With 1.3 billion people, $1.7 trillion in foreign trade, 2.2 million soldiers, and about 200 nuclear warheads, China seems to be positioning itself as an emerging superpower. As far as the average American is concerned, most think of China as a benign academic cottage industry, but with China’s new focus on growth at any cost, they are accelerating their position on the world stage. However, symptomatic of this new focus is a more sinister agenda that may startle the West and those unsuspecting governments who just haven’t seen it coming.

According to an article in the Spring, ‘07, Wilson Quarterly, China is operating on an alternative form of governing. Following the Cold War, other emerging countries have been pursuing democratic liberalism. Whereas, China is following a different path. Theirs is “illiberal capitalism” which entails free markets and tightly controlled politics. This is coupled with an indifference toward other nation’s affairs which has been described as “see no evil”.

This “see no evil” policy has lead its foreign policy in its quest for oil to include strange bed fellows and questionable deals with dictators and regimes friendly to terrorism, and hostile to the U.S. According to Matthew E. Chen, a research assistant at the James A. Baker, III, Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, “China’s drive for energy resources risks gravely weakening international human rights and obstructing global energy security objectives”.

So, what has China been up to while we have been obsessively preoccupied with meddling in the Middle East? According to Chen, its latest deals include the signing of between $70 and $100 billion in oil contracts with Iran, complicating the world efforts to isolate Tehran’s nuclear ambition. It has been developing growing ties with Hugo Chavez which may embolden his authoritarian intent and threaten America’s future oil imports.

China is also forming relations with Nigeria that could undercut efforts to improve the African state’s conduct. Oil-rich Angola recently received a $2 billion credit line from the Export-Import Bank of China. It also has formed a liaison with Sudan and has become the biggest investor in Sudanese oil giving it the ability to sustain its militias. This compounded with China’s permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council which is blocking introduction of a U.N. peace-keeping force or the imposition of sanctions. This is proving to be a problem in intervening in the genocide in Darfur and supporting radical armed militias in other areas.

Also, in Asia, China has propped up the military regime in Burma with $1.2 billion in trade and also signed an agreement to pipe natural gas from a new offshore field. All of these deals are being made with China’s promise not to meddle in their nation’s affairs.

What China has been successful at is focusing on achieving “easy things”, not meddling in foreign disputes, and basically avoiding cost commitments or major risk, unlike the U.S. who has committed to extremely costly, in terms of money and reputation, foreign interference and failed global democratization. Bush has miserably squandered the greatest opportunity in world supremacy that befell this country after the end of the Cold War. His obsession with his personal religious mission and disastrous foreign policy have put our nation at serious risk.




So, the real threat from China is not economic or military — its ideological. What the lasting effects of these shifting ideological loyalties are to the U.S. is as yet undetermined. However, any way you look at it, China is definitely forming alliances with those who are hostile to our interests, especially Chavez.

What is to stop China from this aggressive, no-holds-barred quest for growth at any cost? Perhaps it may be the quest itself that does China in. In an interesting article in The Nation in an article called China vs Earth, a recent major official study on climate change predicts up to a 37 percent decline in China’s wheat, rice and corn yields in the second half of the century with precipitation declining as much as 30 percent in three of China’s seven major river regions. Being that this is China’s richest agricultural regions that derive much of their water from Tibetan glaciers, it is predicted that they will initially experience floods then drought as the glaciers melt.

With a country as large as China, you wouldn’t think the glacier melt would have as much of an impact but with half the country’s population and 60 percent of its economic output being concentrated on its eastern seaboard, it is very vulnerable. A one-meter rise in sea level will submerge this area which is the size of Portugal. Even more alarming is that climate change is already impacting China. In 2006 such disasters cost China more than $25 billion in damage. Yet, China refuses to see these problems and threats to its economy.

In late 2006 the International Energy Agency predicted that China would surpass the U.S. as the largest contributor of CO2 by 2009, which is a full 10 years earlier than anticipated. Also, China already uses more coal than the U.S., the European Union and Japan combined and is the world’s second-largest consumer of oil after the U.S. Adding to this already devastating environmental impact, China is developing its strategy to urbanize half the Chinese population by 2020 which will cause energy consumption to soar.

And, with China’s number of cars predicted to increase by fifteen times present levels over the next thirty years, more than tripling CO2 emissions, there’s no end in sight. With China’s development trajectory, its increase in greenhouse gases will likely exceed that of all industrialized countries combined over the next 25 years. What will be the effect of these staggering environmental impacts to China — to the world?

You know, there were times when we could predict a little more clearly outcomes based on one or two dimensions of action when it came to political and economic success. However, Mother Nature has stormed in and said…”not so fast”. I think everything is all up in the air and it’s anybody’s guess as to what the next 50 or even the next 10 years will look like. All I do know is that if we don’t start working together as global stewards of this planet, all bets are off.