Chinese-U.S. Relations Take Center Stage: Some Experts Fear Imperial Goals in Future

Sieff, Martin, The Washington Times (Washington, DC)

Western political analysts are virtually unanimously agreed that China is the fastest-rising potential superpower for the 21st century, but they continue to fiercely debate what this will mean for the United States and the West.

Some analysts, such as Paul Wolfowitz, dean of the Paul Nitze School of International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, believe that China may present the same kind of aggressive challenge to the Western democracies in 20 or 30 years as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union did this century.

Speaking last month at the second annual congress of the New Atlantic Initiative (NAI) in Phoenix, Mr. Wolfowitz, who was undersecretary of defense in the Bush administration, warned that China, as an emerging, heavily industrialized superpower of 1.2 billion people, could present the same destabilizing challenge to the existing international system as imperial - and later Nazi - Germany did in the first half of the 20th century.

No regional power in Asia has the strength to counterbalance the emerging strength of China on its own, Mr. Wolfowitz said.

Speaking this week to reporters and editors at The Washington Times, Mr. Wolfowitz said he believed the current strategic cooperation between Russia and China was motivated by …

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Publication information: Article title: Chinese-U.S. Relations Take Center Stage: Some Experts Fear Imperial Goals in Future. Contributors: Sieff, Martin - Author. Newspaper title: The Washington Times (Washington, DC). Publication date: June 13, 1997. Page number: 19. © 2009 The Washington Times LLC. COPYRIGHT 1997 Gale Group.

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