PERISCOPE: "China Puts the World Off Balance," by Minxin Pei, Newsweek, 1 February 2010.
Bits and pieces: "habitual free rider," "refusal to strengthen is currency," "rebuffed the West's call for ...."
China's constant reply: low per capita income, which is fair enough at $3,500--more or less.
But the key line: "The more likely explanation for the country's obstreperousness is that despite its rise, China is no more comfortable with the Western-led international system now than it was 10 years ago."
Not surprisingly, basically the same leadership is in place: Hu and Wen were clearly ascendant back in 2000, and they're wrapping up their rule now. Classic homebodies who didn't travel abroad for their tertiary education, due to the Cultural Revolution, they remain as tone-deaf diplomatically today as they were back when they started. It is simply not in their nature.
Yes, the PRC continues to reject democracy and human rights, but it still accepts U.S. leadership as an enduring reality, and it'll remain that way so long as China's self-definition makes it too unappealing to the advanced economies of the Core.
Here I agree with Pei a lot:
Yet the days when China can have it both ways--freeload on global public goods while enjoying international respect--are about to end. Disillusionment with its self-serving policies is setting in.
As someone who plans AHEAD (!), I can catch a lot of crap for my vision not unfolding fast enough--as with China.
But my sense of timeframe remains constant: nothing to expect from the 4th generation of leaders (through 2012), some hope for the 5th (2012-2022), but most evolution expected once Hong Kong undergoes its self-selecting experiment (pushed off til the end of the decade) and the 6th generation (my-age people in their late 40s) start to be teed up around 2020. I expect this evolution toward pluralism (first factions within the Party, then slow divorce into recognizable competing parties) to find its consummation by around 2030, when China will hit the half-century mark since Deng's revolution, in line with my notion from Great Powers that single-party rule for about five decades after the "revolution" is approximately the norm (I date it at 64 years for the U.S, or only after Andrew Jackson "third term" in the form of Martin Van Buren, meaning the 1840 presidential election when Whigs and Democrats teed off rather evenly for the first time--in terms of popular appeal).
I expect the late 2020s and early 2030s to be a fascinating time. I'll be closing in on my mid-to-late-sixties.
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