ZenPundit
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
 
NEW CORE RISING..."NOW THEY'VE GOT A PIECE OF THE PIE..."

Fareed Zakaria, using a somewhat ill-fitting historical analogy with late 19th century Great Britain, muses on the impact that the rise of India and China as global economic players will have on the United States.
 
Comments:
As the Chinese population becomes wealthier they will want to spend more of their disposable income upon education for their children, especially in a family-orientated society such as China. The one thing we know about students is that they tend to challenge the status quo and question the established order. Therefore, the growing wealth of China contains within itself the catalyst for the downfall of totalitarianism.

Regarding India, it is a committed democracy and in many ways sees itself as part of the Anglophone world (for instance, India takes seriously its membership of the Commonwealth, something UK does not take seriously). I am always amazed at the number of Indians who can easily quote Shakespeare and regard English writers as part of their literary heritage. Village India is undoubtedly beyond Western comprehension (and vice versa no doubt) but the educated Indians (a class numbering many millions) are firmly in the Western camp and would be a strong addition to the shared values of the English-speaking world.
 
The genuine foreign policy accomplishments of the Bush Administration are few. Prime among them are the multilateral talks on North Korean nuclear weapons. But the second is abandoning a Euro-centric foreign policy. When John Kerry refers to “our allies” whom does he mean? Europe. Very nearly the only context in which he mentions China or India is as potential targets for trade sanctions in the name of “fair trade” (fair trade being defined as a Carteresque attempt to compel our trading partners to change their social or environmental policies).
 
"The one thing we know about students is that they tend to challenge the status quo and question the established order."

Particularly in China, where such challenges by students are viewed in the Confucian culture as paradoxically having moral legitimacy. The CCP politburo hesitated and negotiated in 1989 because crushing the students with tanks - which they ultimately did - meant a loss of face. Recall the May 19 movement as well ( and probably a number of others).

The Japanese have a similar concept of " sincerity " to excuse extreme gestures of protest. This was used by rightists in the 1920's and 1930's to escape severe consequences for assassinating ministers of state until 1936 - where Hirohito forced the army to deal out dishonorable deaths to the young putschists.
 
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