For a long time, China was considered the rising world power of the 21st century. But the decline is near, proclaims a politics professor in Foreign Policy Magazine. Accordingly, China will meet the same fate as all emerging nations before it.
The world is full of falling empires these days: when Brexit came about, the public opinion was that the English had still not gotten over the loss of their empire and that they could therefore not be included in the European family. Anyone who travels to Vienna can literally grasp how difficult it must be for Austrians to come to terms with the loss of the world empire: the architecture, the majesty and beauty of the public buildings in no way reflect the current role played by the country, but rather those that it once had.
And then there is the United States of America: in the last century the architect of the “Pax Americana”, today a country in which more than a third of the people do not exist economically, schools and colleges are unaffordable and democracy has been hollowed out.
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If there is one country that you think right now is setting the counter trend and is on the way to becoming the new global hegemon, it is the People’s Republic of China. Not that anyone anywhere in the world should expect anything from this totalitarian dictatorship, run by one man from Beijing, becoming the new world power of the 21st century.
But that doesn’t mean China can be overlooked or dismissed: on the way to becoming the largest economy in the world, soon to be equipped with the largest fleet that patrols the world’s oceans, ideologically armed by Xi Jinping as an ethno-nationalist state and ready for war (with 15 neighbors Beijing has already ongoing border disputes that can escalate at any time). In light of these realities, one has to read twice a headline like that in the US magazine Foreign Policy, which proclaims that China is not a rising power but, on the contrary, a declining power.
Alexander Görlach is a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs in New York. The PhD linguist and theologian teaches democratic theory in Germany, Austria and Spain as an honorary professor at Leuphana University. In the 2017-18 academic year, he was at National Taiwan University and City University Hong Kong to conduct research on China’s rise. He is currently researching new technologies at the University of Oxford’s Internet Institute and how they are used in democracies and abused in dictatorships.
But what is right now? Perhaps even America and China alike are on a downhill path to insignificance? Doesn’t every “empire” that draws its ideal from times of tyranny and colonialism embody a barbarism that should have no place in today’s world? The free world is rightly disgusted by the horrible and criminal activities of the warlord Putin, who prefers to rule like the tsars of past centuries, dividing the world into spheres of influence and clearly defining who is to polish the Russian boot.
It is absolutely true that those political empires are over. Rather, multilateralism and the insight that the great challenges such as climate change can only be mastered together as a human family characterize the structure and working methods of international institutions. Their most important instrument is international law. After that, hopefully not in the too distant future, Vladimir Putin will be convicted for the war criminal that he is.
The aforementioned Foreign Policy article from last September lists historical examples, the US, Russia, Germany and Japan, to solidify the thesis of China’s impending demise. The authors thus do not blame any specific idiosyncrasy of the Chinese political model as the reason for its imminent demise, but explain it in terms of a dynamic that afflicts all countries that are growing rapidly in a similar way. Countries, so the argument of the text, which are growing rapidly and attaining economic prosperity, would very soon like to have their economic power paid off in political coins. They accomplish this, increasingly ruthlessly, with the crowbar on the international stage and with coercive measures against their own population at home.
Here is the tipping point where a rising nation with promise becomes a danger: to itself and to the rest of the world: The more radical a country becomes, the text says, the more likely it is to roll back the policies that put that country first made successful. And that is exactly what is happening in Xi Jinping’s China: the Chinese leader abolished all the freedoms that once existed (and there weren’t many), reined in the population, locked ethnic minorities in camps, and converted the economy back into one state-owned, away from a market model.
This started the downward spiral in China: the debts that the country has taken on in order to be able to have a say in the New Silk Road initiative everywhere in the world are gigantic. The economy is not growing as necessary, and unemployment, particularly among young people, is 18.4 percent, the highest it was when they were alive. There are other reasons why China has not remained a country pursuing its legitimate interests, but has become an aggressive player: With 1.4 billion people, it is one of the most populous countries in the world.
But China is running out of drinking water. That is why Tibet is occupied and there is a dispute with India because Beijing wants to secure the drinking water supplies that the melting Himalayas will release. In addition, by the end of the century there will be around 500 million fewer people living in China, and by 2050 200 million who are still working, paying taxes and producing growth will retire. In view of this finding, it is clear that the growth figures of the past will not be able to be repeated.
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And: In the system competition with the United States, China is in just as bad a position as the shining torch of freedom: economic inequality is similarly blatantly high in both countries, as is wealth redistribution: a few rich are faced with an armada of poor people. China has failed to become a better America. Instead, predatory capitalism made in the USA was also cultivated at home. However, due to the absence of freedom, China does not have the mechanisms for action and healing that the United States, as a free, democratic country, has at its disposal.
This sober economic prospect is in stark contrast to Xi’s rhetoric of China as the land of milk and honey. As a result, people’s thumbscrews are being tightened, propaganda is ramping up and targets designed to distract from the real state of the country: Xi’s obsession with conquering and smashing democratic Taiwan off the Chinese coast is ample testimony to this. Xi says the “rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” will not be successfully completed until Taiwan is subjugated and “reunited” with China. This is, of course, nonsense, but in a country where there is no free press or other organs for genuine knowledge formation, many people believe him.
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The current conflict between China and the US, at least according to the logic followed by the Foreign Policy article, is an extraordinary one. Because normally a new world power replaces an old one. In the present case, however, two world powers are going to the dogs for the same reasons but at different speeds. Capitalism as embraced and exported by Washington and Beijing is obsolete because it is misanthropic. The alternative to this is obvious: the social market economy, as it prevails in continental Europe and from there has also made its way towards South Korea and Taiwan.
This century needs a “Pax Democratica” that embodies the ideals of a responsible and sustainable democracy, with decent politics and a socially just economy. This new alliance does not need a nation to lead it, but the will of the countries united in it to shape the future of humanity together, responsibly and in freedom.
