important for purely intellectual reasons. In my view, it is strategically important too. After all, if a country like China really does come to believe that one day it really will be ruling the world, and Americans fearing the worse see no alternative but to combat this in whatever way they see necessary, this could very easily lead to an increased, and in my view, a quite unnecessary escalation of tension between these two very powerful states.

I draw two other very important conclusions from the foregoing analysis.

The first concerns the lessons we should be drawing from the past, Here the Cold War looms large in my thinking. I am not naïve enough to think that it would have been easy to have avoided some form of competition between the US and the USSR after World War II. But there is little doubt either that western worse case thinking based on exaggerated fears of a rising Soviet Union did make the conflict far more intense and long-lasting than it might have been otherwise. In the same way, though in a very different context involving a very different kind of state, there is a very real danger today that if the policy-makers and analysts begin to talk up Chinese strengths without recognizing its very real limits, they could easily end up creating yet another security dilemma.107

This brings me in turn to the future. As I earlier suggested, too much of what has become the new mantra predicting an almost inevitable revolution in world politics, with one part of world declining and another rising, is based on the altogether questionable notion that we can easily know what the world and the world economy is going will look like in five, ten, fifteen, or nearly fifty years time. All I would make a plea for here is a little more modesty and a lot more circumspection. After all, only a few years before the end of the Cold War it was predicted that the USSR would remain the same – and it didn?t. It was then predicted that Japan would become „number one? in the world – and its financial system collapsed. And in 2005 the then head of the Federal Reserve in the United States told policy-makers in the US that the market could never fail – and it did, rather dramatically only three years later. The conclusion to be drawn is obvious: why should we be any more confident today when economists and pundits tell us that the rise of the BRICs is a foregone conclusion and that it is only matter of time before China (like Japan before it) also becomes number one?

Finally, I want to make a plea here for a far more subtle theory of the modern international system. Too many writers over the past few years have talked of the world as if it were like a series of billiard balls banging up against each in some zero-like contest in which states and regions in one part of the world rise, while others in other parts of the world fall. This might make perfect sense to some realists.108 However, it ignores just about everything else, including the fairly self-evident fact that the modern international economy is now so interdependent that even if we accepted the perfectly reasonable idea that certain states can make relative gains here at the expense of other states there, in the end most states – including most obviously the United States and China - have become entirely dependent on each other for their prosperity and security. To this degree we no longer live in a world composed of clearly specified friends and well-defined enemies, but rather in one where partnership has become a necessity. Once upon a time this way of looking at the world was branded by its critics as liberal idealism. In the 21st century it has, in my view, become the highest form of realism.

0.7 Acknowledgements

This much revised paper is adapted from the Kenneth Waltz Annual Lecture delivered to the Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University on 9 March 2012 entitled “The decline of the West and the rise of the rest: myths of power shifts and economists”. I would like to thank Ken Booth for inviting me to give the lecture, and to develop my thoughts above.

0.8 Further information

1. Michael Cox, Ken Booth and Tim Dunne, eds. The Interregnum: Controversies in World Politics. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)
2. John Mearsheimer, “Why We Will Soon Miss the Cold War”, Atlantic Monthly, August 1990.
3. I discussed this vision of the post-Cold War world many years ago in Michael Cox, US Foreign Policy After the Cold War: Superpower Without a Mission? (London: Chatham House, Pinter Press, 1995).
4. Christopher Layne challenged what he termed the illusion of unipolarity as early as 1993 in an article published in International Security (“The Unipolar Illusion: Why New Great Powers will Arise”) and returned to the same theme over ten years later in his “The Unipolar Illusion Revisited”, International Security,Vol. 32, No. 2, Fall 2006, pp. 7 -41.
5. Charles Kupchan, “After Pax Americana: Benign Power, Regional Integration, and the Sources of a Stable Multipolarity,” International Security, vol. 23, no. 2 (Fall 1998).
6. Donald W. White, The American Century: The Rise and Decline of the United States as a World Power (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1999).
7. Bruce Cummings, “Still The American Century”, in Review of International Studies, Vol 25, No 5, 1999.
8. I tried to capture this turn-of-the-century mood in the USA in Michael Cox, “Whatever Happened to American Decline?” New Political Economy, 2001. 2004.
9. See the front cover of Time magazine, 7 December 2009. The article inside was unambiguously clear about “the first 10 years of this century”…..”They will very likely go down as the most dispiriting and disillusioning decade Americans have lived through in the post–World War II era”.
