Summary : The foundation of the chinese strategic culture by J.C. Ramo

28 novembre, 2012 | Commentaires fermés sur Summary : The foundation of the chinese strategic culture by J.C. Ramo

After the 18th Congress of the Chinese communist part, I provide a summary of the Joshua Cooper Ramo articles : The Beijing Consensus: Notes on the new physics of Chinese power, The foreign policy centre, may 2004, url: http://fpc.org.uk/fsblob/244.pdf. It is a key analysis of the strategic culture of the « other » international system key actor.

 Joshua C. Ramo is an economist, he approaches the chinese power and its dynamic from a realist point of view. With the new political direction of the Communist party it is may be time to remind few basics about the physics of Chinese powers.

 J. Ramo main observation about China is not simply that it is already reshaping the distribution of international power. It is about the change of power politics rules it introduces. From a realist point of view, if you want to understand how the international system worked, you should be concern by the strategic trajectory of its poles. But, there is a major hindrance; no one knows where China will look like in a decade.

 Following this approach, J. Ramo drew the consequences of the emergence of a new pole whose power is more asymmetric than traditional. He also noted that this situation is in part structural due to the size of the Chinese territory, population and more recently: wealth.

The emergence of this great power within the international system is decreasing the American opportunities to conduct a global foreign policy to sustain its national interest in major field of international politics: military, diplomacy, production and finance.

These fields are not challenge on a quantitative basis, the Chinese marine is still building its projection capacities through its first aircraft carrier in comparison with the eleven one of the American Navy all over the oceans. The Chinese power lever is comprehensive and it is a rival to the American soft power.

 It paves the way for other countries in search of a paradigm to develop their economic power without losing their sovereignty in front of a global hegemon. This model is labeled “The Beijing Consensus”, it rests on the will to maintain peaceful relationships and increase the wealth of populations without massively introducing market mechanism, privatization and liberal democracy principles. The result is astonishing; following the World Bank, China has lifted 300 millions people out of poverty since 1979.

 The first feature of the Beijing Consensus is its incremental development view. The shock therapy is not an option. But, as highlight J. Ramo, it doesn’t mean that you can follow Chinese development direction. On the contrary, you can not take a positional picture of Chinese development. As soon as you get the situation, due to a political decision, the central government announced another decision which limits what you had inferred. There is no “ceteris paribus” in China, everything is moving and you can not get the position and the speed of the government.

 The Beijing Consensus is described by three theorems about development:

1/ Innovation is the most important lever, it solves problem before it happens, it avoid social friction by connecting people together, it reinforce government legitimacy, it helps to cure the reform problem before it becomes unmanageable due to its exponential social effect when it diffuses.

2/ Sustainability and equality are the most important criteria to evaluate a political decision; it is the basis to evaluate experimentation, its success or failure. The consequence is that the government is the final arbiter of what should be continued.

3/ Impredictability is the key word of policy action, even through the five years plan.

 This Beijing Consensus paradigm is a key concept to understand the Chinese cultural strategy and the major challenge for international relations theories that China emergence is represented. It should be read again and again in order to avoid major misunderstanding of the second great power of the international system.

 This is the most surprising property of the Beijing Consensus. But it is very coherent with the place of technology within this cultural strategy. Indeed, a technological breakthrough is by essence indetermined in the futur; it is best represented by an “S” curve which induces a veil of ignorance above the decision maker.

The most striking revealation of J. Ramo analysis is that the Chinese strategic culture is centered of what makes the philosophical basis of the market economy: the share of technological progress by the largest number of people. But the Chinese answer is at the opposite of the political solution that western countries built during the last two centuries: liberal democracy. It is a major ontological difference between the two great powers: the United States and China, of the international system. The new president Xi Jinping is now leading the upgrade of the Beijing Consensus, unless newly re elected president Obama chose a new strategic trajectory.

Joshua C. Ramo – The Foreign Policy Centre : http://fpc.org.uk/publications/TheBeijingConsensus