The question posited in this paper was what China's role in an
emerging global multilateral financial system would be? The answer I offer is
that it will be primarily a role, which sacrifices national freedom for the
collective good in a way in which everyone in the system is better off. On the
question of currency reserves, China's vast resources can help underpin a
multilateral reserve currency that is not vulnerable to the economic cycles in
a single country and is managed above the national level. When considering
foreign direct investment, China again has the potential to have the largest
investment of any country, relatively, but not enough to be the only
consequential player in the system - however, its position would give it the ability
to indirectly influence economic trends and investor interests; the implications
are that it can indirectly affect economic growth and development more in the
developing world, and to a lesser extent in the developed world - all in the
context of its own maturing investor culture.
Finally, trade flows in the current system produce
imbalances that, left unchecked, threaten the overwhelm the entire structure;
China's role in a multilateral design, conversely, would be to lead the development
of the framework that will anticipate, limit and discipline states that produce
system-threatening imbalances, be they positive or negative; their existence today
suggests that current oversight procedures by the WTO are not adequate. As far as
hegemonic stability theory is concerned,
we have seen that historically, Britain and now, the United States, have each had
their moment in the sun as the trendsetters in global finance. However, today's
world is more interconnected, bigger and more interdependent than any point in
known history. It is too complex for a single actor to handle and no single
actor has the resources, nor the political, ideological or economic capacity to
govern a world as complicated as ours.
China will have the strongest relative position in this
century, but it will never be able to govern unilaterally. That is why, its potential
for global leadership must happen through multilateralism - for the sake of
both itself, and that of the world.
Georgi Ivanov is a graduate
student in political science at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. He was
among the organizers of the 2012 Model NATO Youth Summit. For more information
on the summit, click here.
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December 14, 2012
Lawrence Michael
Militarily, China has a lot to look at for including perhaps forging strategic alliances with the CIS states who shall remain outsiders to NATO in more senses than one, though Russia's internal challenges and compulsions (corruption being merely one of those) would remain as part of the factors that would have to be considered before China engages into any economic agreements in the strategic sense - despite the emergent Shanghai Co-operation. Any strategic economic agreement without factors inbuilt into it that ensure China's strategic security as mentioned in broad terms here would be a strategic mistake.
The biggest factor going in China's favour is its perception as a fast-modernizing secular state that respects International Laws (alongwith Russia though Russia emerges much weaker here since it's impressions remain of its abilities being hinged upon its leaderships and not a phenomena of the state - something where China emerges much stronger and stable in having its own institutional arrangement that ensures a stability of the state.). That is something the NATO states and the USA sadly have seriously eroded in their self-exfoliations that any analysis of geo-politics marks - in such ironical absences!