Asia-Pacific

Joseph Nye: Don't magnify China's power

By Ariel Tung (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-03-31 07:39

NEW YORK - Prominent US political analyst Joseph Nye has warned against exaggerating China's power, despite some observers in the United States interpreting China's growing clout as a threat to US influence in East Asia.

Nye, university distinguished service professor at Harvard University, said such views could lead to an escalating fear of enmity between the two countries.

Since the financial crisis of 2008, many scholars and journalists have written articles urging China to be more assertive as "the US is in decline", he said.

"As I demonstrate in my new book The Future of Power, this is a mistaken perception; it leads to hubris in China and fear in the US.

"That in turn makes compromise and cooperation more difficult. Both countries should relax and realize that they have much more to gain from cooperation than from conflict."

In a recent Pew Research Center poll, almost 47 percent of people in the US think China is the world's leading economic power, while only 31 percent named the US. About 60 percent of US citizens believe their country is in decline.

Nye argued that not only is the US likely to remain the most powerful country in the first half of this century, but "China still has a long way to go to catch up in military, economic and soft power".

Earlier this year, Nye explained why China "is a long way from posing the kind of challenge to America that the Kaiser's Germany posed to Britain in 1900".

In 1900, he said, Germany had not only surpassed Britain as an industrial power, but Germany was "pursuing an adventurous, globally oriented foreign and military policy that was bound to bring about a clash". In contrast, China is focusing primarily on its economic development.

Goldman Sachs, the fifth-biggest US bank by assets, recently predicted that China would be the world's largest economy by 2027.

"And even if China's GDP passes US GDP around 2027, the two economies would be equivalent in size, not equal in composition," Nye said.

"Moreover, as countries develop, there is a natural tendency for growth rates to slow. By my calculations, if China's annual growth goes down to 6 percent and the US economy grows at 2 percent per year after 2030, China will not equal the US in per capita income until decades later."

Nye said the US should welcome China's growth, and there are signs the US is, willingly or not, shaping the environment for China's growth rather than containment.

"Contrary to the Cold War, where the US had virtually no trade with the Soviet bloc and very few social exchanges, the US has opened its market to China and has a large trade deficit," he said.

"Moreover, there are over 100,000 Chinese students studying in the US. (US President Barack) Obama's hope to send 100,000 Americans to study in China is another example."

The growth of the Chinese economy has moved hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, and this is a great accomplishment, Nye said.

But China lags in military power and lacks US' "soft power" resources, such as Hollywood and world-class universities.

It is important to increase China's soft power as well as its hard power, he said.

There are great expectations regarding China's growth. Despite China being a developing country, the world will expect China to play a greater global role, said Nye.

"As China's size grows, its impact on the world economy and environment increases and other countries look to China to help produce the global public goods such as financial stability and restraining carbon emissions that affect everybody," he said.

"Thus China cannot afford to wait until it is truly rich to begin to share in playing a greater global role."

Although the relationship between the US, China and Japan has experienced "difficulties" and "misunderstandings", in the long term, stability and prosperity in East Asia depend upon good relations and cooperation among three sides, Nye said.

Nye is positive US-China ties will improve "as the US and China realize that they need to cooperate to manage many of the new transnational challenges both countries face".