Speculations by U.S. experts about the prospects for “a partnership of equals” and methods for integrating China into the liberal world order created by the U.S. show a new approach to changes in the global balance of forces. The U.S. is becoming aware that the era of its unsurpassed dominance in the world will come to an end in the next ten to fifteen years and China will move into the prime economic position on the planet. According to Albert Keidel of the Carnegie Endowment, China will be equal with America by 2020 in terms of GDP by purchasing power parity and in terms of national currency exchange rates by 2030. Chinese GDP will exceed U.S. GDP twofold by 2050.

This forecast cannot be called sensational, if anything, as the steady and rapid growth of the Chinese economy already provided grounds for such calculations back in the previous decade. And yet China’s unrelenting advance to the position of global leader took the West by surprise. It was only a mere nine years ago that Gerald Segal said in his article “Does China Matter?” published in Foreign Affairs (September/October, 1999, Vol. 78, p. 5) that China’s might was illusionary and by far a mental plot of the West itself. “At best, China is a second-rank middle power that has mastered the art of diplomatic theater: it has us willingly suspending our disbelief in its strength,” Segal wrote soothingly. Today Chinese analysts recall this article with a due sense of malevolence as an example of the general misunderstanding of what is happening in their homeland.

DUAL UNIONS?

Chinese experts admit that the country has received huge benefits from its engagement in the global liberal economic system created by the West. It opened the doors to the ever-increasing flows of Chinese commodities to international markets. A common explanation one comes across in China suggests that the West contemplated the plight of the Soviet Union for China at first, but a sober analysis of the aftermath if there were a crash of such a densely populated country convinced Western powers to revise that approach and help Beijing continue a normal development. It looks like the West created favorable conditions for Beijing’s embedding in the global economic order on the assumption that growing prosperity and the obligation to observe the universally accepted rules of the game would create conditions for speedy political reforms and democratization in China.

But this liberal calculus has turned sour as the rate of political reforms lags far behind market economic reforms. This means that China may acquire the status of global economic leader while retaining a one-party system and a formal commitment to a “special Chinese socialism.” Whatever Western politicians may think about this, there is nothing they can do about it, since no one will ever be able to push China to the bottom of the economic ratings in conditions of globalization, or take away its economic benefits. The growing economic interdependence opens the doors for influences directed both ways, and now China itself can exert influence on the West.

The George W. Bush administration factored China’s growing status into practical policies. Rapprochement with Beijing became one of its successes, especially against the backdrop of serious economic failures at home and political/military problems abroad. On the intellectual plane, however, the neo-Cons reacted to the rise of new countries – China and Russia – by issuing a call for a tighter consolidation in the ranks of the old Western democracies. This scenario looks ideologically immaculate, yet it might mean that an “alliance of the tardy” will be formed that would lack any long-term prospects.

A political standoff between the “democratic bloc” and the new centers of growth would hurt both sides. The hope for replaying the 20th-century experience when the West managed to wear out and dilute the Soviet bloc’s economy in the course of contention is but a highly dangerous illusion these days. Given China’s annual economic growth of 7 to 8 percent compared to the 2 to 3 percent posted by the West (the U.S. and Europe), attempts to isolate the new leader and to impose an economic boycott against China will make the “democratic bloc” pay a price, and this price will increase each year and make the losses inflicted on the opposite side diminish progressively. Eventually – some time in the middle of this century – the U.S. might find itself in the shoes of the former Soviet Union, whose huge military power broke away from the modest economic influence in the world.

A proposal to set up a U.S.-Chinese duopoly for governing the world economy looks like a classical instance of realism in foreign policy. It rests on the concept of the balance of forces and rules out any hints at the problem of value orientation. By getting a pragmatic, flexible and strong partner in the person of China, the U.S. could set up a union of the world’s two largest economies. The problem is that the emergence of the Big Two may impact existing alliances.