10. On 9/11 and its impact see Ken Booth and Tim Dunne eds, Worlds in Collision: Terror and the Future of Global Order. (Palgrave, Macmillan, 2002).
11. Roger C. Altman, „The Great Crash, 2008: A Geopolitical Setback for the West?, Foreign Affairs, 2009, pp. 2-14.
12. See Jim O?Neill, Building Better Global Economic BRICs’ Goldman Sachs. Global Economics Paper No:66, 30th November 2001.
13. See “Goldman Sachs Jim O?Neill Reflects 10 Years After Coining BRIC” 27th November 2011.
14. Danny Quah summed this view up most succinctly. “As late as 1980” he noted, “North America and Western Europe produced more than two thirds of this planet’s income. Not unexpectedly then, the world economic center of gravity 30 years ago was a point deep in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, 900 miles west of Morocco. By 2008, however, because of the continuing rise of India, China and the rest of East Asia, that center of gravity had shifted to a point just outside Izmir Turkey, east of Helsinki and Bucharest - a drift of 3000 miles, or about three quarters of the Earth?s radius. My projection has it that this move east will continue until 2050 when the world economic center of gravity will cluster on the border between India and China, 400 miles east of Katmandu”. See his analysis in CNN World April 2011.
15. Kishore Mahbubani, The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Power Shift to The East (New York: Public Affairs, 2008).
16. Fareed Zakaria, Post-American World, (New York: W.W. Norton, 2008).
17. James Hoge, „A Global Power Shift in the Making: Is the United States Ready??, Foreign Affairs, 83 (4) 2004, pp. 2 -7.
18. G. John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs, “The Future of the Liberal Wolrd Order: Internationalism after America”, May-June 2011, p. 56.
19. Niall Ferguson, Civilization; The West and the Rest. (London: Penguin, Allen Lane, 2011).
20. On the emerging US decline debate see Michael Cox, “Is The United States in Decline – Again?” International Affairs, 83 (4) 2007, 2007, 643-653.
21. “The illusion of American hyperpuissance” wrote Niall Ferguson in 2010 “was shattered not once but twice in the past decade. Nemesis came first in the backstreets of Sadr City and the valleys of Helmand, which revealed not only the limits of American military might but also, more importantly, the naivety of neoconservative visions of a democratic wave in the greater Middle East. And it struck a second time with the escalation of the subprime crisis of 2007 into the credit crunch of 2008 and finally the “great recession” of 2009. After the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the sham verities of the “Washington Consensus” and the “Great Moderation” were consigned forever to oblivion”. See his ‘China’2s Century?’ Niall Ferguson says yes’. 1 January 2010. The Peking Duck.
22. Paul Kennedy even invoked Lenin to make his point about the rapid change taking place in the international system. “The beauty about Lenin’s approach” he noted “is that he does not get himself embroiled in debates about some cultures and civilisations being superior to others, or Protestantism and capitalism, or relative resistance to disease, or democracy versus autocracy, or any of the other long-winded stuff, to explain the relative rise and decline of particular economies and their influence in the world. He simply points out – as any natural scientist observing a run of data would – that if the record shows one country’s productivity and economy growing faster than others, then there will be a steady shift in the balances of power towards it. The antecedent causes are mere intellectualism. It is what is happening that counts. And this it seems to me is the only sensible way we can discuss the most significant political phenomenon of our new century: the relative rise of Asia, perhaps China especially, and its natural concomitant, the relative decline of the west as a whole and more particularly of both of its two greatest components, Europe and the US” Paul Kennedy. “Rise and Fall. World Today”. August-September 2010.
23. A.F. Organski, World Politics (New York: Knopf, 1958) for the classic statement on power transitions in history and why all power transitions are bound to lead to intensified competition, heighted insecurity and possibly war.
24. By 2010 China held 11.5% of all outstanding US Treasury securities valued at $895 billion; accounted for nearly 12% of all world trade; had become the world’s largest producer of clothing (60% of the total), shoes (66%), toys (80%) and cars (13.8 million). It also consumed more imported coal and raw materials than any other state; it had already become the key economic player in its own region; and was fast becoming a major one in Australia, Latin America and Africa. Figures from Robert J. Art, Political Science Quarterly. 2011.
25. For one of the better popular studies on rising China by a non-Sinologist see Mark Leonard, What Does China Think? (London: Fourth Estate, 2008).
