Dave Porter Weblog

Barnett: Why China Matters To You

From Tom Barnett's article "Ten Reasons Why China Matters To You" in Good magazine: Reason # 10: Because Nixon went to China and your world was born:

When President Richard Nixon reopened diplomatic ties with Mao Zedong’s communist China in 1972, he enabled the most profound global economic dynamic of the last half century: China’s historic reemergence as a worldwide market force. Nothing shapes your world today more than China’s rise, and nothing will shape our planet’s future more—for good or ill—than China’s ongoing trajectory.

After centuries of relative isolation, China’s rapid reintegration into the global economy transformed globalization from its narrow Cold War-era base (the West) to its current “majority” status, whereby two-thirds of humanity now enjoys deep and growing connectivity with international markets and the remaining third works toward it. China’s decision to rejoin the world was globalization’s tipping point, meaning—absent global war—there’s no turning back now, only adaptation.

If Nixon opened the door, then Mao’s successor Deng Xiaoping led the Chinese people through it. Unlike Mikhail Gorbachev, Deng chose wisely: By tackling economic freedom before political liberalization, Deng kept China stable during its tenuous first years of market reform. Although Deng is correctly labeled an autocrat (he ordered the bloody suppression of the Tiananmen Square democracy protests in 1989), he is also correctly identified as a modernizer who unleashed a generation’s immense creativity.

Many from that generation will tell you that, before Tiananmen, they felt freedom was “90 percent political and 10 percent economic,” but after Deng’s crackdown, they concluded—somewhat harshly—that real freedom was “90 percent economic and 10 percent political.” In other words, they decided that markets were the first, best instruments for generating positive change in China.

A grand bargain was struck: Deng won military support for further market reforms so long as a lid was kept on political change, and the army was afforded enough of a budget to modernize. The Party would remain supreme, but state involvement in the economy would shrink and private business would be encouraged along with investment from, and trade with, the outside world.

China has experienced incredible economic growth ever since, increasing its gross domestic product annually by almost 10 percent—as fast as you dare expand. But China is also nowhere near becoming a democracy, and its achievement scares nations around the world—and excites others—because it suggests that you can rapidly embrace globalization, achieve great income growth, and remain a single-party state by following the so-called China model.

Barnett: China's economy

Tom Barnett's Scripps Howard News Service editorial "China's capitalism isn't so foreign:"

Western powers today fear that China's stunning rise signals a real challenge to the notion that economic growth triggers democracy. While I understand such fears, let me tell you why they're unfounded: China's economy increasingly mirrors our own....

....Point being, China's model of development constitutes more of an endorsement of American-style capitalism than an improvement --much less rejection. This strategy of "incremental change, or entrepreneurial capitalism at the margin," allows China to gradually shift its economy toward the U.S. blend of big firms surrounded by entrepreneurial small firms.

What comes next?  More and more freedom if China hopes to hold onto those entrepreneurs.

"Asian necessity will be the mother of global invention"

Thomas P.M. Barnett's column "Asian necessity will be the mother of global invention:"

.... therein was an inescapable challenge for American businesses: Access Asia's emerging markets or risk missing out on their coming wave of innovation.

I spent last week in Beijing for the same reasons why a lot of foreign firms are jumping into bed with Chinese businesses. I want to access the sheer brain power being applied to the mountain of problems -- both good and bad -- that China must surmount in coming years to maintain its fantastic growth rate, not merely to find out what China learns but what China teaches.

Ten trillion dollars will be spent inside emerging markets in infrastructure development between now and 2030 in energy and water alone. Most will happen inside China and India at a pace not witnessed on this planet since America surged westward following the Civil War....

And further:

.... I know, I know. It's fantastic to think our global economy's future growth is dependent on a lot of poor people becoming both innovative and greedy at the same time, but hey! That's how these United States were built.

So sit on the sidelines at your own risk.

Barnett: China in Africa

Tom Barnett appeared on C-Span to discuss his latest Esquire article "The Americans Have Landed" about the US military in Africa. Tom Barnett comes on about 1 hour and 11 minutes into the show. Barnett's see lots of China involvement in Africa. Comments on China in Africa begin about 1:30 until end (specific China at about 1:37 and 1:45).

You can link to it through the blog Porkopolis .

China Threat: Two Views

Two recent views on China's military threat: First, Gary Schmitt's article "The Power China is Building" in washingtonpost.com:

... And now, as China adds hundreds of advanced fighters; builds scores of new submarines, frigates and destroyers; modernizes and expands its strategic nuclear arsenal; and fields hundreds of new theater-range missiles, the argument is that China is bent on building up its military capabilities to unprecedented levels because it sees the United States spending more on its military than it has since World War II.

