The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order by Samuel P. Huntington Page B

Japan and other Asian societies and enabled the latter to resist American pressure. The rise of China posed a more fundamental challenge to the United States. U.S. conflicts with China covered a much broader range of issues than those with Japan, including economic questions, human rights, Tibet, Taiwan, the South China Sea, and weapons proliferation. On almost no major policy issue did the United States and China share common objectives. The differences go across the board. As with Japan, these conflicts were in large part rooted in the different cultures of the two societies. The conflicts between the United States and China, however, also involved fundamental issues of power. China is unwilling to accept American leadership or hegemony in the world; the United States is unwilling to accept Chinese leadership or hegemony in Asia. For over two hundred years the United States has attempted to prevent the emergence of an overwhelmingly dominant power in Europe. For almost a hundred years, p. 229 beginning with its “Open Door” policy toward China, it has attempted to do the same in East Asia. To achieve these goals it has fought two world wars and a cold war against Imperial Germany, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, the Soviet Union, and Communist China. This American interest remains and was reaffirmed by Presidents Reagan and Bush. The emergence of China as the dominant regional power in East Asia, if it continues, challenges that central American interest. The underlying cause of conflict between America and China is their basic difference over what should be the future balance of power in East Asia.
Chinese Hegemony: Balancing and Bandwagoning
    With six civilizations, eighteen countries, rapidly growing economies, and major political, economic and social differences among its societies, East Asia could develop any one of several patterns of international relations in the early twenty-first century. Conceivably an extremely complex set of cooperative and conflictual relations could emerge involving most of the major and middle-level powers of the region. Or a major power, multipolar international system could take shape with China, Japan, the United States, Russia, and possibly India balancing and competing with each other. Alternatively, East Asian politics could be dominated by a sustained bipolar rivalry between China and Japan or between China and the United States, with other countries aligning themselves with one side or the other or opting for nonalignment. Or conceivably East Asian politics could return to its traditional unipolar pattern with a hierarchy of power centered on Beijing. If China sustains its high levels of economic growth into the twenty-first century, maintains its unity in the post-Deng era, and is not hamstrung by succession struggles, it is likely to attempt to realize the last of these outcomes. Whether it succeeds depends upon the reactions of the other players in the East Asian power politics game.
    China’s history, culture, traditions, size, economic dynamism, and self-image all impel it to assume a hegemonic position in East Asia. This goal is a natural result of its rapid economic development. Every other major power, Britain and France, Germany and Japan, the United States and the Soviet Union, has engaged in outward expansion, assertion, and imperialism coincidental with or immediately following the years in which it went through rapid industrialization and economic growth. No reason exists to think that the acquisition of economic and military power will not have comparable effects in China. For two thousand years China was the preeminent power in East Asia. Chinese now increasingly assert their intention to resume that historic role and to bring to an end the overlong century of humiliation and subordination to the West and Japan that began with British imposition of the Treaty of Nanking in 1842.
    In the late 1980s China began converting its growing economic resources into military