Japan will most likely join the duopoly in a bid to extract the maximum possible benefit from economic cooperation with China and from defense/political cooperation with Washington. As for the EU, it may find itself in the position of being the “third man out,” although the U.S. will continue to assure the Europeans of “trans-Atlantic solidarity” and the Chinese of commitment to mutually beneficial cooperation. If the hypothetical Sino-American alliance expands beyond the economic framework and takes on a political dimension, this may motivate Europe to expand the geopolitical base by forging a union with Russia. Considering the EU’s ambitions, it is unlikely that it will agree to reduce its own status (to the third weightiest in the Sino-American alliance from the second-in-importance in the current partnership with the U.S.). In the meantime, it will feel like an equal in a partnership with Moscow.

Following the events of August 2008, this option seems rather unrealistic against the background of a steep heightening of polemics between the West and Russia, since the former has gotten a pretext for a lineup within the old alliance. At the same time, the conflict around Georgia has shown that the U.S. needs new strong allies to uphold its global influence. This in turn increases the chances of a rapprochement between Washington and Beijing.

On the other hand, a cooling-off in relations with the U.S. may stimulate Russia to continue the search for a rapprochement with Europe and for setting up new mechanisms of cooperation with its neighbors on the European continent. One can recall, in particular, Russia’s recent proposal to sign a new agreement on security. In the future this may open the road to forming a dual alliance between the EU and Russia as a response to the alliance formed by China and the U.S. The Russia-EU duopoly will be a junior twin of the Sino-American one. It will also operate on Realpolitik principles and will sacrifice Western values for common interests. Let us note that both alliances will resemble each other in terms of internal asymmetry, with one partner leading in the military sphere (the U.S. and Russia) and the other dominating economically (China and the EU).

The prospect of China turning into the most powerful world player has emerged so unambiguously that everyone is trying to be China’s friend now. The European Union, too, would not miss an opportunity to set up a lucrative strategic bloc with China. Charles Grant and Katinka Barysch of the Center for European Reform believe that Europe has a chance to win Beijing over to its side. The U.S., which is heavily bent on unilateral actions, will not likely predispose the Chinese toward cooperation, while the EU, whose hallmarks are diversity and multilateralism, would suit China much better as a partner. In addition, Beijing is not only a source of problems in trade and finance for Washington; it is also a strategic contender in East Asia and this breeds military and political mistrust between the two sides. The latter factor tallies badly with the plans for joint administration of a global economy.

Yet Europe has no internal cohesion, and Eastern European countries could easily heed a U.S. request and bury plans for rapprochement with the authoritarian Beijing. This influence over the New Europeans and a deepening division inside the EU provides Washington with a good chance to show itself as the only Western partner worthy of forming an alliance with the Chinese. Add to this the presence of separate interest groups in the EU which, unlike in the U.S., are sorting out relations at the national level. Leading EU industrialized nations are fighting each other on the Chinese market and are seeking bilateral agreements with Beijing in order to gain the maximum benefits. However large the EU’s willingness might be, it is not yet ready for a uniform and constructive policy of cooperation with China – as well as with Russia.

DOES BEIJING NEED FRIENDS?

Still, a crucial unanswered question is whether Beijing needs an alliance of this type and whether it is ready to give up its traditional foreign policy course that denies the possibility of allied relations with other countries. The acute need for foreign assistance to speed up modernization in the 1950s urged Mao Zedong to “lean against a single side” by forming an alliance with the Soviet Union, which would help China build up its strength, then move on independently later. Now the external situation is favorable for China’s development and it does not have an apparent need for allies. Beijing has already joined the World Trade Organization – at the expense of great concessions; a reform of the United Nations is off the agenda for the time being; and Beijing’s chances for implementing plans for a radical realignment of existing international institutions and for the setting up of new structures are questionable now.

Add to this the arguments concerning “parity of the partners” that may arise inside China if an alliance with the U.S. is forged hastily. China’s former ambassador to Moscow Li Fenglin has recently described the Sino-Soviet friendship treaty of 1950 as an “unequal” one, as China found itself in the position of being the guarded and protected side and the imbalance of the two countries’ forces was immeasurable. These statements hurt many Russian veterans who took part in providing friendly assistance and support to the Chinese people. Still, the Chinese system of foreign policy benchmarks suggests that equitable agreements are possible only between players with equal potential. If this logic is projected at the prospects for an alliance between China and the U.S., it may also turn out to be “inequitable” if American leadership persists, as the difference in weight between the two countries will not be in Beijing’s favor.

