Stephen M. Walt'ın Çin'le ilgili beş sorusuna bir takipçinin yanıtları

Foreign Policy yazarı, John F. Kennedy School of Government Harvard University Uluslararası İlişkiler profesörü Stephen M. Walt' ın Çin'le ilgili beş sorusuna "syslsau" imzasıyla 16 gün önce verilen yanıtları, blog sayfamın ziyaretçilerinin bilgisine sunuyorum.

Soru 1 : No. 1: Is China’s economic future bright, dark, or somewhere in between?

Yanıt:

Power in international politics ultimately rests upon economics. You can talk all you want about “soft power,” the genius of individual leaders, the importance of “national character,” the role of chance, and much more, but the bottom line is that a country’s ability to defend itself and shape its broader environment ultimately depends on its economic strength. You need a large population to be a great power, but you also need substantial wealth and a diverse and sophisticated economy. Hard economic power is what enables a state to build lots of sophisticated weapons and train a first-class military, provide goods and services that others want to buy and that can enrich its own citizens’ lives, and generate surpluses that can be used to build influence around the world. Being recognized by others as competent and economically successful is also a good way to earn their respect, get them to listen to your advice, and enhance the appeal of one’s political model.

China’s economic performance over the past 40 years has been extraordinary, and no serious person believes its economy is going to deteriorate so much that it drops out of the great-power ranks. But as its sluggish post-COVID performance suggests, China’s economy is now facing growing headwinds that are unlikely to abate. Its population is aging and declining, which means ever-fewer workers will be supporting an ever-growing number of retirees. Youth unemployment is over 21 percent, and total factor productivity growth has declined sharply over the past decade. China’s financial system remains opaque and debt-ridden, and the real estate sector—a major source of prior growth—is especially troubled. Put these things together, and it’s easy to see why many analysts are pessimistic about its long-term prospects. As I’ll discuss in a moment, U.S. policy and the quality of Chinese leadership could make these problems worse.

Yet shorting China would be a risky bet. Its industries dominate some important sectors—including solar and wind technology—and its electric car industry is outperforming the rest of the world. Three of the world’s top construction companies (including the one with the largest annual revenues) are Chinese. It has gone to considerable lengths to secure access to critical minerals and metals and may eventually be in a position to deny some of them to others. There is every reason to expect China to remain a major economic player far into the future. The big question is whether it will blow past the United States, remain permanently behind on most dimensions of economic power, or achieve rough parity. If you knew the answer to that question, you’d be a long way to knowing just how worried you should be.

Soru 2 : No. 2: Will U.S. export controls work?

How you answer the first question depends in part on whether you think the Biden administration’s economic war against China will be successful. By denying China access to advanced semiconductors (and related technologies), the United States is hoping to retain technological supremacy in this important sector. Although U.S. officials insist that these measures are limited to narrow national security concerns (what National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan characterized as a “small yard and high fence”), the real aim seems to be to slow China’s technological advance more broadly.

The question is whether this campaign will succeed over the longer term. Even a partial decoupling is never cost-free, and these restrictions will slow innovation in the United States and in the other countries that must go along with the U.S. campaign if it is to work. Technological barriers are never 100 percent effective, and this policy gives China a huge incentive to become more self-sufficient over time. For these and other reasons, well-informed experts disagree about how effective these measures will be.

Let’s not forget that when export controls do work—as they did against Japan in 1941—the target state may not sit back and take it. China is already retaliating against U.S. firms and allies, and its countermeasures may not stop there.

The bottom line, however, is that if you think this campaign is going to work well, you’d be much less concerned about the long-term challenge that China poses to U.S. primacy or the existing global order. If you think it may work for a while but not forever, or that it will eventually trigger a backlash in China and in some other key countries, you ought to be a lot more concerned.

sylsau

Soru 3 : No. 3: Is Xi Jinping another Mao Zedong or another Lee Kuan Yew?

China’s rapid rise began under its post-Mao “collective leadership,” even if Deng Xiaoping was “first among equals” in the Chinese Communist Party hierarchy. Today, however, Xi has concentrated power to an extent unseen since Mao himself and cultivated a Mao-like cult of personality in which his thoughts are considered infallible and his decisions cannot be questioned.

