China, it seems, is on everyone's mind. The United States is perhaps the most discussed and debated power in the world today. But China is a close runner-up. Why everyone thinks about the U.S. is very obvious. It is the world's most powerful country - economically, militarily, and politically. What it does affects everyone everywhere. So it is quite natural that its policies are discussed, debated, and analyzed.

But China? To be sure, it has the largest population. And it claims to be the oldest civilization. Furthermore, it has incredible potential. But potential is not actuality, today. So why discuss, debate, analyze China so extensively? This was not really the case 50 years ago, or even ten years ago. What has changed? In part, the decline of others to discuss. Russia has faded a bit into the background, perhaps temporarily, but quite noticeably for the moment. Japan's economic triumph seems a bit tarnished in many people's eyes. Europe seems an uncertain picture. At a time, however, when even the U.S. seems to be somewhat less powerful and less exuberant than a decade ago, China (virtually alone) seems to be on the rise. Perhaps this is only passing impression, but it is the current impression.

But what is China today, and what will it be in the near and medium term? That is the most interesting thing about China. The analyses are extraordinarily disparate. Take China as a military power. Is the world to take Chinese military strength seriously? Is the U.S. to do so? It seems that the countries of East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia do all take China seriously as a present and future military power. Does the United States?

When we investigate the motives behind Bush's proposed Missile Defense program, the U.S. administration speaks publicly of "rogue states" (usually indicating North Korea in particular) as the object of its worries. Diplomatically, its chief problem is the existence of a treaty it signed with Russia, as part of containing the interstate rivalries of these two states, a treaty that the U.S. now wishes to abrogate, given the decline in Russia's military strength. China, however, is never mentioned in this context by the Bush regime. Yet it is no secret to the analysts that the country that would be most affected militarily by the Missile Defense program would in fact be China, whose current meaningful missile technology would be largely nullified by this U.S. program. Is this then the primary, if unavowed, object?

The ongoing debate within the U.S. about Bush's missile proposals revolves heavily around the technological and military plausibility of such a program. Many opponents speak of it as resembling the Maginot Line, an inefficacious mode of defense. In response to such a line of argument, one Richard Cummings, described as a member of the [U.S.] Association of Former Intelligence Officers, wrote a letter to the editor of The New York Times in which he gave this case in favor of the Bush plan:

"The Reagan administration used 'Star Wars' as a ploy to break the Soviet economy. It worked, and we won the cold war. The missile shield will do to the Chinese Communist Party what 'Star Wars' did to the Soviet Communist Party. As soon as the Chinese start committing the resources to counter it, they will run out of money for domestic needs and the entire system will collapse" (Aug. 10, 2001).

Is Mr. Cummings's letter the voice of truth? Is he revealing the real motivation of the U.S. government? And if so, what does his analysis imply? It implies three things: (1) The fact that the Chinese Communist Party remains in power continues to be seen as a threat to U.S. interests; (2) China's economy will not be able to remain stable if it is "forced" to expend still more on its military; (3) The "collapse" of the Chinese "system" is expected to have little or no ripple effect that might trouble the larger stability of the world-system.

Is any of this true? That is to say, is it likely that the Chinese Communist Party will be ousted from power in the foreseeable future? Is the fact that it is currently in power a "threat" to anyone, and if so, to whom? Would expanded military expenditure place an impossible burden on the stability of the Chinese government? And will China have more friends or fewer friends in the geopolitical arena in the decades to come, should the U.S. missile program be implemented?

It should be noted, first of all, that the future role of the Chinese Communist Party is much debated, within and outside China. Premier Jiang Zemin suggested quite recently that the continuing primacy of the Chinese Communist Party was a guarantee of stability and moderation that the world (meaning the U.S. primarily) really ought to cherish and support. It seems that many of the world's leading capitalist figures - not only in the United States, but even in such unlikely places as Taiwan - may be agreeing with him, may in fact be building their own expectations of capital accumulation around such a premise.

The recent decision to admit "capitalists" to membership in the Chinese Communist Party is a case in point. What is termed by some analysts on the political left as the ultimate betrayal or retreat from Communist principle is being hailed by some in the U.S. and elsewhere as a sign of "moderation" and "gradual change" that will lead to greater pluralism. But if this is the expectation, why would anyone in the Western world want to imperil this slow "evolution" by imposing a "collapse" on the Chinese regime, as Mr. Cummings suggests is, and ought to be, the policy of the U.S. government? Indeed, the argument about encouraging gradual change has been extensively used to applaud the decision to hold the Olympics in Beijing in 2008.

One gets the impression that the Chinese leaders themselves are self-confident and optimistic about the future of the Party, but prudently so. They believe that time, that is, the next thirty years, are on their side. But they recognize that many things could go wrong. Perhaps they worry a little about errors of judgment by North Korea, but I warrant they spend more time worrying about the unpredictability of U.S. politics, and hence of U.S. geopolitical activity.

The example of the U.S.S.R. has led many to the assumption that all Communist regimes are inherently fragile. (This comes after some 50 years of making the equally absurd prediction that once a Communist Party were in power, nothing could ever budge it.) What this analysis of fragility leaves out of the picture is that, unlike Russia and all the countries of East and Central Europe, the Communist Parties in China (and Vietnam and Cuba) all have nationalist sentiments on their side rather than against them. And China, on the rise, has enormous economic attractiveness to the capitalists of the world. This makes for an uncertain mix whose immediate turbulences are exceptionally hard to predict. It would, nonetheless, be a grievous error for anyone facilely to rule China out of the picture, or to rule the current regime out of the picture. On the other hand, the China of the 21st century is clearly no longer the China that proclaimed that "the East is Red." So we cannot be sure what it will mean for the world that China is looming ever larger on the world scene.

Immanuel Wallerstein

[Copyright by Immanuel Wallerstein. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to download, forward electronically or e-mail to others and to post this text on non-commercial community Internet sites, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To translate this text, publish it in printed and/or other forms, including commercial Internet sites and excerpts, contact the author at iwaller@binghamton.edu; fax: 1-607-777-4315.

These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of the long term.]

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