Experts say that after an incident in 2001, in which a U.S. and a Chinese warplane collided over sea, relations between Beijing and Washington have remained steady. This is the longest period of stability since the end of the Cold War. Experts inside China link it to the September 11, 2001 events and provide two different explanations for it. Some of them believe this lull is temporary and is mostly due to external factors. They maintain that the China-U.S. confrontation will resume after Washington relinquishes its struggle with terrorism and scales back its activity in the Middle East. Another explanation suggests that external factors do not play a leading role anymore and a stable Sino-American relationship comes from the growing need that both countries have for each other.

Chinese analysts tend to deny the thesis that China’s rapid economic growth was a result of Bush’s antiterrorist campaign. Washington kept most of its attention focused on China and continued to build up its military presence in East Asia. At the same time, the Chinese admit that the role of external stimuli for cooperation with the U.S. (like the “Soviet threat” during the Cold War or the current fight against terror) is decreasing. After solutions are found to the North Korean and Iranian nuclear problems, their importance will drop to a minimum and internal stimuli for partnership will move into the spotlight.

Dr Yuan Peng, the director of the Institute of American Studies that reports to China’s Institute of International Studies, believes that Chinese diplomacy faces the task of fostering strategic trust in relations between Beijing and Washington and expanding the field for cooperation. The main issue that Chinese analysts ask is whether economic interdependence will be enough to form trust in politics and security. As they assess the Strategic Economic Dialogue that the U.S. and Chinese leaders launched in 2006 and in which Henry Paulson, the U.S. co-chairman and U.S. Treasury Secretary, takes so much pride, Chinese analysts indicate that the U.S. uses its mechanism to put unilateral pressure on China in a bid to force it into concessions on the yuan exchange rate and to make Chinese financial markets accessible.

The Chinese deemed Paulson’s calls for opening the financial market and changing the growth model “in the interest of healthy development of the Chinese economy” as a strategic entrapment aimed at arresting the speed of the country’s global rise. Experts point out that a deepening of internal changes will set the scene for a rapprochement with the U.S., such as the opening of the Chinese financial market. The latter is an objective of economic reform, however, and “it will be effectuated without pressure on China on the part of the U.S.” It is another thing that Chinese reformers will not yield to U.S. impatience and will not take the risks of poorly prepared changes.

However, the Chinese will draw increasingly more benefits in the future from the conditions of bargaining with the economically limping West, which will continue to lose its advantages. Dr Song Yuhua of Zhejiang University’s Economy Research Institute says that if one looks at the situation right now and in the short term, China depends on the U.S. to a larger extent than the U.S. depends on China; that is why the Economic Dialogue evidences ever-increasing U.S. demands, while Beijing has to agree with it and make concessions. He also writes that it is the Americans who define the issues for this dialogue and its results bring far more benefits to Washington. However, in the mid and long term, China will benefit from the changes. As China’s economy continues to grow and the country’s standing in the world economy and politics rises, America’s dependence on China will grow and the balance of their interdependence will level out.

Disputes are not limited to the economy. The U.S. exasperates China with its support for Taiwan and its criticism of “a lack of transparency” in the programs to modernize the Chinese Armed Forces or China’s cooperation with countries like Sudan or Myanmar. China regards the “color revolutions” in the territory of the former Soviet Union and U.S. rapprochement with India, Mongolia and Vietnam as a challenge to itself in the field of security. Moreover, Beijing’s willingness to rid foreign policy of an ideological ballast does not find much response on the American side of the Pacific, as the White House continues expounding on the importance of democratization in China and holding meetings with the official Beijing opponents – Xinjiang and Tibetan separatists, members of unofficial Christian sects, and Hong Kong democrats.

