The Post-American World

The class yesterday focused on Zakaria's description of how the Non-western World fell behind the Western World after the Renassiance in Western Europe. I think his point about focusing on GDP per capita as a measurement, rather than just GDP, makes sense as we try to examine the modernization of societies and economies. The other point that he makes in the chapters examined for this lesson deals with the definitions of "western" and "modern", which many would argue are the same basic idea. He uses quotes from Samuel Huntington, who believes the two are very different, to support his position that they can overlap but being western does not necessarily make a nation modern and being modern does not necessarily make a nation western. While most nations that he would consider western are also modern, the two terms do not always have to overlap. Zakaria uses two examples from the Non-western World, China and India, to accentuate his arguments. This week we looked at China and how it has changed and grown and modernized...specifically in the last 30 years. When I published the economic figures for China since 1978 (economic growth of 9% on average per year for the last 30 years - doubling the size of their economy every eight years) a number of people just shook their heads in amazement. It will be interesting to see if Zakaria is right in his belief that China is not looking to become the other superpower in another Cold War, but seeks to take its place in the world by hard work and economic growth without the trappings of superpower interference. His example of the World Bank refusing to loan Nigeria the $8M they needed to fix their train system because of questions about corruption in the Nigerian bureaucracy...and China stepping in to give them a $9B loan to rebuild the entire train system but with no strings attached and no scolding. The World Bank represents the interests of the Western/Modern World trying to discipline a non-western, developing country...while China represents the quiet giant of the non-western world helping a developing country make itself more able to compete in the world market. How will such actions reshape the political and economic landscape of our world? How will we as a nation deal with a country which approaches its relationships with others in such a way? Will we be willing to break our normal paradigm and not lean again on our blatant power politics? Hope to see many of you next week for our last class in this series. We'll look at his second example, India, and then bring this interesting book to a conclusion.