In 2007, when I drove this bright-eyed yellow sports car

21,000km through China, from the Yangtze’s mouth in China’s glitziest city, Shanghai, to its source in the Tibetan highlands where all that I encountered was a Yak, practically everyone whom I met asked me 3 questions: How fast? How much? What do you do when it rains? Even though very few people I met in China had ever seen a convertible and no one I met had ever seen a Caterham in the flesh, one thing was clear: they all aspired to have a car. That much was obvious from their longing looks and, on occasion, gentle caresses of the car’s body.

Earlier this year the news came that China had overtaken the U.S. as the world’s largest automobile market. China really has arrived, I thought to myself, and its ascendency has been as smooth a ride as that in a Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham. Will China’s ride continue to be as smooth, I wondered.

In 1980, China’s gross national income was USD188 billion. The United States’ was 2.7 trillion. Thirty years later (in 2009), that of China is 5 trillion and that of the U.S. 14.5 trillion. For the U.S., that’s a five-fold increase. China, by contrast, achieved a 25-fold increase in the same period, albeit from a very low base. (China’s per capita income was only USD200 per person in 1980.)

These figures are impressive, but what is even more remarkable is that hundreds of millions have been lifted out of poverty without hardly any disturbance. In the 1980s, China’s emergence as an economic power went practically unnoticed until 1989 threw up the only noteworthy untoward event along this remarkable journey: the Tian’anmen Square protests. Despite the severity of the crack-down by the authorities in response to the protests and despite the many lives that were lost, it can count as no more than a speed bump on the highway on which China has been travelling. Nothing else in the 1990s slowed down China’s growth.

In the 2000s, all things considered, not much happened either, but nowadays China is a lot more in the news. That’s not surprising since it’s simply gotten too big to evade the radar guns of the rest of the world. Yet while there are many irksome disagreements, no major conflict has arisen to date. What an incredible 30 years it has been. Fingers crossed, will it continue like this for another 30 years?

My prediction is: no, it won’t.

China’s GDP is, at USD3,600 per person per year, 1/13th of that of the U.S. (and lags similarly behind Europe and other rich nations.) China will want, and of course has the right, to continue to grow. Further rapid growth is what China’s leaders will attempt to achieve. Even if they content themselves with slower growth – note that there is no sign of this yet, though – China’s need for resources and competition for markets will bring it increasingly into conflict with other nations. And these conflicts will very likely become vitriolic, it not outright violent. (China will not fight territorial wars – except perhaps over Taiwan and Tibet and other fringe regions – because they are content with the patch they live on.) On the other hand, if China stops growing (or grows insufficiently quickly), then internal conflicts will most likely multiply, become violent and bring upheavals no more pleasant than those that would otherwise be brought on with other nations due to resource or market scarcity.

The next 30 years will therefore not be pretty. As we travel through the years to come, it will be tempting to curse China. But let us try to bear in mind that, unless the people of China take matters into their own hands (and I would like to stress that I am not advocating that that would necessarily be a good thing), they, unlike many others in the world, have no choice in the manner and direction their country is led.

And if per chance violent conflicts can be avoided, it will be the result not of good luck but immense good will by all involved.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 10th, 2010 at 3:33 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.