Yuan Peng argues that China and the U.S. act as two powerful states whose relations rule out any benefits from one-sided pressure on the other partner. He believes that both sides must keep in check and dampen the elements of confrontation, as well as reduce the impact of ideology and domestic policy. In the future, a new type of strategic stability is expected to emerge between the two countries. It will be different from the one that existed between the U.S. and the Soviet Union or between the U.S. and their incumbent allies.

Stability in relations between the U.S and the Soviet Union rested on the balance of military force and the balance of nuclear deterrence. Post-Cold War stable relations between the U.S., on the one hand, and the EU and Japan, on the other, are based on the communality of the social system and ideology. They can be called “an alliance of common values.” Yet China, which is reluctant to pursue a Soviet-style buildup of military power or to renounce socialism and Communist Party rule, does not fit into either model. Dr Yuan called on China and the U.S. to build a model of strategic stability taking account of the conditions of globalization, differences in the social order and patterns of civilized development, asymmetry of military strength, and the deepening of economic interdependence.

Partnership proposals from both sides contain voluminous lists of reproaches and wishes that may prove to be unfeasible in reality. The absence of shared liberal values makes the hypothetical alliance uncomfortable for Washington, while the absence of defense parity and the presence of a chain of military bases along the perimeter of China’s borders are unlikely to inspire Beijing with trust toward its partner. At the same time, mainstream political scientists in China, who reflect Beijing’s official viewpoint, are ready to support John Ikenberry’s main thesis that China will not take any actions aimed at destroying the existing global system, which satisfies it on the whole and which produces good dividends for it.

Song Guoyou from the Center for American Studies at Fudan University warns that a threat to partnership may come from the U.S. At this point the U.S. continues to watch China’s efforts silently, but people in Washington are gradually losing patience – they may apparently decide that Beijing is getting too many benefits and that it is developing away from a direction desirable for the U.S. The researcher believes the Chinese authorities should not soothe themselves with optimistic hopes that the U.S. will continue to support the tendency toward the growing economic cohesion of the two countries.

Interdependence has a price and the Americans will inevitably try to draw benefits from it, forcing China to make concessions. However, this does not lay the groundwork for China to break up with the U.S. unless the situation involves Taiwan or the country’s territorial integrity. However, Beijing must prepare for a possible clash of the two countries’ interests in the future. “If China’s strengthening in all spheres presents a peaceful challenge to the U.S. domineering position, will the U.S. look at it peacefully then and fulfill China’s justified demands?”

Today’s debates inside China regarding future partnership with the U.S. proceed – to one degree or another – from the U.S. thesis about the advisability of turning Beijing into a “responsible stakeholder,” which was put forth in September 2005 by Robert Zoellick, then an Assistant Secretary of State. Chinese experts evaluate his statements in different ways. They believe that in addition to recognition of China’s international weight, which is a balm to national pride, his statements conceal a dangerous invitation to give up national interests in favor of supporting Western policies in the spheres where this may damage their country – from the revaluation of the yuan to the import of liberal values.

The experts interpret the new foreign “theory of China’s responsibility” as the aftermath of the evolution of former attempts to influence Beijing, using the bankrupt theories of “China’s crash” and “China’s threat.” The “crash theory” of the 1990s was based on overstatements of the problems that China was to face with its internal development. The “threat theory” that replaced it is also losing its relevance as Beijing’s international prestige and rapport with the outside world grow. Now the West is trying to impose its own rules of the game on China and to influence its policies with the aid of the “responsibility theory.”

Niu Haibin of the Shanghai Institute of International Studies describes the latter theory as a challenge to Chinese diplomacy. Unlike the former two theories, this one is more neutral and unbiased and it focuses on dialogue and consultations instead of on the mechanisms of deterrence. However, it is painted in liberal colors and is devoid of realism. China cannot reject its responsibility, but Dr Niu believes one should draw a clear distinction between obligations to the U.S. and to the world community in general.

