China and America in the 21st Century

I first became aware of the imminent (then) demise of the Soviet Union back in the early 1980’s from an article in The Wilson Quarterly.  The article noted the rapid emergence of a new educated middle class in Russia, and commented that, “You can threaten a peasant with a gun; it’s much harder to frighten a nuclear engineer.”  Putting that together with the lessons of social history and of my own experience analyzing the changes in supervisory styles occasioned in the U.S. with the emergence of employees more knowledgeable about current technology than their managers, it was easy to see that some major upheavals were on their way in the USSR.  When Reagan made his famous challenge, to “tear down that wall”, the real foundations of that wall had mostly already been eaten away.  I feel somewhat the same now about China. 

China is riding a major housing bubble, and lives off dominance in exports, both enabled by a rapidly growing middle class.  It is a gift to them, but a dangerous one that breeds social revolution.  Increasing inequality as the power brokers of the Communist Party become far richer than those around them nettles the newly affluent middle class.  A highly testing dominated traditional educational system robs the new entrepreneurs of what they perceive as necessary training of their children for global competition.  Trash and polluted air accompanying China’s “industrial revolution”, not important twenty years ago, are now becoming a major public offense.  Revolutions are often thought of the end result of extreme poverty, but far more common is the “revolution of rising expectations”, which can take a variety of forms.  It was prosperous American merchants and land owners who set off the American Revolution, not desperate peasants.  China’s is currently taking the form of growing public resentment against the perceived “corruption” of Communist Party leaders.  A recent analysis by Washington Post reporter Jia Lynn Yang compared this growing resentment of the Chinese middle class to the Tea Party and Occupy movements in the U.S., but more stratified cultures, such as China’s, often see “rising expectations” revolutions take more violent forms, such as that of the American or French Revolutions.

Americans tended to view the 20^th century as the century for struggle for super power status between the U.S. and Russia.  That was really first predicted by De Tocqueville back in the 1840’s, based on his recognition of the characteristics the two countries had in common.  He was not blinded by the then feudalism of Russia versus the raucous democracy of America to all the nations had in common. 

Now Americans view China as a somewhat mysterious rising power from the East on a collision course with the U.S. for dominance as a global super power.  China-U.S. relations are perceived as perhaps the largest international policy issue of the 21^st century, aside from global climate change.  But what is notable also about China’s issues, starting with a polyglot culture spanning a continent, is that they are very much the same as America’s. The rising levels of inequality in both China and in the U.S. are among the greatest, measured on standard international indices, in the world.  Both countries’ educational systems are characterized by areas of brilliant achievement combined with wide-spread trouble spots.  Environment and the need for clean technology are sore spots in both nations.  How to deal with issues of migrant labor occupies both countries.  Constructing an infrastructure capable of supporting a 21^st century economy is an overwhelming need in both.  And other nations rich in people and unexploited resources are nipping at the heels of both, from India and Brazil to South Africa.

Looking longer term, the international super power of the 21^st century will likely be the nation which best addresses its domestic issues.  Both China and America are shaky on doing that in many ways.  China’s problems are its own, and mostly must be dealt with just by China, as they best learn how.  But it is well for us here in America to remember that in a global world “foreign policy” and “domestic policy” are no longer separable.  What we do in dealing with our own infrastructure and education and inequality will determine our standing throughout the world, and our failures will resound worldwide.