On the Rise of China, The Reconfiguration of Global Power, and the Collapse of the Modern Liberal Order (original) (raw)

Events following the Second World War propelled the United States to assume command of the globe, as well as the organization of its resources, wealth, and power. China, represented by the newly formed revolutionary People's Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party, meanwhile developed outside this new anti-Communist, and hyper-liberal, trading and security system. As a result, China's early existence left China's early development and preparation for the 1980's largely in the hands of CCP leadership, which, after the death of Mao, immediately assumed a technocratic stance to the nation's affairs. With the United States beckoning it to return to the international system, largely to spite the Soviet Union, a massive and new area for liberal capitalist development suddenly appeared to global investors, international production networks, and global financial systems. With the 2008 collapse, US demand, represented prominently by the easy availability of credit, soon dried up, and with it, the external source that allowed the Chinese state to pursue its massive expenditures went with it. The world, now, is in flux. Larry Summers sees this new period as a dangerous one in which China may finally be inclined to pursue its own interests, as heralded with China's formation of the Asian Infrastructural Investment Bank. Should China fail to reform domestically - a major undertaking - the CCP stands ready to lose as it credibility crumbles and conservatives block reform at every turn. Alternatively, China could export its wealth and replicate the past actions of the United States with the revival of the ancient Silk Road as a new, and massive, Marshall Program so as to marshal its own satellites worldwide. This however, would place the PRC on a collision course with the US internationally. For the world America made, this course of action may represent a major and fundamental challenge to the American military, economic, scientific, and ideological order; this scenario, however, relies entirely upon the PRC's competency and success securing further growth. In the end, without a basis of growth, nothing remains certain for the People's Republic of China, as the CCP has staked so much upon it.