There is some truth in that point, but only some. The fact is that the Chinese military buildup really began after the demise of the Soviet Union -- that is, precisely when China had the least reason to worry about its defense needs. And the buildup continued during a period when the United States was cutting its own defense budget by significant amounts. Moreover, no other Asian regional power was putting forward double-digit defense increases. To the contrary, Taiwan -- presumably China's main military concern -- was slashing its defense budget. And Japan, the only possible regional "great power" competitor to China, was suffering from a decade of economic stagnation, with a static defense budget to match.....

And second, in reply to Schmitt's article,  Tom Barnett's post "Criteria for a real conversation:"

... America can't manage a Cold War-like rivalry with China plus a Long War against radical extremism, and frankly, China can't come close to managing either, given its hundreds of millions living on less than a dollar a day and their supremely rapidly rising elder population. Run the numbers down the road and they simply do not compute.

But Schmitt unabashedly wants a far larger U.S. Defense budget and makes no bones about it, so China's "scores" of Russian platforms must impress. But as someone who spent some time studying Soviet military capabilities, especially naval ones, I remain unimpressed.

China's capabilities place it in the same zip code as Britain's in numbers, but hardly in skills (frankly, I'd take India's navy over China's). Ask yourself what Britain can manage right now as an independent global power and what it would take from the Brits to "stand in our way" as a hostile one and you'll get a sense of the huge capabilities gap that still remains.

As China rises, we can choose to shape that rise, or we can try to counter it.  What we can't do is prevent it.....

Bartnett: One million text messages screaming "We want life, we want health"

Tom Barnett post "China grows up, little by little:"

As China connects more and more to the world, and particularly to the U.S. economy, the notion that one can thrive at the other's expense is revealed as illusion. When China hurts, America will hurt, and when America hurts, China will hurt.

That signal function is a whole lot more real than China's still largely-disconnected stock market, which is truly a pure expression of ambition and desire rather than underlying economic reality, making its inevitable crash a more interesting phenomenon--as in, how will people take to having their dreams temporarily crushed?

Done well (meaning we handle it well too), then the answer is obvious: fix the underlying disconnectedness so greater transparency results in truer economic logic. In short, better to know the truth than live on lies--even hope-filled ones.....

Barnett: "China hawks don't have a leg to stand on"

Tom Barnett post "Let the harsh truth be told: holding on to the past kills Americans today and endangers American tomorrow," which is a reaction to a Washinngton Times column "Inside the Ring" by Bill Gertz. From the Barnett post:

The problem with the anti-mil-mil cooperation argument is that adherents lack credible scenarios for U.S.-on-China war and vice versa.

I've seen all the scenarios and not one holds up to any rational scrutiny. They are fantastic relics of the past, as are those who cling to them.

Spin me out the plausible strategy where China gets away with sinking a U.S. carrier. You can't. You simply can't answer the "and then what?" questions.

There is no Chinese economy without profound and continuous access to U.S. markets. It simply comes to a stop, as does communist rule.

If China were to attack and sink a U.S. carrier, we'd sink their entire navy and decimate their air force to boot. We'd crush the crap out of them in a completely unfair fight. We'd do it out of both anger and the simple desire to signal to them and anybody else: do this and we'll kill you en masse.

Do I think we can push events in such a way as to get this type of lunatic response from the Chinese?  Sure.

Do I think history would judge us as complete fools for doing so?  Absolutely.

Are they some leaders in China dumb enough to entertain such ideas? Sure, but there are more here, and they worry me more because our advantages over China remain huge militarily.

You jettison the nonsensical Taiwan scenario--wet dream of platform builders across America--and the China hawks don't have a leg to stand on. There are no rational scenarios extended into the Middle East: all of the ones you can name have China facing more dependency and vulnerability than we do (they need that energy, we do not), so the spoiler role--so much more easily achieved--falls into our lap, not China's.

But Geertz is unredeemable--a total pawn of the Big War crowd and the mil-industrial complex, who feed him like the pet he is. People like him need to be escorted off the stage pronto. They hold up our much-needed and much-delayed adjustment to the war we have because they insist on holding on to the war--and the enemy image--they prefer.

Let me be perfectly clear here in a way Keating could never hope to be until he takes off his uniform:

This thinking kills our SOF every day.

This thinking kills our Marines every day.

This thinking kills our Army soldiers every day.

This thinking kills our Reservists every day.

This thinking kills our National Guard every day.

This thinking kills our contractors every day.

This painfully out-of-date non-strategic mindset kills Americans every single day by continuing this inexcusable idiocy of overfeeding the Leviathan and starving the SysAdmin.....

Barnett Brief, 2004

This is the C-SPAN video from Tom Barnett's presentation at the National Defense University in June 2004, broadcast Labor Day weekend. It is 2 hours 39 minutes long.

Barnett brief

There is a newer version of Tom Barnetts brief online. Barnett spoke at Pop!Tech. It is about 40 minutes long with the portion on China starting about  27 minutes 50 seconds.

Strategist and expert on national security affairs Tom Barnett takes command and focuses in on the role of the United States in a geopolitical world of “core” and “gap” states. As you were, soldier.