> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/23/china-martin-jacques-
> economics
>
> A civilisation state, furthermore, operates in ways that are
> fundamentally different from a nation state: China embraces huge
> variations and it would be impossible to maintain its unity unless it
> tolerated diversity. This is why it was natural for China to offer Hong
> Kong a "one country, two systems"
> constitutional settlement. Such systemic diversity would be entirely
> unacceptable to a nation state.
Hardly. Many countries have a wide range of such arrangements, especially in the periphery (systems of local governance are quite complex). This notion of China being a vast civilizational monolith is not credible. Look more closely, and you find vast differences: different languages (Cantonese versus Mandarin), a wide range of ethnicities, wide variations in provincial histories, and of course the town versus rural divide.
> It would not be in the least surprising if some of the
> characteristics of the tributary state system once more came to shape and
> inform inter-state relations in the region.
History has shown the opposite trend: China has become more like its marketized neighbors, in terms of education, infrastructure, outlook, living standards, and geopolitical behavior.
> The Chinese sense of
> superiority is thus rooted in biological, as well as cultural, attitudes
> and beliefs. One consequence is that the Chinese have little conception of
> difference, which is clearly manifest in their attitude towards Tibet
> and Xinjiang.
This is where the argument turns into 20th century Orientalist nonsense. China is no more or less racist or xenophobic than any other society on the planet. Tibet was annexed to the Chinese Empire in the mid-19th century, the same time that the US took the Southwest from Mexico. Today's China has 900 million cellphones, 300 million broadband connections, a vibrant mass media, and a thriving civic culture.
> western states. Unlike European states, for over a millennium the Chinese
> state has not been obliged to compete for power with rivals such as the
> church, the aristocracy or merchants.
Simply not true. Medieval China was a churning battleground of competition between rival nobilitarians, religious orders, occasional peasant uprisings (some quite spectacular) and nomadic invaders from Central Asia. It had highly sophisticated merchants, systems of trade, military technology, you name it.
The multipolar world is not going to be a rewriting of the American Century -- no single nation, not even China, will ever dominate the planet as the US once did in 1945. That's not something to be feared, but to be celebrated -- this means more space for democracy, egalitarianism and transnational solidarity, and less space for vicious nationalisms and barbaric fundamentalisms.
-- DRR