Геополитически щрихи – Китай в 21. век
Geopolitical Sckethches – China in 21st Century

Summary/Abstract: This report argues that China has leveraged its integration into the Western-dominated global economic system in a manner fundamentally distinct from that of the East Asian “tigers.” First, China is the first rising world power in the last 500 years without European roots. That is to say, China’s rise breaks the established historical rule that only European powers or powers originating in Europe will dominate world affairs. Second, China’s rise over the last 30 years has occurred within the existing world economic matrix dominated by the West. The strategy initially applied to China was the one that had previously been widely applied to the so-called East Asian economic tigers. In a nutshell, it can be formulated as follows: massive investment, access to technology, and the opening of the North American and European markets, in exchange for the imposition of a military and political protectorate and the renunciation of geopolitical sovereignty. Of course, in each country the conditions were different and specific, but this was the general formula applicable to Japan, South Korea and the other so-called economic ‘tigers’. Massive attempts to impose a similar formula on China have failed, for one very simple reason. China is a sovereign country with enormous domestic resources. In this sense, the clichés of a dependent export economy are absolutely inapplicable to it. In fact, China has made the most of, and fitted into, the established networks of economic globalization imposed by the West, but, contrary to expectations, has used these networks not to fit in as a subordinate element within them, but as a prerequisite for its own economic and geopolitical rise. Third, as a corollary of the second, China’s rise is not being achieved through war and the destruction of the incumbent hegemon. China is clearly aware that the existing economic order, if maintained, will work to its advantage. Therefore, neither China nor its many economic partners has any interest in a military outcome to resolve the question of who will dominate the 21st century. Moreover, China’s rise follows a principle that is simple in formulation but almost impossible in practice: that one’s success does not necessarily require the destruction of one’s opponent. Hence, the main threat to the still existing global economic order stems, strange as it may seem, from its creators – the leading Western powers of the past. For the first time in history, they face an insoluble task – the global economic and geopolitical model they created to serve them is being turned against them. If anyone wants to destroy this model, it is precisely the geopolitical powers, for whom the free market and the wide exchange, because of their ongoing economic and technological degradation, are becoming a threat to their position as leaders of the world (until recently). This is an unprecedented historical moment, and its outcome will determine the future of humanity. And it will depend to a significant extent on what China will do in the 21st century.

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