Letting one person have unchecked power in a country is usually a recipe for disaster. No human being is infallible, and allowing an ambitious and willful person to operate without constraint makes it more likely that big mistakes will be made and go uncorrected for a long time. Just consider Mao’s ill-conceived Great Leap Forward (which caused a famine that killed millions), or the damage China suffered during the Cultural Revolution. If that’s not warning enough, consider the costs of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s disastrous views on monetary policy or the trainwreck Elon Musk is presiding over at the social media site formerly known as Twitter.

To be sure, there are a handful of individuals who defy the odds, consistently beat the market, and never seriously put a foot wrong. Maybe Warren Buffett or Lee approach this level of wisdom, but most leaders fall well short. My point is that China’s near- to medium-term future depends a lot on whether Xi is even half as smart as he thinks he is. He’s clearly a genius at consolidating power—as the recent purge of former Foreign Minister Qin Gang and several top military officers reminds us—but he also mismanaged the pandemic, undermined some of the brightest stars in the Chinese economy, and has presided over a steady decline in China’s global image. And the more power he amasses, the worse his policy judgments seem to be. Those of you who are bearish about China’s economic prospects might take heart in the fact that he’s probably in the job for life.

16 days ago

Today, however, Xi has concentrated power to an extent unseen since Mao himself

Soru 4 -  No. 4: Will Asia balance effectively?

One of Xi’s major failures was not doing more to discourage China’s neighbors from joining forces to keep Beijing in check. China’s rising power was bound to be of some concern to other Asian states, but openly proclaiming China’s global ambitions, embracing “wolf warrior diplomacy,” overreacting to perceived slights, and employing aggressive salami tactics against Taiwan and in the South China Sea made the problem worse.

The result? India and the United States continued to move closer, and they are now joined by Japan and Australia in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. The AUKUS agreement has strengthened strategic ties (and security collaboration) between the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Japan is increasing its defense spending rapidly and mending its delicate relations with South Korea. Farther afield, the European Union is becoming less enamored with Chinese investment, and public opinion in Europe and Asia has become much warier of China’s global role.

That said, the ultimate effectiveness of these measures remains to be seen. As I’ve written previously, a balancing coalition in Asia faces significant collective action problems, and Europe isn’t going to take on a major strategic role there. The distances separating these states are vast (which may tempt some states to pull back if trouble starts far away), nobody wants to lose complete access to the Chinese market, and countries like South Korea and Japan have a troubled past. Many of these states may want to let Uncle Sam handle China while they free-ride, which will undermine deterrence and could eventually lead to a backlash here in the United States. These same states also tend to get nervous if the United States becomes too confrontational, because they don’t want to be collateral damage in a Sino-American clash.

America and its Asian partners are actively balancing today—as balance of power/threat theory would lead us to expect—but whether they do enough of the right things is hardly a foregone conclusion. If they do, Chinese hegemony in Asia is much less likely and the risk of war goes down. If not, you should probably worry a bit more. Here, a lot depends on whether the United States can lead a potentially fractious coalition and find the sweet spot between doing too much and doing too little. Who wants to take a bet on that?

sylsau

Soru 5 :  No. 5: What will the rest of the world do?

The final issue isn’t about China, per se; it’s about how the rest of the world is responding. A clear pattern is emerging: The Asian states most worried about China are moving closer to each other and gravitating toward the United States; most of Europe is reluctantly following America’s lead because they are still dependent on U.S. protection and thus don’t have much choice; Russia has little choice but to stick with its only major power partner; and medium powers around the world are hedging their bets, diversifying their strategic supply chains (trade and investment, diplomatic ties, and military support) and trying to avoid having to pick a side. For South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and some others, rivalry between China and the United States is an opportunity to play the great powers off each other and benefit from ties with both.

The key issue here is which of the two strongest powers plays this new game most effectively. The United States has squandered a lot of good will in the developing world over the past 30 years, and its failures have given China an opportunity. But China’s own actions—including the vaunted Belt and Road Initiative—haven’t been the game-changers many expected. Looking ahead, it’s easy to see a world order that looks surprisingly like the early Cold War: the U.S. aligned with Europe and much of East Asia and the Pacific, China aligned with Russia and some key states in the developing world, and other medium powers oscillating between them. The lineup on these scorecards isn’t a perfect match, and some of the players will have switched teams, but the overall pattern resembles the one we’ve seen before.

16 days ago

Belt and Road Initiative—haven’t been the game-changers many expected.

But did it work for china? Did they get what they wanted, or even more really. Indebted nations with nothing to show for its new debt = more influence for china?