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for survival, for evolution. And it would best be done cooperatively with the nation
that will, in a short time, have the largest economy in the world.

China is not really a threat to the US now. The country can't assemble the ability to
demolish or attack America in any significant way, and it is years from being able to
sustain a military effort. It is not in China's interest to provoke a match. They would
lose. And honestly they have endless, troubling problems to handle, many new in
human history. How do you care for 800 million aging people? Though China will
pass the US in total national income in coming years, the country may never pass
America in per-capita income. With an aging, 1.4 billion person population the
challenges of distribution nearly guarantee this. Time acts against both the United
States and China today. Each depends on global arrangements that are themselves
cracking. Each nation needs to adjust her structures for a network world. But these
pressures operate severely against China. She can disrupt and challenge and slow
the transition to a gated order if she wishes, but only at the cost of fatal distraction.

An American Hard Gatekept system will thrive with or without China. China is not so
fortunate. Her system, without America or other elements of global connection,
cannot continue on the path of reform. Great network construction – this is the
nature of our age. There is no fighting the nature of the age, as Huang Hua would
remind us. We should of course expect China to build her own systems. We can also
expect that she will try to avoid some of the costs that joining an American system
might impose. That's all fine. Our aim should remain constant, calm and direct: Build
a gatekept system for our own use; enforce the rules we believe secure that system.
And remain clear in our thinking: The threat to the US is the evolution of the
network. The threat to China? The evolution of the network.

If an arrangement based on these undeniable facts seems unlikely, it is worth
remembering that in the twenty years before the restablishment of simple relations
between Beijing and Washington in 1971, the two sides had fought a war in Korea,
built a politics based on condemning one another, and drifted so far apart as to
share nearly no econoic connection. Bringing the countries together demanded
heroic diplomacy on both sides, to be sure. To read the transcript of Henry Kissinger
and Zhou Enlai's first, secret meeting on July 9, 1971 is to regard a masterclass in
careful chessboard moves255. But the game itself demanded a clear view of the
board, of shared interest in the face of a changing world. On his very first day in
office, Nixon compiled a list of his diplomatic aims: "Chinese Communists: Short
range – no change. Long range – we do not want 800,000,000 living in angry
isolation. We want contact."256 The Seventh Sense returns us to this fundamental
question of balance, but in a new frame. It alters how we look at the range of options
for US-China relations – and American security itself. There are certain problems
both sides face, perhaps the most essential, that are simply not addressable using

255 To read the transcript: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976,
Volume XVII, doc 139
256 Nixon complied a list: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume
XVII, doc 3, footnote 3

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