China the Hegemon?

Hello Prof. Chase-Dunn,
As per your suggestion, I have pasted earlier e mail on the captioned.
Thank you for the opportunity to share. Bruce has responded, my addendum

will go to Bruce via WSN as soon as I am "listed".
Regards, Tso

"Hello Dr. Podobnik,

I am a student at the City University of Hong Kong.  Working on a
proposal for PhD thesis on environmental management, with globalization
as the parent discipline.  I read, with great interest and respect Dr.
Chase-Dunn and his contemporaries' world-systems analysis.  One of the
literature is a paper jointly written by Chase-Dunn and yourself on "The

Next War".  Recently, (23 Feb 2000) your WSN "China Concerns" article
attaching  Kaiser and Mufson's Int'l Herald Tribute writing is
alarmingly non-peaceful.  Hopefully Wallerstien's Comment No.35 will
help diffusing the speculation that "The Chinese are Coming!".  >From
that of a historian, his Comments are not only comforting, they are
essential in any future bargaining process with China.  Bargaining, not
war.

To understand China, one needs to understand the Chinese language as a
pictorial representation of ideas.  Yes, the Chinese people has
developed a love for arts earlier than most civilizations.   Except for
the Mongolian Race ( there are 54/5 races in China as you may well be
aware), the Chinese had never ventured out of the 'central' state
intending to be a hegemon in the world-systems sense. (Cheng Wo's trip
to Arabia a noted exception of any venture outside of China, even though

the three trips he took was not for military expansion.)
As a peace loving nation, China suffered invasion from all major
hegemons and would be hegemons and also runs in the 19-20th C.   In her
written history of some 5,000 years, China had never really enjoyed the
possibility of 'unification' in the context of a new 21st C. buzz word,
let alone the prosperity of one.  She now has a dream, much like Martin
Luther King Jr.  We know what happened to King and his dream.

WS literature had talked about the US as a declining hegemon.  Really?
Who is there to challenge and fill the vacuum?    China?   If one had
been to those part of China, not the parts occupied by TNCs, one would
know how poverty is still very much the concern of the Chinese at large.

  How would China become a hegemon?  Through Taiwan?  The Blue Team
needs the Big Blue to figure that out, and more!

Taiwan had been an American colony, cultural and economic of course,
since the end of WWII.   If one asks ten average Taiwanese, eight of
them would like to go and live in US, one and a half in Japan, only half

would like to stay in Taiwan.  The fortune Taiwanese have made in China
(as did people from HK, US, UK and the rest of the world), would be an
interesting topic for empirical research.  So why would the Taiwanese
not be happy with US as an ally and China mainland as a foe?

That, if anything, could be the reason for the next major conflict.
The US could be making the biggest arm sales in recent human history to
Taiwan soon enough to safe it from becoming a declining power and
hegemon.   The Gulf War helped decelerate that process.  Perhaps  the
Blue Team will finally figure out what Winston Churchill meant when he
said" no bastards win the war by dying for their country, they win the
war by making the other bastards die for their country";  only that this

time, the US could really win big by making 'bastards' from both sides
of the Taiwan strait die for their country.

Deng Xiao Ping was wrong in saying in the late 70's that China needs
peace, uninterrupted peace for fifty years (or is it twenty, whatever
the number, he was wrong) to rebuilt the country from ten years of
devastation created by the Cultural Revolution.  China needs peace just
to survive.  1989 came almost ten year to the opening of China for
business.  1999 was the year when the first US bullet was fired killing
a Chinese since the escalating Vietnam War in 1969.  2020 may be
optimistic for more bullets to fire from all over the universe against
anybody in their way.  It may need just another nine years to complete
the classical ten year 'cycle' as evident by the past thirty years
'trend'.

I have a dream.  I am looking to share it with humankind.......

K.S.Tso

Dr. Stremlin, pls fwd to Prof. Wallerstein if you see fit."

p.s. Dr. Stremlin, the original message to you was returned, but have
since been redirected to Prof. Wallerstien direct since I could not
determine your correct e mail address.