By Javid Husain | Published: October 27, 2009
If there is one issue which will determine the future course of the 21st century, it is the direction and substance of US-China relations in the coming decades. The driving factors behind this relationship are twofold: the US determination to prevent the emergence of a power in any part of the world capable of challenging its global supremacy and the phenomenal economic growth of China over the past three decades which in due course would translate itself in the growth and strength of its military power.
The combined effect of China’s huge size and rapid growth makes it inevitable that the world would, at first, see increasing rivalry between the two nations in the economic field followed by a challenge to the US global supremacy in the military field by China in the second half of the 21st century. Of course, this conclusion is based on the bold assumption that the present trends of growth in the economic power of the two nations are sustained in the coming decades. These developments would transform the global geopolitical scene with far-reaching strategic, political and economic implications for the whole world.
There is no denying the fact that the current world order has been shaped primarily by the West under the leadership of the US - a reflection of the Western countries’ domination of the global political and economic scene since the end of the World War II.
The structure, the procedures and the functioning of the United Nations, particularly the Security Council, the World Bank and the IMF, established after the World War II, were such that no major decision could be taken without the backing of the West. The position has remained more or less unchanged since then. This state of affairs is going to change dramatically in the coming decades reflecting the redistribution of the economic and ultimately the military power globally.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union did pose a challenge to the military supremacy of the West. The defeat and disintegration of the Soviet Union made the world unipolar briefly with the US emerging as the global hegemon.
However, the rapid growth of China and other powers like India and Brazil, the re-assertiveness of Russia, and the emergence of other power centres such as the European Union, Japan and the ASEAN indicate that the US unipolar moment has already passed.
The world is increasingly turning multipolar with several centres of power emerging on the scene even though for the time being the US is the only country capable of projecting its military power in the different corners of the world. It is inevitable that these developments would ultimately lead to the re-writing of the rules which determine the way in which the world functions in the political and economic fields.
China’s rapidly growing economic and military strength would make it a major player in this process of global transformation. An example of the kind of changes that can be expected in the coming decades was the call by the Governor of China’s Central Bank, Zhou Xiaochuan, in March 2009 for the replacement of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency by Special Drawing Rights (SDR’s).
Changes can, thus, be expected in the structure and functioning of multilateral institutions like the UN Security Council, the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO.
The net effect of these changes would be the gradual decline in the influence of the US and the West and increase in the role of China and other emerging powers.