Ali jibran
The uncertainty regarding China’s near future is a hot debate in contemporary global politics academic circles. In this article, I will endeavour to discuss the near future of China after looking briefly at China rise from these antipodal views. Paul Kennedy in his master work, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, suggests that military and political power of states rest on their economic power. The economic prowess of a country ultimately leads her to seek her interests militarily to secure her relative position in anarchic international political system.The behaviour of three major powers in 19th century-the UK, Germany and Japan- and the US in 20th century verifies this theory. Based on this theory of Paul Kennedy, John J. Meirsheimer predicts that China- which is the second largest economy currently and will replace the US as the largest economy in 2027 according to a report of Goldman Sachs- bound to behave in the similar fashion to these aggressive powers of near past because disposition to aggression is not intrinsic to states, but is instead the product of the constant search for survival in a world of uncertainty, changing distribution of power and offensive military capabilities. Therefore, once economic superiority of China is well established, it will ascertain it that no other country should challenge that status-quo.On the other hand, Joseph N. Nye presents concept of soft-power in his book Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics, as an alternative to hard power. He opines that in contemporary politics, use of hard power may ruin the overall image of the countries using it. The main assumption of soft power is that the poor countries endeavour to emulate the developed countries; therefore soft power can be used to get the desired results from poor countries without use of coercion. China can use its soft-power in form of extensive scholarship programs, hundreds of Confucius Institutes established around the world, growing number of international blockbuster movies, a number of great international airports, the Beijing-Lhasa railway, an excellent network of expressways, the Pudong airport-Shanghai Meglev rail link, the three Gorges Dam, world’s largest high-speed rail network and the Bird’s Nest Stadium. China will be soon in a better position to use soft-power because of its extensive economic relations to different parts of worlds, especially with Africa, East Asia, Latin America and elsewhere. After looking the both contradictory views, it becomes evident that it is highly complicated to predict China’s future behaviour, but the current economic and political parameters may provide some help. China is still dependent on the imported military hardware from Europe and Russia, thus China is of no mach to the much developed and improved forces of the US that have more than 800 bases throughout the world. Owing to week relative military position, China does not seem to behave like Japan or Germany of past. Moreover, China is poorly endowed in natural resources, making it massively dependent on raw material and energy from Africa, Latin America and Middle East.Any military conflict in future can disrupt the over-sea traffic of Chinese goods by the powerful US forces in South China Sea, culminating in deleterious effects for Chinese import-export oriented economy, though China is strenuously looking for some other routs like CPEC and Iranian land based supply route from West to East Asia to decrease its dependence on South China Sea. Therefore, the economy of China is much more integrated with international world than Germany or Japan in past. The future Chinese policy still seems to be unchanged and will echo in future in golden words by charismatic Chinese leader Deng Xioping at the turn of twentieth century, “hide our capabilities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadershipâ€.
