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By Root 1190 0

rule, but its Confucian background was brutally cast aside and overlaid by Communist ideology for forty years. Japan has chosen to adopt many American styles and mind-sets over the last century. Africa has its own long-standing traditions, but it is also home to the largest and fastest-growing Christian population on earth. In Latin America, churches remain vital to the country’s life in a way that is unimaginable in Europe. We hear a great deal about Protestant evangelicalism in the United States, but it is in Brazil and South Korea that it is growing fastest. If Christian values lie at the heart of the Western tradition, then how should one characterize a country like South Africa, which has more than seven thousand Christian denominations? Or Nigeria, which has more Anglicans than England?

The West and the rest have been interacting for millennia. Legend has it that Christianity came to Africa with Saint Mark in a.d. 60. Some of the earliest Christian communities in the world were settled in northern Africa. The Middle East preserved and advanced Western science for centuries. Russia has been struggling with its Western and non-Western identities for at least four hundred years. In much of the world, the West has been around so long that it is in some sense part of the fabric of that civilization. That is why it seems perfectly natural that the largest casino in the world has been built in Macao, China—and it is an imitation of St. Mark’s Square in Venice, which is itself strongly influenced by Moorish (Islamic) design. Is it Chinese, Western, Moorish, or modern? Probably all of the above.

Modernity has come with the rise of the West, and so it has taken a Western face. But as the modern world expands and embraces more of the globe, modernity becomes a melting pot. Trade, travel, imperialism, immigration, and missionary work have all mixed things up. Every culture has its distinct elements, and some of them survive modernization. Others don’t, and as capitalism marches on, the older feudal, formal, family-based, and hierarchical customs die—as they did in the West. The impact of modern, Western values continues to be strong. China and India might be less inclined to act on human rights, but they have to respond to the reality that this issue is on the global agenda. In the case of India, being a democracy with a liberal intellectual elite, there is a vocal constituency within the country whose outlook, on this topic, is largely shaped by Western values.

The question “Will the future be modern or Western?” is more complicated than it might seem. The only simple answer is yes. The only complex one is to look at specific countries—to understand their past and present, their culture and folkways, the manner in which they have adapted to the Western world and modernized. I will try to do that next with the two most important rising powers—India and China. This is also the best way to understand the new geopolitics. After all, the real challenge we will face in the future is not a vague one of differing attitudes but a concrete one of differing geography, history, interests, and capabilities. To speak of the “rise of Asia” misses the point. There is no such thing as Asia, which is really a Western construct. There are many very different countries that are part of that construct—China, Japan, India, Indonesia—and they harbor differences and suspicions about one another. The world looks different to China and India not simply because of who they are but also because of where they sit. The great shift taking place in the world might prove to be less about culture and more about power.

4

The Challenger

Americans may admire beauty, but they are truly dazzled by bigness. Think of the Grand Canyon, the California redwoods, Grand Central Terminal, Disney World, SUVs, the American armed forces, General Electric, the Double Quarter Pounder (with Cheese), and the Venti Latte. Europeans prefer complexity, the Japanese revere minimalism. But Americans like size, preferably supersize.

That’s why China hits the American mind