Why the US doesn't really fear China's rise

The US doesn't really fear China's rise, despite all appearances to the contrary. Against all conventional wisdom in policy circles, it's rather glaring that in fact Americans not only have no qualms about an ascendant China, but in fact welcome it - even with ever growing proof that such a China will be as assertively un-Westernized as ever. There are fewer and fewer pretenses of trying to change the venerable Oriental civilization in America's image, and little genuine interest in preserving traditional American hegemony in the Asia-Pacific. Rather, a lot of noise is being made by career officials and scholars who have simply failed - or refused - to keep up with the times.

They seem to assume we're still in 1970, where nations and individuals still live by essentially cold war or even world war-era values. Hence the continued obsession with the military balance, weapons systems, political repression, and the like: it's as if the world is still locked in an existential struggle between rival ideologies which command a mass devotion that in the last century was essentially the modern equivalent of proselytizing religious faith, threatening large swathes of human civilization with Apocalyptic holy warfare.

Any such discussion is increasingly ludicrous in the present context. Americans as a whole implicitly share the pragmatism of their elites when it comes to China. Their gut instinct tells them that a powerful China which maximizes its clout in the global system, even through manipulation and coercion where practicable, is actually far less dangerous than a China which is routinely thwarted by the status quo.

It's a given that all human individuals and societies tend to prize stability, familiarity and continuity over uncertainty and rupture. The epochal shift that occurred with the end of the Cold War is that, for the first time in recorded history, the balance of global realities shifted decisively in favor of general peace over general conflict. That's because, for the first time in recorded history, enough general prosperity was readily available or attainable to counterbalance the forces that traditionally seek to redress a perceived unacceptable deficit.

It's often suggested that trade and economic interdependence isn't enough to prevent war between China and the US any more than it was to prevent cataclysm between the great European powers a century ago; the only problem with this comparison is that it's utterly invalid. The wealthiest European elites 100 years ago didn't have the technology or medicine that are accessible to poor Chinese peasants today (if even barely affordable). Rich world miners and workers back then toiled in conditions that would be considered atrocious even in remote or underdeveloped parts of today's global economy. An influenza epidemic which racked up a genocidal toll in Europe won't be remotely rivaled by even the worst imaginable disease outbreak in sub-Saharan Africa.

So no, trade definitely hasn't sufficed to ensure peace, but the cumulative effects of it and of economic and technological development generally mean that its implications are vastly different from what they were 100, 50, or even 25 years ago. And it's hard to envision any scenario where these effects are rolled back - not even North Korea wants to stay in the stone age.

It's a truism that wars are merely the continuation of politics; it's equally a truism that politics are merely the mediation of economics. The ultimate backstop in the US-China relationship is that neither is a net absolute loser in their intercourse, even if China appears to be the net relative winner (in Donald Trump-speak). For its own interests, the US sees that a dominant China isn't really a threat because it's a satisfied China; conversely, for its own interests China will see that a "losing" US is in fact a threat because it's a hostile one, and will have every incentive to help it "win" again. On this last point, even if Beijing spars over what this would look like to Washington, sooner or later it must deliver tangible results: we just don't live in a world of abstractions.

Perhaps the great peace that could well define the 21st century will mark the end not of conflict, but of the stranglehold of rigid ideology over it. Judging from America's true attitudes about China's rise, that's already happened.