Ka Leo O Hawaii

Issue date: 3/6/08 Section: Commentary

Media Credit: Courtesy of MCT Campus Many political commentators believe that greater wealth will spur democratic reform in China, but evidence for this claim remains to be seen.

Editor's Note: This is the final installment in a three-part series about the economic, social and political rise of China.
Part I: Chinese suppression dims Olympic torch, March 3
Part II: Seeds of revolutions are made in China, March 5

The mounting giant. The awakening dragon. The Eastern behemoth. The world's next superpower. Each of these names has been used to describe China's dramatic surge within the international community. Kitschy sobriquets obscure the tension underlying China's ascent, however, and fail to address one of the most poignant foreign policy question of the early 21st century: Will China's rise be managed peaceably by the United States?

The numbers depicting China's growth are breathtaking, to say the least. Home to 20 percent of the world's population, China's economy has been growing at a rate of 10 percent annually since the end of the Cold War. Chinese exports gross more than $900 billion in revenue for the country's entrepeneurs and foreign direct investment, the moniker of industrialization, topped $60 billion during the last fiscal year.

Taken at face value, these figures illustrate a stark challenge to America's economic supremacy. But it would be a mistake to aggrandize the importance of such statistics by interpreting them out of context. While China's economic growth outpaces that of most Western nations on a yearly basis, the nation's per-capita GDP hovers around $1,700 (compared with $43,000 in the United States).

Furthermore, China's municipal labor market regularly exceeds the number of new jobs created by approximately 20 percent, leaving many of the nation's urban dwellers lingering in unemployment.

Accordingly, Washington policymakers shouldn't be troubled by the causes of China's rabid financial escalation. Instead, they should focus their attention on the effects of amplified Asian consumption, which include increased competition for oil and greater military spending from Beijing - two sides of the same yuan, according to most international observers.

Continued...

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