One high school teacher was very astute. He warned us in 1960 to be aware of rising China. Many articles expound the hypothesis that the future century will be China’s; perhaps, but there are flaws in the theory.
Consider this: Basic concepts of personal freedom as embodied in The English Bill of Rights, The Declaration of Independence and U.S. Bill of Rights spread everywhere, and led to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Internet, movies and television bombard the world with English language entertainment, values and culture. Even though the films may be Nigerian! English is the most widely spoken language in history and the predominant language of science, engineering, commerce, navigation, international law and diplomacy. More people may grow up speaking Mandarin, but they live in China. English language media influence opinion everywhere.
Where a language goes the culture goes. Just as the English language is very flexible in absorbing words from other languages the Anglo-American culture absorbs and refines customs. Fourteen of the G20 countries are multi-ethnic with rights assured in the Anglo American tradition. In America you can find traces of almost every language, culture or religion. Almost all of them tempered with mainstream American melting pot attitude.
China may rise in many ways, but the cultural values that started in England and flourished in America and other colonies have so pervaded the world that one might say, “There will always be an England.” It’s just that the capital of Anglo-American culture is no longer political, or a physical location.
China’s ultimate limitation is oligarchy, one-party (one-man) rule. Oligarchy historically has led to excesses and their own collapse. With no opposition, national priorities get skewed and political energy is diverted from the greatest good to someone’s obsession; like a wall.
Even in America when one party has had too much control of the government progress stalls and excesses like the internment of Japanese Americans or prohibition take root. One party government has no checks or balances. In Democracies, birth rates have declined and populations have leveled without political coercion and remain gender balanced. In China the party panicked by fear of overpopulation, implemented by force a one-child policy. China now has a superannuated asymmetric population, with millions of men for whom there are no women. The party is understandably afraid of the masses and so has created a multi-class society where the urbanites have rights and privileges denied the rural peasants. Party members have even more. Position, not merit, determines who gets what. One party government needs an enemy — an imaginary one suffices — to distract the people from its real agenda.
One party government like a monarchy cannot tolerate political dissent, because that would tarnish its projected image of divine infallibility. When there is dissent an oligarchy inevitably responds by tightening its grip. Make protest illegal; loosen libel laws, limit free speech and press. They may seem more stable than messy democracy, but they are not immune to failure and when they do, it’s often catastrophic like starting an unwinnable war.
China is churning out college graduates in prodigious numbers, but the best universities are in multi-ethnic America. Top leaders from all over (even China) send their offspring to America, England or Europe, in that order.
Those students are forever imbued with Western concepts of human worth, and the long-term value of free expression. While China trains copiers, America trains critical thinking leaders the American way. America took the leadership from Europe in part by prolific inventing. Our free culture attracted the dissatisfied and rewarded the brightest and the best from around the world. Americans still secures about half the patents and Nobel Prizes worldwide. Name a modern Chinese invention?
A nation cannot copy its way to leadership. When you are the first to reach the top of a mountain you notice the other climbers are catching up, that does not mean you are falling behind.
Ken Obenski is a forensic engineer, now safety and freedom advocate in South Kona. He writes a biweekly column for West Hawaii Today. Email obenskik@gmail.com.