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next century. How might Huang Hua, with his nature-of-the-age consideration of
strategy have regarded the matter? What does gatekeeping tell us?

The dominant view of future relations between Americans and Chinese generally
runs along a nervously familiar historical track: An established power (the US) and a
rising one (China) consider each other. Do they cooperate? Scratch at each other in
constant annoyance? Each nation possesses a different image the world. Each holds,
as well, distinct pictures of their role. One power has enjoyed a long period of
prosperity, has built and defended a global structure; the other, trod mercilessly
underfoot by history, feels the unbearable flow of power’s rising sap, a hunger for
recognition and release and for some, revenge; her economy craves resources, trade
routes, and markets. So Germany encountered and then attacked Great Britain at the
turn of the 20th Century. Japan collided, similarly, with Russia in 1904. France taking
on Austria, Russia and Great Britain in the Napoleonic age.

Even if the leaders of the United States and China intend to avoid conflict, they face
one of the most sobering, if not depressing, problems of international politics: The
“security dilemma”. The world is a dangerous place. So countries do things to feel
safer. Their populations demand it. Germany looks at Britain’s imperial navy in the
1890s: London could snap Berlin’s trade arteries. So the Kaiser orders two
battleships. Britain builds three in response. Germany turns to submarines. And so
on. Each country, chasing her own security, ends up less secure. This is the
“dilemma”. The puzzle is like one of those woven wicker finger traps: The harder
each side pulls to get out, the more stuck they become. America in 2012 pivots her
military gaze to Asia. China feels encircled. She orders a couple of aircraft carriers,
paves remote islands into military bases. America flies aircraft closer to Chinese
waters. Are the two sides more secure? Collisions, arms racing, accelerating distrust
become the threnody of contacts. Each side seeks something impossible: Perfect
security. Move first, certain forces begin to whisper in each capital.

The essence of this problem today, as the United States and China consider their
future, is not merely or even mainly in the details of trade, territory, or cyber
disputes we read about. These hot points are important, of course, but they are
symptoms of differing judgments of the world, of a fracture at that first step of
asking, “What is the nature of the age?” Americans generally believe the existing
global power map is just, sustainable, in need – perhaps – of minor adjustments.
America engineered this system; benefits tremendously from it’s fictionless
operation. China regards that same layout differently. As broken, unbalanced,
rocking towards a seizure – and, anyhow, built, lubricated and run without her
participation. This view is sharpened by ideology, national psychology and the bald
fact that no global mechanism ever functions perfectly. The larger nature of the age
is, many in Beijing feel, Da po, Da li. Great destruction. Great construction. Certainly
this is true inside China; it must be true outside. The nation has it’s hammers out.
They see the paradoxes of power we read about earlier, the inability to act and the
collapse of American credibility, as clearly as people in Washington or Damascus or
Moscow. Surely the global system should be adjusted, they think. Tap. Tap.

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