26. A view championed, oddly enough, by Henry Kissinger in his book On China (New York: Penguin, 2011). Kissinger even quotes Kant to support his notably non-realist conclusion that relations between the US and the USA are likely to remain peaceful and relatively amicable over the long term.
27. Stefan Halper, The Beijing Consensus: How China’s Authoritarian Model Will Dominate the 21st Century. (New York, Basic Books, 2010).
28. Aaron Friedberg, A Contest for Supremacy: China, America and the Struggle for the Mastery of Asia. (New York:: W.W.Norton, 2011)
29. Martin Jacques, When China Rules the World: The Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the End of the Western World (London, Penguin, Allen Lane, 2009; 2nd edition 2012).
30. Odd Arne Westad, Restless Empire: China and the World (London: The Bodley Head, 2012).
31. Gerald Segal, “Does China Matter?”, Foreign Affairs, September-October 1999
32. Wendy Dobson, Gravity Shift: How Asia’s New Economic Powerhouses Will Shape the 21st Century. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009).
33. Dominic Wilson and Roopa Purushothaman. Dreaming With the BRICs: The Path to 2050. Global Economics Paper No:99. 1st October 2003.
34. As did the “muse of the Asian century” Kishore Mahbubani in his The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East, (PublicAffairs, 2008).
35. John Plender, “Great Dangers Attend the Rise and Fall of Great Powers”, Financial Times, 21-22 August 2010.
36. John Mearsheimer, “China’s Challenge to US Power in Asia”, The Chinese Journal of International Politics, Volume 3, 2010, p. 396
37. It is not just the United States that is now officially changing its foreign policy priorities to adjust to the power shift under way (Hilary Clinton, “America’s Pacific Century”,Foreign Policy, November 2011). In his first statement outlining the UK’s foreign policy in a “networked world”, the British Foreign Secretary in 2010 stressed that “the world has changed and if we do not change with it Britain’s role” was “set to decline”. The most significant of these changes, he continued, was the rise of new economic powers. “Economic power and economic opportunity” were he said “shifting to the countries of the East and South; to the emerging powers of Brazil, India, China and other parts of Asia and to increasingly significant economies such as Turkey and Indonesia”.See William Hague, “Britain’s Foreign Policy in a Networked World”, 1 July 2010.
38. See for example Avery Goldstein, “Power Transitions, Institutions, China’s Rise in East Asia”, Journal of Strategic Studies’, Vol. 30, Nos 4 and 5, August 2007, pp. 639-682, Renee Jeffery, “Evaluating the ‘China Threat’: Power Trnsitions Theoory, The Successor-State Image and the Dangers of Historical Analogies”, Australian Journal of International Affairs, 63, 2, June 2009, pp. 309- 324, and Barry Buzan, “China in International Society: Is ‘Peaceful Rise’ Possible?”, The Chinese Journal of International Politics, Vol. 3, 2010, pp. 5- 36.
39. See Simon Serfaty, “Moving into a Post-Western World”, The Washington Quarterly, 34: 2, Spring 2011, pp. 7 -23.
40. For a excellent guide to the economic shifts in the world economy see Danny Quah “The global economy’s shifting centre of gravity”, Global Policy, Volume 3, Issue I, January 2011, pp. 3 -9.
41. Susan Strange successfully demonstrated that problems facing the United States in the 1970s and early 1980s did not , in of themselves, undermine its “structural power”. See her “The Persistent Myth of Lost Hegemony”, International Organization, 41, 4, Autumn 1987, pp. 551-573.
42. See also Wendy Dobson, “Why the Shift of Economic Gravity Is Not a Power Shift”. The Globalist. 21st October, 2009.
43. Ian Clark discusses these issues in his “China and the United States: a succession of Hegemonies”, International Affairs, 87:1 2011, pp. 13-28.
44. In 2012, the Australian government entitled its future White Paper on Australia’s foreign policy: “Australia in an Asian Century”.
45. Dan Gardner, Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions – And Why We Believe them Anyway. (New York: Penguin.2011)
46. Such as Jim O’Neill in his The Growth Map: Economic Opportunity in the BRICs and Beyond. (London: 2011).
47. For a balanced view of India’s rise and why it has a very long way to go before it can be called a “superpower”, see David Malone, Does the Elephant Dance? Contemporary Indian Foreign Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). For an equally sober view of India’s power position see Ramachandra Guha “Will India Become a Superpower?” in India: The Next Superpower? LSE IDEAS. Special Report, March 2012, pp. 6 -17
    48.For a wide-ranging survey of China’s many problems and flaws that challenge the “China-as-a-superpower in the making” literature, see Jonathan Fenby. Tiger Head: Snake Tail (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011).
