In another section, Mahbubani asks if China is expansionist, as the Americans have claimed. He obliquely responds rhetorically, Is capitalism inherently expansionist? Did America push capitalism on China? Has China shown it can play the game with equal skill, while keeping pleasing its citizens with true upward mobility and market opportunity, while keeping chaos at bay? What do you think, reader, he seems to ask. As far as Mahbubani is concerned, modern China is destined to make inroads into Europe, where the Monguls failed, due to one historian's account, by getting bogged down by mosquitoes and malaria. Mahbubani writes, America is trying to create a pretext for military engagement with China, by claiming it is flexing its muscles, especially in the South China Sea.
In another section, Mahbubani wonders if America can make a "U-turn" away from its profligate and totally unnecessary military spending. He suggests that China looks at America the way the latter looked at the Soviets who wasted so much GDP on weaponry it helped collapse the USSR. "It is in China's national interest for this irrational and wasteful defense spending to continue," writes Mahbubani. America is locked into an "irrational processes it cannot break away from." He gives an example of their two approaches: "An aircraft carrier may cost $13 billion to build. China's DF-26 ballistic missile, which the Chinese media claims is capable of sinking an aircraft carrier, costs a few hundred thousand dollars."
Another chapter asks: Should China Become Democratic? Mahbubani wonders the same about America? While the US considers regime change in China, Mahbubabi writes,
Since I live in the neighborhood, I can say with some confidence that most of China's neighbors would prefer to see China led by calm and rational leaders, like Xi Jinping, and not by a Chinese version of Donald Trump or Teddy Roosevelt.
In a surprise suggestion to the West, he adds, that for China, and its millenia long history of emperors, "a nondemocratic CCP could do long-term calculations on what would be good for China and the world." But, of course, there are those in America, who will ignore what Nixon said about sovereign nations. "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people," Kissinger said before socialist Allende was popped.
Mahbubani closes with a section on American hypocrisy, which falls on deaf ears, as it does with any realpolitik empire. So, sue me, they say. Mahbubani closes with A Paradoxical Conclusion, the nub of which is that imminent conflict is "inevitable" and yet "avoidable." Why? Hubris. Always, it's the hubris. Who will win? Look at the title? What do you think? Mahbubani asks rhetorically.
If Has China Won? has a major flaw it is that it presumes that China's global victory by economic expansion is a victory. We are learning that we are in late stage capitalism, and that the endless expansion of economic growth in light of diminishing resources, proliferating population growth, and imminent climate catastrophe, is not a healthy response to reality. To his credit, however, Mahbubani does suggest that if the two superpowers could find a way around their dangerous political impasse they might be able to come together and lead the world out of some of its impending crises.
Pass the bong.
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