The world is experiencing complicated and profound changes of historical significance. How to regard and define this situation of immense change remains a question for the international community. Does it signify the formation of a new international strategic structure and world order? The author of this essay believes that there are two indicators for judging the shift in the international strategic structure, namely whether there are fundamental changes taking place in the balance of power between the major international actors, and the regulations that maintain the running of the international order. From these two perspectives, we can see that there are not any fundamental changes to the“one superpower with multiple powers”structure shaped after the end of the Cold War. On the one hand, there is not any single major power or any bloc of nations that could be a match for the U.S. in terms of comprehensive strength; on the other, there is not a new set of international mechanisms or rules that could replace the international regulations dominated by the United States.
However, it is undeniable that since the global financial crisis, the U.S.’s position in the global power structure has declined. Many U.S.-dominated international political and economic regulations have been questioned orhave faced challenges, revealing that the international strategic configuration of“one superpower with multiple powers”has indeed begun to slacken. However, we definitely believe that the shaping of the new international strategic configuration and international order will be slow and gradual. It cannot be formulated in treaty systems such as the Versailles-Washington system or the Yalta system, which were formulated as part of post-war treaty systems after the tragic world wars. The course of formulating the strategic competition between various great global powers will be extremely fierce and will be conducted across many fields, coupled with new sci-tech and industrial revolutions.
In the field of economics, the U.S.-led Western nations are actively racing to take a commanding role in the new round of energy and industrial revolutions, so as to preserve their advantageous positions in the international industrial division. While reducing U.S. dependence on imported energies, the“shale gas revolution”in the United States also lessens its cost in the manufacturing industry, thus creating profound change in the international energy market. Many American companies are transferring their manufacturing bases back to the United States. In the future, this trend will accelerate. This is partly due to the rise in labor costs or the domestic currencies of the new emerging countries such as China, and partly due to the technological progress made in robot technologies, artificial intelligence technologies, 3D printing technologies, and nanotechnologies in developed countries. These new technologies enable these countries to obtain new sources of growth in the manufacturing industry. Although it may seem that their“quantitative advantages”are lessening, the“qualitative advantages”remain extremely powerful in the world economy. While maintaining the technological advantage, the developed countries are also trying to reshape the world economic management system so as to maintain their“institutional hegemony”. Currently, the U.S. is attempting to reshape new regulations in regional and international trade and investment in order to regain its dominant role in the world economy through the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Agreement (TTIP). This is causing many developing countries and emerging economies who are not involved in the negotiation process to face the risk of“entering the WTO for the second time”. Although many emerging economies have an increasing role to play in the World Bank, the IMF and the G20, they still face many difficulties in adjusting their economic structure, transforming their mode of development, upgrading their innovation abilities and expanding their say in world economic decision-making processes.
In the military and security fields, the United States and its allies have strengthened their advantageous position in three ways. Technologically, as the owner of the world biggest nuclear arsenal that is undergoing constant upgrade, the United States has sped up its anti-missile system in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region with the excuse of“nuclear threat”from Iran and North Korea. To a great extent this shatters the strategic balance in Europe, the Asia-Pacific and the world as a whole. The U.S. often accuses other countries of launching cyber wars. However, it is the U.S. that has established a“cyber army”and used cyber war in actual attack. The Shockwave and Flame viruses that attacked Iranian nuclear power plants are the first signs of the cyber war launched by the U.S.. Strategically, the decade-long Iraq and Afghan wars brought an abyss of misery and dire poverty to the people of those countries instead of the security, stability and development promised. Under these circumstances, the United States is accelerating its pace of“strategic rebalance”and has reinforced its military deployment in the Asia-Pacific, the region with the fastest economic growth rate. Institutionally, NATO did not disintegrate with the end of the Cold War. Rather, it has played a more significant role. More than once it has interfered with the internal affairs of other countries and it has even overthrown the legitimate governments of other countries in the name of“humanitarian intervention”. As the U.S. strengthens its policy of “strategic rebalance”, it is also reshaping and strengthening its ally system in the Asia-Pacific. There is a big gap between the U.S. act of consolidating its own “absolute security” and China’s new security concept of “comprehensive security”, “common security”, and “cooperative security”. In the future, the competition between these two security concepts and their related policies will influence the prospects for Asia-Pacific security.
In terms of development models, the global financial crisis demonstrates that the neoliberalism featured by the “Washington Consensus” is no longer effective. Since the 1990s, the Washington Consensus has run rampant, characterized by a free market, a floating exchange rate, and free elections. Neoliberalist policies marked by the re-allocation of public expenditure, a reduction in taxes of the high income groups, market deregulation, the liberalization of international trade, the lifting of restrictions on foreign investment, and the privatization of state-owned enterprises and public service industries, have become the most effective tool for transferring the income of the majority of the world’s population and the wealth of poor countries into the pockets of the upper classes and the most wealthy nations. Currently, 90% of global wealth is concentrated in the pockets of 16% of the world population, 60% of which is concentrated in Europe and the United States. Neoliberalist policies have enabled the ruling elites in Europe, the U.S. and Japan to restore power. At the same time, these policies have caused the marginalized economies to be exploited by the core economies at their free will, resulting in global poverty and a polarization between rich and poor. As China’s economy develops rapidly, the Beijing Consensus, characterized by state macro-control, gradual development, opening up to the outside world, and flexibility, has attracted increasing attention among the international community. The 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party proposed the strategic goals for China’s development by the mid-21st century. The Chinese leadership is also aware of the various challenges that China faces in its development. It is true that“every family has its own troubles”, especially as the world enters a period full of historic change. No matter whether a nation is developed or developing, the key to maintaining invincibility in the big power competitions is the ability to recognize one’s own problems, and to make corresponding institutional adjustments, with a view to revealing one’s innovation abilities and flexibility in economic and social management.
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