| Ethos Issue 2, April 2007
The Globalisation Game
Interview with Martin Wolf
You can now see this emerging quite
significantly in China’s foreign relations: China and Sudan,
China and Zimbabwe, China and Iran — these are all potential
trouble spots. Add to these differences a natural power rivalry,
and the fact that culturally the US and China have little
sympathy for each other. The US really dislikes the way China
is run. The way the US is run is clearly not the one the Chinese
have chosen for themselves. So presumably they are rather
doubtful about it. These differences are profound. Here is
the largest rising power in the world and it is not anything
even close to a democracy. This is another source of conflict.
Third, China is imposing economic
changes upon the world and upon the US which are very difficult
to cope with. So there is plenty of potential for trouble.
The upside is that the Chinese particularly,
but the Americans too, as Bob Zoellick1
pointed out very well in a speech about a year ago, have invested
in a mutual economic relationship which has become so deep,
and engaged the interests of so many important players on
both sides, that clearly both would suffer enormous damage
if it broke down.
At this stage in China’s history,
challenging the US head-on is pointless. China will rise and
naturally change the balance of power, so they do not need
to push it. It is not as if this is a temporary window of
opportunity. China has more to lose in the breakdown of relationships
now than the US has. They are certainly not a military rival
in any way. They need American technology; the reverse is
not true. They need access to American markets. They have
a poor relationship with Japan already and certainly don’t
want the US using Japan against them. So I think the basic
Chinese solution to this problem is to lie low and to be cooperative
as far as they can. In most issues, they are.
I think that given all the problems
the US has in the world and given the mutual interest and
also Chinese policy, this will probably be a manageable relationship.
However, there are factions in the United States that would
quite like it to break down — people who are either suspicious
of China or just feel that the US could do with an enemy.
At the moment, however, the US has
enough enemies, which is another factor. Attention is diverted
to the Middle East. What would have happened without Al Qaeda
is quite an interesting question. The enemy of one’s enemy
is one’s friend. On that principle, the Jihadists have brought
some very unlikely countries together.
This article was extracted from a discussion
between Donald Low, Director of the Institute of Policy Development
and Mr Martin Wolf on 14 September 2006, after Mr Wolf delivered
his New Insights Lecture on "Global Imbalances: Why They Matter"
at the Civil Service College in Singapore.
Mr Martin Wolf is Associate
Editor and Chief Economics Commentator at The Financial Times,
London. He was awarded the Commander of the British Empire
(CBE) in 2000 for services to financial journalism. He is
a visiting fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford University,
and a Special Professor at the University of Nottingham. He
has been a Forum Fellow at the annual meeting of the World
Economic Forum in Davos, since 1999. Mr Wolf was joint winner
of the Wincott Foundation senior prize for excellence in financial
journalism for 1989 and again for 1997 and won the RTZ David
Watt memorial prize for 1994, a prize granted annually "to
a writer judged to have made an outstanding contribution in
the English language towards the clarification of national,
international and political issues and the promotion of their
greater understanding".
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