The Post-American World - Fareed Zakaria [57]
Ultimately, China’s intentions might be irrelevant. In the messy world of international politics, intentions and outcomes are not directly linked. (No country was expecting a world war in 1914.) It’s like a market in which all companies are trying to maximize profits by raising prices: the systemwide result is exactly the opposite—a fall in prices. Similarly, in international politics, another system with no single, supreme authority, the intentions of countries do not always accurately predict the outcome. Hence the Roman aphorism “If you want peace, prepare for war.”
Just how peacefully China can rise will be determined by a combination of Chinese actions, other countries’ reactions, and the systemic effects that this interaction produces. Given its current size, China cannot hope to slip onto the world stage unnoticed. Its search for energy and raw materials, for example, is entirely understandable. China is growing fast, consumes energy and all kinds of commodities, and needs to find steady supplies of them. Other countries buy oil, so why shouldn’t Beijing do the same? The problem is size. China operates on so large a scale that it can’t help changing the nature of the game.
China’s perception of its interests is shifting. Men like Wu Jianmin come from an older generation of diplomats, and the younger generation is well aware of China’s new power. Some China watchers worry that, in time, power will go to China’s head. In a delicately phrased set of warnings delivered in China in 2005, Lee Kuan Yew described his concerns not about China’s current leadership, or even the next generation, but about the generation after that, which will have been born in a time of stability, prosperity, and rising Chinese influence. “China’s youth must be made aware of the need to reassure the world that China’s rise will not turn out to be a disruptive force,” he said in a speech at Fudan University. Lee implied that what has kept Chinese leaders humble since Deng Xiao-ping is the bitter memory of Mao’s mistakes—fomenting revolutions abroad, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution, which together resulted in the deaths of about forty million Chinese. “It is vital,” Lee went on, “that the younger generation of Chinese who have only lived through a period of peace and growth and have no experience of China’s tumultuous past are made aware of the mistakes China made as a result of hubris and excesses in ideology.”
For now, China’s foreign policy remains entirely commercially focused, though that, too, casts its shadow. In Africa, for example, China is working to build economic ties. The continent has natural resources, particularly oil and natural gas, that China needs in order to grow. Both Beijing and African governments have welcomed new trade relations—in part because there is no colonial past or difficult history to complicate matters—and business is booming. Trade is growing around 50 percent a year, Chinese investments in Africa even faster. In many African countries, economic growth is at record highs, a fact that many attribute to their new connections with China. Some on the continent see the relationship as exploitative and resent China’s new power, so Beijing has taken pains to demonstrate its good intentions. In November 2006, President Hu Jintao held a summit on Sino-African relations. All forty-eight African countries that have diplomatic ties with China attended, most of them represented by their presidents or prime ministers. It was the largest African summit ever held outside the continent. At the meeting, China promised to double aid to Africa in two years, provide $5 billion in loans and credits, set up a $5 billion fund to encourage further Chinese investment in Africa, cancel much of the debt owed to China, provide greater access to the Chinese market, train fifteen thousand African professionals, and build new hospitals and schools across the continent. Ethiopia’s prime minister, Meles Zenawi,