The China Question

Matt Yglesias thinks that the Pentagon and Neocons are using fears of China as rationales to beef up the defense budget. Now Matt is probably right about this, and he doesn't necessarily think that China isn't a problem, but I'd like to respond to the Neocons' substantive arguments rather than just poison the well.

You can put in the camp of those who think China is a rising strategic threat to the United States. This doesn't mean it's a threat now, or necessarily will be in the future. But the main point is unassailable and unavoidable. Within the next generation China will surpass the United States as the #1 economic power, which means that it will sooner or later displace us as the #1 power, period. If you don't believe me, read Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.

Now speaking as a patriot, a China as #1 does make me queasy. But I can get over the pride thing. You don't have to be #1 to have a nice country. I do think it will make many on the right go apeshit, however. They are after preserving U.S. dominance for the sake of dominance.

But what really concerns me about a rising China is that it will act as an expansionist hegemon on the lines of Wilhemine Germany. I'm not convinced that capitalism inevitably leads to democracy. I hope I'm wrong, but I think it is quite possible that the tyrants in Beijing could use xenophobic nationalism and economic prosperity to maintain their grip on power. Maybe not forever, but long enough to do some real damage. I believe that China's mercantilist tradition could beggar the rest of the world, as it is presently doing to the U.S. And I believe that the environmental consquences of unregulated capitalism in a country with a billion people would be incalculable.

So should you count me in with the Neocons? Absolutely not. Their cure (a bigger defense budget) would actually accelerate the Day of Reckoning. The folks at the Pentagon and the imperialists don't seem to realize that the foundation of China's growing political and military power is its growing economy. China is growing faster that the U.S., and if China reaches anything remotely approaching the per capita production of the U.S., they will easily outstrip us. Which means they will be able to pay for a much bigger army than we will, as well as use access to their consumer market as a diplomatic tool. Building more tanks will not forestall this situation, and by diverting scarce resources into unproductive areas like military spending, we will actually make things worse.

Secondly, the militarist diplomacy of the right is making China's emergent hegemony easier, both by overstraining our power and inviting a backlash. If the Neocons are really worried about China, they should be trying to contain it by building a network of alliances. Instead their policies are isolating us.

What should we do about China? We should integrate it into international institutions in order to divert its energies to peaceful endeavors and open it up to democratic penetration. And we also need to put our own economic house in order. But these are solutions that require clear thinking, which is pretty rare on the right these days.

So you can think that China is a potential problem without believing that an aggressive foreign policy and a big army are the way to address it. In fact, if you are thinking clearly you will realize it is the opposite of what we should do. China is one of the few cases where the right may have identified the correct question, but typically they come up with precisely the wrong answer.