An Oversimplified Model of Recent World History

I just read some news item that said that tourists who went to Beijing for the Olympics were "dazzled and daunted" by the event, and that this was an unprecedented exercise in increasing the maturity of a country in such a short time span. Last night, the NBC commentators marveled during their retransmission of the closing ceremonies (bits of pageantry shown during the infrequent gaps left between commercials and the incessant replays of the achievements of almost only U.S. athletes) that Beijing had spent about $40 billion and mobilized up to one million volunteers for the games, and that one was unlikely to see an effort of this size any time soon, "or perhaps ever."

The description of the advances made in Beijing for these games may well be true. But what the media, and U.S. media in particular, do not seem to grasp, is that we're talking about the durable emergence of China as a pre-eminent economic, political and social power, not about a temporary flash of brilliance. And for that matter, I can look in my crystal ball and tell you exactly when the Olympics will cost more and mobilize more people than the 2008 games did: this will happen the next time the games are hosted by China, and I am pretty sure that this will happen again some time in the next 30 years (OK, make that 32), because China is in the front seat for good now.

So here's my oversimplified geo-politico-historical model: the 18th century was French (the Enlightenment, French spoken in the palaces of Europe, the Revolution, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen). The 19th century was British (Waterloo, Queen Victoria, the building of the Empire, international maritime commerce). The 20th century was American (the U.S. conclusively intervenes in two world conflicts, rules the economy, develops the atom bomb, puts a man on the moon, and ends up as the sole superpower in the last decade of the century). And the 21st century will belong to China: 1.3 billion people, a 9% annual growth rate in GDP, the world's largest manufacturer and soon the world's largest consumer.

Americans still think that they are God's chosen people: this hubris will only delay the inevitable realization of China's preeminence. The U.S. still has the best universities in the world... but students are increasingly dropping scientific subjects in order to choose careers in Finance, Business, and the law. Can you build an economy solely on that basis? No, you can't. The modern world isn't just virtual: someone needs to grow our food, make our clothes, build our homes and our cars. Increasingly, all these things come from elsewhere. And that elsewhere more and more takes the form of this little label that reads "Made in China." OK, food is a little different, because the cost and duration of transportation already make it expensive and/or inconvenient, and will make it increasingly so, to import foods from afar (we still cherish our Chilean strawberries in winter, but for how long?). Crude oil at $120/bbl is actually increasing the interest in local/regional food production. But will it cause a resurgence of manufacturing in the U.S. (and other Western countries)? Only when the cycle completes and our countries' economies sag so low that we will be the "new poor," and our ill-educated work forces, aided by a dollar worth 50 euro-cents or less, will make it cheaper for an American consumer to buy goods made in Mississippi than made in China (you can name the equivalent "bottom of the barrel" regions in your own countries).

The two questions that remain in my mind, because I believe the above scenario to be almost ineluctable, are: what accidents can happen in the meantime to delay or modify it? and what happens after that? Is this is a one-way street, or will the "decline of the American empire" and of other Western countries result in some sort of compensating pendulum swing, where China will find itself, by the dawn of the 22nd century, in a similar situation that the U.S. is finding itself now, unable to prolong its fading grandeur, and sobered-up countries with significant natural resources (the US, Brazil, Nigeria, Canada, etc.) will restore a different balance?

It will help China extend its domination if the Chinese government at the time does not repeat the errors of the most recent U.S. politicians, which caused the sudden and profound moral bankruptcy of this country on the international scene. Assuming that China grows out of the current climate of quasi-dictatorship and human rights violations, let's fast forward. If anything similar to the U.S. 2000-2008 political catastrophe happens in China in 50 or a hundred years, will the Chinese people have the political education, the will, and the ability to change things before it damages their country's standing in a similar way to what Bush & Co. have just done to the U.S.? Of course, today, it is clear that they probably wouldn't be able to. But as the country continues its rapid progress, a time will come when they will probably have that power. So the last question is whether the Chinese people in a few decades will have the knowledge needed to make the right decisions (as opposed to, say, Americans who can't locate Iraq on a globe, or still believe that there were WMDs in Iraq because Fox "News" tells them so). The future of the world may well depend on this more than on anything else.