THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO...BOOM!:

China No. 1? Don't hold your breath (Ross Terrill, NOVEMBER 16, 2005, The Boston Globe)

China's foreign policy seeks to maximize stability at home (for example, by keeping the status quo across Xinjiang's borders with Central Asia) and to sustain its impressive economic growth (for example, by safeguarding the huge U.S. market). A third goal is to maintain peace in its complicated geographic situation, with no fewer than 14 abutting neighbors. So far so good. This is a prudent foreign policy.

But China also has two dubious goals. One is to replace the United States as the chief source of influence in East Asia. Hence Chinese efforts to drive a wedge between Japan and the United States and Chinese whispers in Australian ears that Canberra would be better off looking only to Asia and not across the Pacific. The other is to "regain" territories that Beijing feels fall within its sovereignty. These include not only Taiwan but a large number of islands east and south of China and, eventually, portions of the Russian Far East to which Beijing has laid territorial claims in the past.

Whether Beijing can achieve these goals depends on how long its rigid political system can survive, and on the reaction of other powers to China's ambitions. A middle-class push for property rights, rural discontent, the spread of the Internet, unemployment and a suddenly aging population bringing financial and social strains all dramatize the contradictions inherent in "market Leninism." Traveling one road in economics and another in politics does not make for a settled destination.

China's economy may continue to grow at its present rate. Or China may retain its Leninist party state. But it can hardly do both. Either the economic or the political logic will soon gain the upper hand.

The reality is that China is destined to break apart into its constituent pieces rather than aggrandize itself by adding neighbors.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 17, 2005 7:09 AM