The U.S. would like China to “shoulder the excess costs of protecting American hegemony.” The EU is pressing for progress in the energy sector, in the openness of markets and in human rights. Developing countries expect China to hold back the reciprocal competition in trade, as well as to provide aid and privileged loans. This means that China will bear international responsibility, indeed, but not in the way that a small group of countries would define for it. Beijing will act proceeding from its national interests and the political priority of the authorities’ responsibilities for the country’s development.

The weakness of the U.S. position is seen in Zoellick’s proposal that China should provide “retroactive pay” for advantages previously gained in trading with the West. Beijing now stresses the burden of the obligations it undersigned while joining international organizations and their scrupulous observance, saying that this makes any extra demands groundless both in the juridical and moral sense. Fred Bergsten makes this point clear in an article where he says China will not be satisfied with being treated just as “a party concerned” and not getting the status of a full-fledged and genuine partner in global administration. At the same time, Zoellick’s postulation produced a profound impact on Chinese political discourse, stimulating the discussion of prospects for partnership and rapprochement between Beijing and Washington.

CHINA’S DISCUSSION ON RESPONSIBILITY

Professor Chu Shulong from the School of Public Policy and Management at Tsinghua University in Beijing said in a recent publication that China acts as a defender of the existing international system and this facilitates approximation of its positions with the West. He indicated that China’s growing confidence in its own strength plays a certain role in this process. Remembering pressures through the use of force on the part of the West and Japan has fostered a specific “psychology of the victim” among the Chinese. It fuelled the acute reaction to the West’s operations in Kosovo in 1999, which sparked apprehensions that the formula suggesting the supremacy of human rights over sovereignty could be applied in other parts of the world, as well, including Tibet and Xinjiang. Yet in 2003, after the start of the war in Iraq, some Chinese experts came up with public condemnations of U.S. hegemony, but did not link the events to any possible threats to China’s national security.

Value conceptions have been changing, too. In the past, Beijing would do its best to disassociate itself from the U.S. and would speak out against any war conducted by the Americans, but it neither supported nor condemned the war in Iraq. Chu Shulong says the government made a decision to choose this position with due account of the international situation and relations with the U.S. and Iraq. But value conceptions also played a certain role in it. The U.S.-British war launched to impose democratic values on the Iraqi people was a hegemonic action, but the Chinese government also considered the horrible things that Saddam had done to the interests of the Iraqi people, the security of neighboring countries and stability in the region in the past 20 years. In addition, Beijing took account of the factors of international justice and morals.

Dr Chu indicates that the tradition of standing against something – imperialism, colonialism, revisionism – is vanishing from Chinese politics, and the lingering postulation about countermeasures to hegemony has lost its previous key status. “A gradual change of the culture of ‘standing against something’ is a gratifying fact. It shows that China is turning more and more into a normal country, and an active and encouraging member of the world community,” he writes.

Another indication that China is moving toward new values can be found in an article with the eloquent title “On the Possibility of China-U.S. Joint Dominance” published in the Xiandai Guoji Guanxi (Contemporary International Relations) magazine (No. 2, 2008, pp. 28-32). Its authors come from a new generation of China’s intellectual elite. Huang He is a postdoctoral student at Nanjing University and a research fellow at the university’s Hopkins-Nanjing Center Institute for International Research. His co-author, Zhu Shi, is a doctoral student at Nanjing. Huang and Zhu suggest that Chinese-U.S. ‘joint dominance’ (gong zhu in Chinese) is quite possible and desirable.

Their discourse takes root in the Western ‘hegemonic stability theory,’ which claims that a hegemonic state is needed to maintain the stability of the world system; a state that has the ability and the willingness to provide public benefits to society. The U.S. performed this mission in the format of ‘unipolar stability’ after the end of the Cold War, but keeping international public benefits in a period of decaying hegemony requires the involvement of other countries, too. The U.S. needs an associate in this field and China can play precisely this role.

