Re: "Rise of China" and WST

    1 
    2.Most of the analysis so far posted focus primarily on countries, namely, 
on the Nation-state we
      know as the Popular Republic of China. I guess this is a misconception 
that takes its toll on the
      accuracy of results. FIRST, because World-systems Theory, as far as I can 
understand it, was
      developed with the explicit purpose of overcoming the centrality of the 
national units. It
      should be applied to regions, or areas instead... SECOND, because China 
is not an
      homogenous unit in itself - it has areas which are manifestly peripheral, 
some which are
      semi-peripheral, and some that are arguably near core status, much like a 
sub-system within the
      structure of the world-system. So, treating it as a single and 
undifferentiated unit does not strike me
      as the correct methodology.

Virtually all states in the world-system, excluding perhaps some of Europe and 
Japan are in the same boat--certainly the US has core, semi-peripheral, and 
near-peripheral conditions.  States become relevant because state power has 
frequently been employed to shape world order--so the question is not whether 
everyone in China will achieve core living standards, but how much power China 
might exercise as an international power.

 
    3.Then, there is the problem of development, as Frank theorized it. 
Clearly, China is pretty much on
      the same position as most of South America, in that it is still exploited 
by core regions, who prevent
      it from appropriating internally-generated surplus. (Actually, and once 
again, this pattern is mirrored
      within China - its most advanced regions exploit its less advanced ones.) 
So, thus integrated as a
      (semi?)peripheral country in the world economic structure, and suffering 
from blatant
      underdevelopment - see latest UN figures - it seems highly questionable 
to me that this
      country/area will move to the core anytime soon.

China, unlike all of Latin America, is not integrated into the neoliberal 
consensus.  Obviously it has opened itself to foreign capital (mostly from the 
Chinese Diaspora, we will return to shortly) but it has refused to adopt its 
laws on business to those the US/World Bank/WTO continually advocates. This is 
why it gets such bad press in the US.  It actually uses the surpluses generated 
for its own purposes--the steps it has taken to regionally redistribute wealth 
don't have too many parallels in Latin America.

 
 Some authors - notably Frank and esp.Arrighi - have for a while now theorized 
about a trend of the core to
 move steadily westwards. In the current phase of global transition, the core 
is said to be moving westward
 again, thus leaving the euro-atlantic area toward the Pacific rim. (Someone 
mentioned Castells' 3 vols.
 master-piece, "The Information Age"... He makes quite a conivincing analysis 
of this trend). If this is indeed
 so, then China will have a chance to move up to Core status when the world 
system moves into another
 Kondrattief A phase. But, again, this is not a swift process, and I do not 
believe we can discern its
 symptoms yet, not in the Chinese case anyway.
  
To really move beyond nation states, we would have to talk about the chinese 
diaspora, which has considerable capital presence not only in China but also in 
nearly all the tigers..  There are two major indigeneous capitalist powers in 
the region--Japanese capital, and Chinese diasporic capital   (Additionally, as 
is always the case, established core countries have invested in the region).  
Some of the questions relevant to the hegemonic prospects of the region:  would 
these two capitalist forces unite?  How might they project power?  militarilly 
(the Chinese state becomes relevant)? economically (a unity of these two 
capitalist forces would endow them with considerable financial weight)? 
culturally (the successes and failures of 'development'(if one wants to call it 
that) in China become relevant, since they may impress or dismay India, Africa, 
Latin America, in other words the global south, the most likely unruly force in 
the contemporary world, and perhaps the one most eager!
 to opt for a new hegemon)?

Not to sound like a broken record, but I am continually dismayed at the way 
hegemony is conceptualized on this list as if it is some sort of linear 
economic race, rather than an effort to address political, social and cultural 
crises--was the work of the Braudel Center Hegemonic Transitions Research Group 
all for nought?


Steven Sherman


1 Quid juris?
  
  






 --------------------Headers --------------------
 Return-Path: <wsn-owner+M1473@csf.colorado.edu>
 Received: from  rly-yh05.mx.aol.com (rly-yh05.mail.aol.com
         [172.18.147.37]) by air-yh05.mail.aol.com (v77_r1.21) with ESMTP;
         Thu, 01 Mar 2001 14:34:02 -0500
 Received: from  csf.colorado.edu (csf.colorado.edu [128.138.129.195])
         by rly-yh05.mx.aol.com (v77_r1.21) with ESMTP; Thu, 01 Mar 2001
         14:33:24 -0500
 Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=csf.colorado.edu) by
         csf.colorado.edu with esmtp (Exim 3.14 #2) id 14YYpF-0003CX-00; Thu,
         01 Mar 2001 12:33:21 -0700
 Received: from hotmail.com (law2-oe37.hotmail.com [216.32.180.30]) by
         csf.colorado.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3/ITS-5.0/csf) with ESMTP id MAA11985 for
         <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>; Thu, 1 Mar 2001 12:29:24 -0700 (MST)
 Received: from mail pickup service by hotmail.com with Microsoft
         SMTPSVC; Thu, 1 Mar 2001 11:28:54 -0800
 X-Originating-IP: [195.23.178.239]
 From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Daniel_Pin=E9u?= <danielfrp@hotmail.com>
 To: "World Systems Network" <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
 Subject: "Rise of China" and WST
 Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 19:19:09 -0000
 MIME-Version: 1.0
 Content-Type: 
         multipart/alternative;  boundary="----=_NextPart_000_000B_01C0A284
         .7DDB9820"
 X-Priority: 3
 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
 X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4133.2400
 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400
 Message-ID: <LAW2-OE37AFeURtvElz000007e3@hotmail.com>
 X-OriginalArrivalTime: 01 Mar 2001 19:28:54.0306 (UTC)
         FILETIME=[DA4AD020:01C0A285]
 Precedence: bulk
 Sender: wsn-owner@csf.colorado.edu