The impact of events in 1979 continues to reverberate in the changing balance of power between the West and the East. Christopher Coker considers the consequences as China’s influence is felt through the world.

In 1904, the greatest geo-politician of his age (or any other), Halford Mackinder, penned a seminal article, ‘The pivot of world history’. For him, the decisive event of the modern age had been the colonisation of the New World by western Europe and of the Siberian Steppes by Russia. While the Europeans had moved west across the Atlantic, the Russians had struck east across Eurasia. By 1904, West and East confronted each other across the Pacific. The 20th century, he concluded, would be determined by the conflict between the two.

This is the point about geopolitics. It tells a story. It involves a grand narrative. The problem is that we often misread the signs. Mackinder got it wrong in a number of essentials. The second half (not the first) of the 20th century was indeed determined by the conflict between what we then called East (the Soviet Bloc) and West. However, the main battlefield was not the Pacific, but western Europe. With the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Europe is no longer the fulcrum of the geopolitical imagination.

Asia sidelined

It never occurred to Mackinder that the Asians themselves would play a role. Not only did he ignore China, but he gave little consideration to Japan, with which first Russia and then the US would find themselves in conflict in the course of the 20th century. Not so the young Oxford don Alfred Zimmern, who was sufficiently shocked at learning of Japan’s defeat of Russia in 1905 that he told his class that he was putting aside Greek history that morning “because I feel I must speak to you about the most important historical event which has happened or is likely to happen in our lifetime: the victory of a non-white people over a white people”.

Writing today, another Oxford don, Niall Ferguson, identifies a quite different pivotal year: 1979. These days, we no longer talk of the clash between ‘white’ and ‘non-white’ people, but we still invoke culture. Not so long ago, we thought economics was the most central science, albeit the ‘dismal’ one. Now, we think it is culture. We were told that as societies grew richer so they would become more secular; as people became more educated, primitive passions such as nationalism would fade away. We seem to have been wrong on both counts.

Religion has bounced back and now confronts the West in the shape of Islamic fundamentalism. In the East, China is well on the way to becoming a fully fledged, self-confident nation state for the first time in its history. What passes for communism in Beijing is largely nationalism and it is the strong old-fashioned nation states such as China, and for that matter the US, that are likely to dominate the high ground of international relations for the foreseeable future.

Pivotal year

For Mr Ferguson, 1979 is the key pivotal year not only because it brought to power the world’s first Islamic republic in Iran, but also because it was when Deng Xiaoping, a Communist Party leader, modernised the Chinese economy. The impact has been dramatic.

The principle destination of China’s goods has been, and remains, the US. And it is no longer cheap clothes and shoes that matter. As the budding superpower in the wings, China represents a challenge to the US not only as a country, but as a culture that seems determined to bring to an end the Western moment in history. The rise of China should be seen as a cultural, not just political, event of true seismic significance because the Chinese have their own idea of what constitutes our humanity, and what they would like humanity to become.

The debate began in the early 1980s, when politicians such as Malaysia’s former prime minister Mahathir bin Mohamad and Japanese politician Shintaro Ishihara began talking of an Asian set of values that, with their emphasis on a more spiritual and communal life, were superior to those of the West. The debate has been given greater force by demographic reality: by 2050 on current projections, the population of the West will represent only 7% of the global total.

Chinese values

The rise of China threatens the values entrenched in international politics since the US turbo-charged Western values into the international system after 1917 by virtue of the emphasis it put on free trade and human rights.

What future will there be for human rights now that China has offered Africa ‘a new strategic partnership’ without the pieties preached by Western leaders. Take Sudan. Labelled a state sponsor of terrorism by the US State Department, Sudan has been targeted by states such as New Jersey, Illinois and Oregon that have banned public pension funds from investing in companies active in the region. US interests have sold their holdings or suspended their operations until the political situation improves. Chinese companies inevitably have filled the vacuum.

Something extraordinary is going on in the developing world. Whereas the Americans talk security and the ‘War on Terror’ whenever they negotiate trade deals, and the Europeans talk global governance and the need to eliminate corruption, the Chinese, surprisingly, talk trade. China will trade with anyone, be it Belarus or Zimbabwe. The Chinese deal with foreign states as they wish to be treated themselves. Be they corrupt, genocidal or tyrannical, they do not lecture the locals; they look the other way. They do not even make aid conditional on respect for human rights.

As a result, the Chinese are making massive inroads into Africa and Latin America, where a new generation of populist politicians led by Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez, is leading an anti-Western crusade to end the Monroe Doctrine, by actively supporting radical parties in Bolivia and Peru, and forging links with Middle Eastern governments, such as Iran, that are also trying to roll back a century or more of Western influence.

The ‘India’ card

No wonder then that many US geo-politicians look increasingly to play the only card left in the pack. With a declining population base in the West itself, those looking into the future find India the most plausible ally in the defence of the values that the West has ‘imprinted’ on the world. The largest democracy in the world, India’s population is set to overtake China’s by the mid-21st century.

Also the oldest democracy in what we used to call the developing world, India’s small but powerful English-speaking elite remains committed to the English tradition of liberalism. It would seem to be the best bet if the West can preserve something of its influence in the future – but for the fact that the Indians, for the moment at least, have no intention of been factored into present US geopolitical thinking.

However, history deals out the cards in unexpected ways. Third World elites may find it annoying to be patronised by the West and lectured to on their countries’ human rights record, but in due course their people may come to rue the day that they became beholden to a superpower that takes no interest in whether they are at war with themselves. You don’t have to read fairy tales to realise one of their principal themes: be careful what you wish for.

Christopher Coker is professor of international relations at the London School of Economics.

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