Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
seeking to increase its status and authority within the existing system rather than laying the
foundation for exerting leadership in an alternative world order.
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China is, of course, already a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, which puts
it at the center of great-power diplomacy. It has also joined the WTO and has increasingly
integrated into the capitalist world economy. Moreover, it is not just that China needs access
to world markets; it also should want access to the protections afforded by the rules and in-
stitutions. The WTO provides the Chinese with multilateral trade principles and dispute set-
tlement mechanisms that should be a huge attraction to Chinese leaders because they offer
tools with which to defend against the threats of discrimination and protectionism that rising
economic powers confront. The sequence of Chinese policy fits this logic: as Beijing's com-
mitment to economic liberalization led to expanded foreign investment and trade, its embrace
of global trade rules followed. It would be an irony if China came to champion the logic and
functions of the WTO while the support of the more mature Western economies waned. It
is more likely that both rising and declining market-oriented countries will find value in the
quasi-legal mechanisms that allow conflicts to be settled or at least defused.
These considerations suggest that China is not doomed to use its growing power to chal-
lenge and seek to overturn the basic organizational logic of liberal international order. It cer-
tainly will put liberal rules and institutions to the test. The deep dilemmas of liberal order and
the struggles over its basic aspects—authority, sovereignty, binding commitments, rights, and
obligations—will be intensified with the entry of China into the mainstream of this system.
But a convulsive hegemonic conflict between China and the United States is not inevitable.
Indeed, the United States and the other liberal democracies have some leverage over how the
rise of China unfolds. The more they cooperate among themselves and reform and renew the
basic foundations of liberal international order, the more likely it is that China will find in-
centives to integrate and participate—and perhaps even to help lead.
China may, in the end, exceed or fall short of the great projections being made today about
its rise. But the capitalist democratic world is an existing reality—a massive geopolitical area
and, taken together, is a powerful constituency for the preservation and, indeed, extension of
the existing international order. If China intends to rise up and challenge the existing order,
it has a much more daunting task than simply confronting the United States and grabbing
control of the international order. At its best, this larger order is not simply an aggregation of
GNP or defense spending. It is a more or less institutionalized political order, an order that
with renewed leadership can continue to expand and grow.
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