FW: Wallerstein on US/China conflict (fwd)

["Craven, Jim" <jcraven@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Joshua Bragg [mailto:joshuabragg@xxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, March 06, 2000 3:35 PM
To: jcraven@xxxxxxxxx
Subject: Fwd: Wallerstein on US/China conflict (fwd)


Dear Professor Craven,

I thought you'd enjoy this commentary by Wallerstein. I've actually
corresponded with him and he proves to be as nice as he is intelligent.

Joshua Bragg
joshuabragg@xxxxxxxxxxx

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Title: I. Wallerstein, "The U.S. and China: Enemies or Allies?"

Comment No. 35, Mar. 1, 2000

"The U.S. and China: Enemies or Allies?"

The United States and China have had a tumultuous relationship in the modern
world. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, the young U.S. republic
launched an early and important China trade, and U.S. Protestants sent their
most competent missionaries to preach the faith in China. Sun Yat-Sen studied in
the United States. And during the Second World War, the U.S. was the principal
outside military support for China in their resistance to Japanese overrule. It
was at U.S. insistence that China was included as one of the five permanent
members of the United Nations Security Council in 1945.

But when the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949, the friendship
seemed to disappear. The U.S. threw its protective fleet around Chiang
Kai-Shek's Kuomintang which had retreated to Taiwan. And Chinese volunteers
supported the North Koreans in the war that began in 1950. In the United States,
the "China question" had begun: "Who lost China?" was the theme of those
Americans who actively urged military action against the Communist regime. And
in China, the United States was termed the leading imperialist power in the
world as well as a "paper tiger." Cold war rhetoric between the U.S. and China
exceeded in decibels even U.S.-Soviet Union rhetoric.

Then things changed. China broke decisively its alliance with the Soviet Union.
The Chinese began to engage in "ping pong diplomacy" with the United States. And
suddenly, to the world's surprise, there was Richard Nixon in China sipping tea
with Mao Zedong. Most commentators gave this a simple geopolitical explanation.
Both powers wished to outflank the Soviet Union, which each regarded as the
primary opponent, at least in the short run. And it was of course only Nixon and
Mao, with their reputation as hardliners, that could have brought about such a
dramatic reversal of rhetoric.

What started as merely sipping tea together developed into a significant change
in the form and degree of participation of China in the world-economy - ever
greater, ever more open, ever more profit-oriented. This is what the United
States seemed to want, and this is what China seemed to want. Neither Tienanmen
nor the collapse of the Soviet Union seemed to slow down the pace of Chinese
economic involvement in world trade or of improved political relations with the
United States - until a few years ago. There was no single event that led to
questioning this trajectory. Still, once again there seemed to be voices on both
sides reviving the old rhetoric. The U.S. thought China was becoming too
threatening about Taiwan. China did not in the least appreciate that the U.S.
Air Force bombed its embassy in Belgrade. The U.S. said it was an accident, but
the Chinese manifestly did not believe it.

I have discovered that many people are returning to their question of more than
a quarter century ago: will there be war between the U.S. and China, and when?
The very question seems to me to miss the point of what is happening. Let us
review the putative "alliance" between the two powers that was begun in the
1970's. It is certainly not based on formal ideological affinity. Indeed, it
involves sweeping under the carpet the official ideological differences. The
basis of the relationship has been primarily economic, what each side as its
economic interests of the next 20-30 years, if not longer.

What does the United States want of China? The primary economic problem of the
United States for the next 20-30 years is how to maintain its central role as a
locus of capital accumulation in a "triadic" world-economy in which it is
engaged in very keen competition with western Europe and Japan. It will not be
easy. When we enter the next major expansion of the capitalist world-economy (a
new Kondratieff A-phase), it is by no means certain that the U.S. will be able
to corner more quasi-monopolies of the new leading industries than its rivals.
And since a triadic competition usually reduces to a dyad, it is possible to
foresee a U.S.-Japan economic arrangement in opposition to western Europe.

If this occurs, then this node will obviously need four things: an enlarged zone
of capital investment, an enlarged zone of low-cost production, an enlarged
consumer market for the new leading industries, and supplementary military
strength. China offers all four in one fell swoop. It seems elementary that the
U.S. would therefore give priority to including China in some zonal arrangement.
This will be of course in Japan's interest as well, if not ever more. But given
Japan's legacy of Chinese resentment, the U.S. must necessarily take the
political lead in trying to bring this about.

Now what are China's interests in the next 20-30 years? China has learned from
its history that it can only be respected in the world if it is a unified state.
The underlying political strength of the Chinese Communist Party resides in the
fact that it restored such unification in 1949 after a long period of
disintegration. Priority number one for the Chinese leadership is thus simply
holding the country together. This explains both the firm political hand
internally and the emphasis the Chinese government places on reintegrating
Taiwan into the Chinese state. This also explains the effort and expenditure
they are putting into building a powerful and modern armed forces. It is not
that Beijing wishes to expand its zone of sovereignty. Rather it wishes to
expand its zone of suzerainty, to revive an old expression long used in accounts
of Chinese empires.

The goal of political strength is pursued primarily in order to achieve economic
strength. The Chinese leadership understands quite well how the capitalist
world-economy works. They know that there are different ways in which a weak
economic zone can be integrated into the commodity chains of the world-economy.
The Chinese can be peripheral exporters who keep very little of the
surplus-value they create. And this is precisely their great fear about the
future. Or they can put in place various political mechanisms which will enable
them to get and keep a larger slice of the world economic pie. This is their
middle-run objective.

So what is the noise of the last few years, the renewed rattling of swords, the
heightened rhetoric of conflict? In a word, it is bargaining. The United States
wants China to "open up" more and thereby be included in the World Trade
Organization (WTO). China wants to get into the WTO, but on terms that will
protect some of its nascent competitive industries. And this debate on economic
terms takes place in multiple arenas and under many guises. Naval maneuvers in
the China Sea or U.S. congressmen berating the China's record on human rights
may be seen as part of the bargaining.

Observe two things. China clearly seeks to maintain and expand ties with a
number of middle-range powers around the world that are seeking to improve their
nuclear arsenal. This annoys the United States, and China has been careful each
time to go so far, and no further, or better put, to go so fast, and no faster.
It fights U.S. resolutions in the Security Council, but in the end it abstains
and does not veto them. And on the other hand, look at the current presidential
race in the United States. As of now, there are four serious candidates: Bush
and McCain as the possible Republican candidates, Gore and Bradley as the
Democratic. These four candidates seek to differentiate themselves from each
other. There is only one major geopolitical issue on which there seems to be
tacit agreement - maintaining the approach to China that has been pursued by
every U.S. president from Nixon to Clinton.

So no war, only hard bargaining.

Immanuel Wallerstein

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