48. See for instance the front cover of one influential American magazine which carried the banner headline “American Decline: This Time It’s For Real”. Foreign Policy. January- February 2011.
49. Adam Quinn, “The Art of Declining Politely: Obama?s prudent presidency and the waning of American Power”, International Affairs. 87, 4, 2011, pp. 803 – 824.
50. For a contrary view, see Barry Buzan, „A World Order Without Superpowers: Decentred Globalism?, International Relations, 25, 1, 2011, pp. 3-25.
51. Christopher Layne, “The Global Power Shift from West to East”, The National Interest. Number 119, May-June 2012, p. 22.
52. See Jeffrey Sachs. “America has passed on the baton”, Financial Times, 30 September 2009.
53. See my discussion of this. Michael Cox, “Whatever Happened to American Decline? International Relations and the New united States Hegemony”, New Political Economy. 6:3, 2001, pp. 311 – 340.
54. Richard Rosecrance, America as an Ordinary Country: US Foreign Policy and the Future.(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977).
55. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of The Great Powers.(New York: Random House, 1987)
56. Immanuel Wallerstein, Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World. (New York: New Press.2003)
57. David Calleo. Follies of Power: America’s Unipolar Fantasy (Cambridge University Press)
58. Edward Luce, Time to Start Thinking: America in the Age of Descent (New York, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2012)
59. See Donald W. White, The Nature of World Power in American History, Diplomatic History, 11, 3, July 1987. 181-202
60. Figures compiled from the IMF and The CIA World Factbooks for the relevant years.
61. For a guide to the current state of American public opinion see Pew Research Centre. Pew Global Attitudes Project. Released 13 June 2012. This revealed that most people in the world in 2012 – including a majority of Americans – believed that China had become the world’s top economy. Moreover, whereas in 2008 - before the onset of the global financial crisis - a median of 45% named the U.S. as the world’s leading economic power (while just 22% said China) by 2012 only 36% said the U.S was in the top position. 42% of those polled in 2012 said China was now on top economic position.
62. The figures for this study were drawn from the 2010 Census Bureau, Un Wolrd Popualtion Prospects, the and the IMF amongst others. For a summary see Giancarlo Loquenzi. „$till top of the charts? Longitude#2
63. Carla Norloff, America’s Global Advantage: US Hegemony and International Co-operation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)
64. See Doug Stokes, “A Post- Crisis Piper ? Assessing Dollar Decline and US Primacy”. Unpublished Manuscript.
65. Source
66. Source
67. See “A New Ranking of the World l’s Most Innovative Economies”. Economist Intelligence Unit. April 2009.
68. George Kee, “Chinese Innovation sidestaps US crisis”, Global Times. 12 August 2011.
69. Don Durfee and James Pomfret, “China Struggles to Find a Formula for Innovation”, International Herald Tribune, 6 May 2011, p. 16.
70. See Schumpeter, “Bamboo Innovation”, The Economist, 7 May 2011, p. 68.
71. The statistics in this paragraph are taken from the FT Global 500. 2011. FT Weekend Magazine. June 2011 and the Fortunes Global 500 list. 2011.
72. The UK is especially strong globally in relationship to the size of its domestic economy. It hosts 10% of the top 100 multinationals.
73. Of the others three BRICS, Brazil has 2 in the top 100 global companies, Russia only one, and India none.
74. David Shambaugh, “Are China’s Multinational Corporations Really Multinational?” Brookings. East Asia Forum Quarterly. 10 July 2012.
75. Barry Buzan, “A Leader without Followers”, International Politics,45. 2008, pp. 554-570.
76. For a sceptical assessment of America’s military retrenchment since 2008, see Edrwad Luce, “The Mirage of Obama’s Defence Cuts”, Financial Times, 30 January, 2012.
77. Luce, The Mirage of Obama’s Defence Cuts.
78. On the Chinese army’s many internal problems see John Garnaut’s useful 2012 analysis, “Rotting from Within”.
79. The Chinese themselves were keen to remind their neighbours that in spite of having acquired its first aircraft carrier, it did “not pose any threat to other countries”. See Zhao Lai and Zhang Xiaomin, “Maiden Run for aircraft carrier”, China Daily: European Weekly.12-18 August 2011
80. For the Chinese view see China’s People Daily
81. For figures on global military spending in 2012 see the SIPRI Handbook for 2012
82. Even the Chinese admit that while relations between “China and countries in its vicinity are generally good”…there remain what is referred to coyly as “certain prickly issues among them the Taiwan Strait, The Korean Peninsula nuclear issue, disputes in the South China Sea and to some extent in the East China Sea”. The article goes on to say that “owing mainly to China’s restraint”…none of these issues have “developed into large-scale conflicts”. See Zhou Fangyin, “New Developments in China’s Relationship with its Surrounding Countries”, China Today, May 2012, p. 35.
