China Leaps Forward In "Game Of Empire"

by Franz Schurmann

(PNS) -- In the "Game of Empire," the Chinese recently have taken a big leap over the USA. Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao succeeded in bringing together India and Pakistan, a feat no American president has achieved since the imperial British divided India into two sovereign states in 1947.

The Chinese have done so without aircraft carriers, other WMD or Pentagons. Former Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji two years ago visited India and especially Bangalore, the "Silicon Valley" of India. He kept on repeating to the Indians: "You have the software and we have the hardware. Let's work together." But the Indians were suspicious because of the 1962 war with China. And they wondered why the Americans and the Chinese kept such pride in their alliance with Pakistan, given the widespread Muslim fundamentalism there.

But Zhu Rongji launched a strategy that went way beyond information technology. He based his strategy on energy, which is in short supply all over the world. Whatever Indians, Pakistanis and Chinese thought of each other, they were more appalled by what the Americans were doing to secure their access to oil and feed their habit of consuming a quarter of all global fossil fuels.

The Zhu-Wen team has generated hits. China is lifting oil and natural gas in many parts of the world, especially in the Sudan. The Chinese are also buying sophisticated weaponry, mostly from the Russians. The Russian Chief of General Staff Yury Baleuyevsky has gone home, satisfied that this fall the Sino-Russian military maneuvers will take place, most likely in Shandong, facing Japan.

As to America's future, an item in the April 11 financial section of the Chinese-language Sing-Tao Daily is instructive: "In 2030 a barrel of crude oil will cost close to $100.00" The headline was based on the research results of a top IMF economist. 2030 is a long way off, and China is now, bit by bit, displacing the global empire that the USA became in May 1945.

But past history can teach us, too. In the 19th century the biggest Game of Empire was between Imperial Britain and Imperial Russia. The Game took place in Central Asia, which many conquerors from Alexander the Great to modern times believed was the "cradle of empires." But in the first 14 years of the new 20th century, both became badly weakened, not by their imperial opponents of the previous century, but new powers, often allies and friends.

Britain and the new Germany (born in 1871) shared the same royal family. But in those 14 years the German Kaiser William rapidly built a navy that challenged the greatest navy in the world, that of the British. Yet, World War I turned out to be a bloodbath of young Germans, Russians, British and French. In effect, it was a gigantic European civil war.

WWII was a continuation of the European civil war of WWI, but the war in East Asia was about empire. A small Japan wanted to conquer an empire, a huge China, just the way a small England conquered a huge India.

In the first half of the 20th century, the British built an awesome navy. But shortly after the Pacific War began, Japanese air power destroyed it. Then the Americans built an even more awesome navy that could dominate the world. In 1947, President Truman began the process of dismantling bit by bit the British Empire and started to build the American Empire.

Is it now America's turn to see its own empire dismantled? The Chinese, harking back to their two millennia as an empire, have already decided that war power is an ineffectual tool for creating a world order. They and the Japanese will likely prop up the sick dollar in contrast to the Europeans, who profit from Uncle Sam's illness.

Whosoever among the Great Powers, lasting into the end of this century, can secure access to oil and natural gas to all nations will be recognized as an empire. Since China has shown that it prefers diplomacy to bombs, it already is an empire. But Chinese empires have also limited their territory. That suggests, some time in the second Bush term, George W. Bush will come out of the closet and show that he has been talking with Chinese President Hu Jintao for a long time. After all, President Richard Nixon sent his conduit Henry Kissinger on many trips there.

In the end, two empires are better than one.