If China wants peaceful friendship I'm all for it. But if China seeks confrontation, we cannot run.
Most important, however, is that though I think China is a potential near-term threat, I do not subscribe to the idea that China will rise to global power status.
So this article (via Real Clear Politics) on the obstacles to rising is a welcome read:
Demographic trends, internal migration and uncontrolled urban development, plus megalomaniac, environmentally disastrous infrastructure projects, all threaten sound development.
The scenario of China as future superpower also assumes continuing political stability, which is questionable in the light of popular unrest and the rivalries at work inside an ideologically dead and morally crippled Communist Party, whose brutal apparatus runs the country.
The increasing number of violent protests against social injustices greatly disturbs the leadership. The public security minister, Zhou Yong-kang, is reported to have told a closed official meeting recently that the number of "mass incidents" has significantly increased, last year involving several million people.
These events, though, are perhaps ultimately less threatening than a popular perception that the Communist government no longer possesses political legitimacy as China's ruler, or the moral legitimacy that radiates from an elite sure of its values. This government is intellectually exhausted.
China is not destined to rise to the top. This fact is relevant whether you think them destined to be friend or foe..