83. Contrary to what has been claimed by one writer who has naively asserted that as China becomes richer it is bound to become “more influential” too. See Gideon Rachman, “When China Becomes Number One”, Financial Times, 7 June 2011.
84. For a full discussion of the South China Sea question see “Stirring Up the South China Sea (I): Asia Report” No. 223, International Crisis Group. 23 April 2012.
85. See “Rising Power: Anxious State”. The Economist. Special report China. 25 June 2011.
86. See Banyan, “Not littoraly Shagri-La”, The Economist, 11 June 2011.
87. David Pilling, “China needs more than five year charm offensive”, Financial Times. 10 November 2011.
88. For an interesting discussion of why China often seems to get the outside world wrong see Hannah Beech, “Split personality” Time magazine, 24 January 2011. pp. 29-31.
89. See the influential Wang JiSi for an excellent discussion of China’s dilemmas. See his “China’s Grand Strategy: A Rising Power Finds its Way”, Volume 90, No. 2, Foreign Affairs, March-April 2011, pp. 289 – 79.
90. For a brief but very good analysis about why China is most certainly not bound to become a “superpower”, see the shrewd piece Guy de Jonquieres. What Power Shift To China?” in China’s Socio-Economic Strategy. LSE IDEAS Special Report, June 2012, pp. 48-53.
91. Inderjeet Parmar and Michael Cox eds, Soft Power and US Foreign Policy. (London, Routledge, 2010).
92. See Jonathan McClory, “The New Persuaders II: A 2011 Global Ranking of Soft Power”. Institute for Government.
93. Between 2010 and 2011 the number of Chinese students studying in the United Stats increased by 43%. Of the more than 700,000 overseas students in the United States in 2011, 22% of the total (around 158,000) had come from China. Significantly, students from that other BRIC country – India – were also looking to the USA for a higher education. In 2011 over 100,000 Indian students had enrolled in US universities. See Jenna Johnson, “Chinese students enrol in record numbers at US Colleges”. 14 November 2011.
94. See Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2011-2012. Times Higher Education, 6 October 2011 for a full break down of figures.
95. Latin America for instance has an extensive university system with Brazil having 3 in the top 10 on the continent. But only one Latin American university, University of Sao Paolo in Brazil, has made it into the world’s top 200. See “Universities in Latin America: the struggle to make the grade”. The Economist. 8 October 2011.
96. These figures from here
97. See Jorge G. Castaneda, “Not Ready for prime Time: Why Including Emerging Powers at the Helm Would Hurt Global Governance”, Foreign Affairs. No 89, No 5, 2010, pp. 109 – 122.
98. Nick Bisley. 2010
99. “The most significant political phenomenon of our new century” is going to be “the relative rise of Asia, perhaps China especially, and its natural concomitant, the relative decline of the west as a whole and more particularly of both of its two greatest components, Europe and the US”. Paul Kennedy, “Rise and Fall”, The World Today. August-September, Volume 66, Numbers 8-9, 2010, pp. 6-9.
100. Judy Dempsey, “Americans Now looking to Asia more than Europe”, The Global Edition of the New York Times, 26 September 2011.
101. These figures were obtained from “Asia’s Importance Growing in Global Economy”. IMF Survey Online.
102. Sarajit Majumdar, “Global Power Shift – West to East?” Asia Sentinel, 9 January 2009,
103. “The balance of economic power: East or famine?, The Economist, 27 February 2010, pp. 77-78.
104. Hamilton and Quinlan, 2010
105. Philip Whyte, Narrowing The Atlantic: The Way Forward for EU-US Trade and Investment. London. Centre for European Reform. 2009.
106. For the now definitive work on the security dilemma see Ken Booth and Nicholas J. Wheeler, The Security Dilemma: Fear, Co-operation and Trust in World Politics (New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
107. John Mearsheimer in particular in, for instance, his The Rise of China Will Not be Peaceful After All, The Australian, 18 November 2005.Michael Cox