Stiglitz: ‘Pivot away from containment’
(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 12-10-2014 WED)
Not a month passes by that no earthshaking developments arise from the East. Just this week, in an article for Vanity Fair slated for January 2015, entitled “The Chinese Century,” renowned former top US International Monetary Fund economist Joseph E. Stiglitz wrote, “When the history of 2014 is written, it will take note of a large fact that has received little attention: 2014 was the last year in which the United States could claim to be the world’s largest economic power. China enters 2015 in the top position, where it will likely remain for a very long time, if not forever. In doing so, it returns to the position it held through most of human history.”
The 2,681-word article goes through the millennia of shifts of economic power from one society to another and describes the painful, often bloody, struggles accompanying the changes; but it concludes this way: “We (the US) should take this moment, as China becomes the world’s largest economy, to ‘pivot’ our foreign policy away from containment. The economic interests of China and the US are intricately intertwined… We will have to cooperate,... the most important thing America can do to maintain the value of its soft power is to address its own systemic deficiencies--economic and political practices that are… to put the matter baldly… skewed toward the rich and powerful. A new global political and economic order is emerging … if we respond... in the wrong way, we risk a backlash that will result in either a dysfunctional global system or a global order that is distinctly not what we would have wanted.”
Filipinos who love America, sometimes even more than they could love their own country, should ponder on Stiglitz’s advice. Stiglitz is saying that the US needs to save itself first, as we ourselves see with the crises of economics and finance, race and its military-industrial complex’s runaway global war monkey business. Filipinos who love America can help save America by echoing to their friends there to heed Stiglitz and allow our World a century of respite from global tension and war.
Across the globe, in China, the president of the largest economy in the World today spoke to his nation’s “central foreign affairs” body on precisely that principle.
Xinhuanet reported that at the Central Conference on Work Relating to Foreign Affairs, Xi Jinping “stressed the importance of ‘holding high the banner of peace, development and win-win cooperation, pursuing China’s overall domestic and international interests and its development and security priorities in a balanced way, focusing on the overriding goal of peaceful development and national renewal, upholding China’s sovereignty, security and development interests, fostering a more enabling international environment for peaceful development and maintaining and sustaining the important period of strategic opportunity for China’s development.’”
China’s “two centenary goals” to be achieved by 2049, the hundredth year of the 1949 Chinese Revolution are: doubling the 2010 GDP and per capita income and finishing the building of a society of initial prosperity in all respects, and the Chinese dream of the great renewal of the Chinese nation.
In his speech Xi said, “Among many other things we should also realize that the general trend of prosperity and stability in the Asia-Pacific region will not change … We should continue to follow the independent foreign policy of peace … While we pursue peaceful development, we will never relinquish our legitimate rights and interests, or allow China’s core interests to be undermined. We should uphold… the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence ... We should continue to follow the win-win strategy of opening-up and a win-win approach in every aspect of our external relations such as political, economic, security and cultural fields … We should increase China’s soft power, give a good Chinese narrative, and better communicate China’s message to the world…”
China’s Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence are: Mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty; Mutual non-aggression; Mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs; Equality and cooperation for mutual benefit; and Peaceful co-existence. Upholding the first principle’s underlying basis can be used to overcome disputes concerning it, and there are many efforts toward this. On Dec. 13, Saturday, the Ateneo Ricardo Leong Center for Chinese Studies is holding a round table discussion with historian and US-China expert Dr. John Delury on “Expressing Joint Responsibility between Philippines and China for Maintaining Stability in the Region.”
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