Re: "rise of china" and wst

On Thu, 1 Mar 2001, David Smith wrote:

> In any case, my original message really was mainly asking folks to
> clarify just what they DID mean by "the rise of China" and offer some sort
> of data to back that up.  We probably need to do that first to avoid
> "talking past each other"...
> 
> dave smith
> sociology, uci

Dave:

My impression is that there seem to be 2 popular ideas:

1) China is a rising military threat to the U.S.,
        and
2) China is a rising economic power that might, therefore, eventually pose
        a threat to U.S. hegemony.

The first seems to be rapidly spreading through the U.S. populace
(evidence elsewhere?), fuelled by pronouncements from Pentagon planning.
(This is what RKM stresses.)

The second seems to be more what Gunder Frank and others in world-system
circles have in mind, and the time frame varies or is unspecified.  If you
add 1 and 2 together in the near term, it seems you have something like
the old USSR (certainly not what the leaders of China have in mind!).  But
in the longer term, it is a more interesting question, and is what I'm
more interested in, particularly vis a vis the implications for theory.

[Some, including Samir Amin and Chase-Dunn if I'm not mistaken, still hold
out hope that China may be part of the liberatory project (as an evolving
experiment in "market socialism.")  This seems quite dubious to me, but
expands the set of possibilities.]

RH