It is not necessarily the smartest strategy for Beijing to try to lock up natural resources in various parts of the world. China is opening itself up to all sorts of political risks its policymakers and business figures have not foreseen in places like Nigeria and Pakistan, where the Chinese are beginning to encounter a backlash to their presence. Rebels in the Niger Delta seeking more autonomy and greater control over their resources have targeted Chinese oil workers as well as those from Shell, which suggests that China's desire for energy security may link it more closely with the interests of the U.S. and other consuming countries than with those of revolutionary movements it once supported.

 

Joel Rosenthal

In his 2000 campaign for president, Governor Bush never missed an opportunity to define China as a "strategic competitor." This position seemed to be part of an overall foreign policy orientation that claimed the mantle of "realism" and took the practical form of "anything but Clinton."

As we approach 2008, any realist assessment would have to feature two observations. First, the United States and China are in fact competing for global power and influence. The competition at this point in time is most fierce over soft power issues that will determine the rules of the game for the global economy as it evolves for next generation. Second, the United States and China are the biggest beneficiaries of the process of economic integration that is called globalization. With this common interest established, one can see that the competition over rules and norms of global economic integration may turn out to be the main game rather than a sideshow.

All of this means that U.S.-China relations will play out under a complicated constellation of rivalry and strong mutual interest. The challenge and opportunity for policy makers on both sides is to see this moment clearly and to identify and lock in common goals and common interests. As the two biggest winners in the globalization sweepstakes, there is much to gain by engaging in a "concert" approach, based on win-win scenarios.

The United States and China have much to gain by forging a 21st century globalization that will continue to benefit its peoples and help to raise the fortunes of the least well off around the world. Further, Chinese investment in the global economy can be an opportunity to encourage China's emergence as a responsible stakeholder in the global system. This outcome would depend not only on China itself, but also on U.S. leadership that will show the way and insist on human rights and related ethical standards as the basis for a stable and just world system. In the end, the power of principle will prevail. A global system that does not reflect basic human values, justice and fairness will not be sustainable over the long term.

 

Nader Mousavizadeh

Containment of China is not a realistic option, given Chinese access to global markets and resources, especially in Europe and Latin America--not to mention East Asia. Nor, is it, in all likelihood, an effective one, given the web of relationships China is forming around the world--leveraging diplomacy in trade negotiations and vice versa--a world which is growing increasingly susceptible to multiple sources of power.

Integrating and nurturing China's emerging managerial class should form a central part of our strategy toward China. To the extent that the Chinese are engaged in acquisitions of Western firms, they are doing so in part to gain Western experience, knowledge and expertise, and improve their ability to manage the power and risk of market forces. Given the integrated nature of the global economy, the world as a whole stands to benefit from the development of these skills in China.

From the perspective of the (in many cases U.S.-educated and free-market-oriented) managers of China's emerging global companies, the United States and its most successful companies are models to emulate. They want to compete and win on the global playing field, which is why there is a great risk involved in protectionist measures that could signal a double standard for global M & A.

In potentially overreacting to a perceived threat from China, the United States may undertake policies that will send precisely the wrong message to China's modernizing managerial class and encourage highly damaging (to the United States, as well as the rest of the world) tendencies in China, including nationalism, mercantilism and distrust of the international markets. To the extent that some U.S. politicians define foreign--and in this case, Chinese--acquisitions of U.S. assets as threats for domestic political purposes, they are jeopardizing a relationship--and a larger open global market--from which the United States has gained the most, and from whose weakening it has the most to lose.

 

Ruchir Sharma

Everyone seems to be convinced that a new superpower is on the verge of overtaking the United States. History, of course, never plays out in purely linear fashion. We've seen this before. In the 1990s it was the small economies of East Asia, the "Asian tigers", which were the wave of the future. Recall that in the 1950s, based on linear projections, Burma and the Philippines were supposed to become the most developed countries of the region. And in the early 1980s the CIA was projecting that the Soviet economy was nearly as large as that of the United States.

Linear projections are not the entire story; they do not encompass the quality of growth or social benefits. It takes a lot more than uninterrupted growth rates to match or even surpass the United States. We don't focus on the very real challenges China faces in making it to the next level of development. I wonder how, in five years time, we are going to evaluate some of these overblown expectations about China.

It is popular to underestimate how well the U.S. economy is doing, and to be worried about the Chinese juggernaut. China is still very dependent on exports to the United States to sustain its economic growth. Domestic demand in China is flat. For a long time to come, China is going to need a healthy, strong and prosperous United States to ensure its own prosperity and development.

 

Fareed Zakaria

Washington has an unsatisfactory way of conceiving the "China challenge" and for coping with it. The discussion tends to focus on the military growth or on the trade deficit. Those aren't the real issues. The real issue is that of size and scope. China poses a multidimensional challenge to the United States: it possesses an almost limitless amount of inexpensive labor for manufacturing as well as a growing high-technology sector (small as a percentage of the Chinese population but large by any other measure). This means China can combine research and development with labor arbitrage. When combined with China's growing surpluses, this means China is in a position to acquire U.S. assets, particularly in the high-technology sector, and move them offshore. Take one example: a firm like JDS Uniphase. This is a company that does high-tech optical physics. It's about as high up on the value chain as you can get. But cost pressures have made it outsource almost all its research and production to China, which happens to be strong in optical-physics research. The shell of the company remains American, but it is essentially a Chinese technology company. The Chinese are in a position to use their labor advantage to produce products more cheaply, and their research and engineering base to imitate American-developed technology. This is a challenge on a different scale than Japan or Germany ever posed. And it can have national security implications when we are considering dual-use technologies. I know the Ricardian answer to all this. But I do wonder if China's size makes things different.

Another aspect of the problem of scale is that China will not be a rich country per capita when it becomes a rich country in toto. China may not be an advanced industrial power, but when its per capita GDP (real) reaches approximately $4,000 or $5,000, it becomes the world's second largest economy. Is it going to think like a rich country, concerned about global rules and norms, or is it going to see itself as a developing country with its narrow interests dominating? I think the latter. This is a unique situation, where India and China will both cast huge shadows on the global economy but still be poor or middle-income countries.

The United States talks about upholding a broad, liberal, international order; Beijing is concerned with how it can get oil from Sudan back to the mainland. Even domestically, China's interests are not necessarily defined in the same way as American ones. The state is very concerned to use economic growth and prosperity to sustain the existing regime. A U.S. company will try to make profits and not be worried about contributing to "full employment" but this is still very much a concern for China. China's state-owned and state-funded firms operate to full employment rather than return on investment.

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