In referring to the ideas of U.S. economists Charles Kindleberger and Robert Gilpin, Huang and Zhu describe the hegemon as managing the process of distributing international public benefits. The hegemon has a powerful economy enabling it to shoulder huge costs. However, the present U.S. hegemony is selfish; it has largely violated the principles of mutual cooperation and joint development of the world community, which was seen by the events in Iraq. In a reflection of these tendencies, Gilpin put forth a hypothesis of ‘shared responsibility,’ suggesting the need for support of international partners, which captivated Huang and Zhu.

The latter maintain that China’s need to lend assistance to the U.S. in order to scale down the burden of control over the world order is becoming more and more obvious. Huang and Zhu believe that China’s stronger role as a leader in world affairs is not necessarily as incompatible with U.S. dominance in world governance as water and fire are. If the new arrangement is flexible enough to help promote settlement at a global level in line with the changes in the alignment of forces, then the two countries will be able to establish fruitful cooperation.

According to Huang and Zhu, future global stability will require Sino-American joint dominance. All strong countries capable of maintaining cooperation keep a balance of power and that is why the probability of a simultaneous decay in the strength of two states that are jointly keeping the world order is very small. As long as order is maintained by many states rather than just one state and not a single state has any preponderant advantages, all issues will be settled through consultations. Big countries will jointly allocate money and human resources in order to maintain the international public good.

Huang and Zhu believe that cooperation with Washington in world governance is a reflection of Beijing’s internal demand for economic development amid international peace and stability. They point out Deng Xiaoping’s suggestion that “relations between China and the U.S. will improve eventually, and we should only continue contacts and develop ties” and conclude that the scope of factors encouraging cooperation is growing steadily in the 21st century. There have already been mutual losses and gains in the economy and investment, and there are elements conducive to active cooperation in both countries’ strategic culture, as well.

The Chinese experts note the paradoxical situation that the U.S. has found itself in. China has learned the ideals and mode of thinking inherent in the international system after becoming included in it. Also, the country has moved toward openness and transparency and assumed an extra amount of international obligations – the way the U.S. wanted it to do. On the other hand, being a part of the international system, Beijing not only assumed the obligations, but also started using rights, thus infusing increasingly more Chinese elements in international mechanisms. This unavoidably makes the U.S. feel certain limitations.

Huang and Zhu say the first thing one will have to consider in the process of developing the model of Sino-American cooperation is a coordination mechanism that will help solve the “free rider” problem during the production and distribution of international public benefits. The accumulation of financial resources will be the key problem of the project. The authors mention the Tobin tax on transactions involving foreign currency that was designed to slash speculative transactions and the instability of currencies; to make government economic policies less vulnerable to external blows; to improve the gains of international organizations; and to raise financing to provide for international public benefits. Another feasible idea – put forth by George Soros – is the creation of a specialized fund that would use donations from rich countries for international aid. This line of logic suggests that China and the U.S. should set up a fund of no less than $30 billion with a provision that other rich countries may also join in. The third area of activity is to draw official and private funds and to mobilize diverse resources.

This interpretation of the alliance between the two countries reduces its practical side to the emergence of channels for the accumulation of funds and a source for additional investment in global public benefits, as well as creating a floor for joint international actions. But the conclusion is worthy of attention. Huang and Zhu say that “joint dominance should rest on the willingness to respect the principle of subordination to the leading role of a state that has profounder knowledge and more developed economic mechanisms.” Since Beijing’s economic leadership looks predestined now, this passage seems to be a claim to the title part in the Big Duo.

The range of published articles this year – both in the U.S. and China – discussing the “partnership of equals” and “joint dominance” highlights the possible rise of new alliances capable of changing the global alignment of forces. It is still a wild guess as to how much these ideas may captivate the new U.S. administration, but partnership with China has been a priority during the two terms of the outgoing Republican administration, which provides grounds to believe that the new man in the White House will maintain the course of rapprochement with Beijing.

As for China, the situation is even more predictable there. A change of power has been scheduled for 2012 and the Communist Party elite has endorsed the successors – Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang. The two men will run the country until 2022, the most decisive ten years in terms of reaching economic parity with the U.S. If current theories are put into practical actions on both sides, Xi and Li will face the task of negotiating the creation of a Big Duo with the U.S.