Contours of Conflict in the 21st Century

CHINESE LANGUAGE PERSPECTIVES: TRADITIONALIST AND MODERNFIGURE 18. CHINESE LANGUAGE PARAMETERS: SALIENCESalienceWhile the salience of conflict receives only minor attention in the Chineseforesight community, opinions are divided into those who believe thatconflict will be fairly frequent and those who believe that conflict willbe fairly infrequent. Digging deeper into the literature, however, the twoviews do not seem be complete opposites. Meng points out that futureconflicts ‘will have the characteristics of high frequency, unexpectedness,and uncertainty’, 37 and such conflicts are generally described as conflictsof low intensity and limited extensiveness. In the same article, the authoralso states that large-scale ‘world-wide conflicts will not take place in thefuture, whereas limited regional conflicts will be unavoidable and willtend to be quite complicated’. 38 This reflects a commonly held Chineseview about the salience of future conflicts: large-scale and high-intensityconflicts will be infrequent while small-scale regional conflicts can beexpected to be much more common.37 Meng, ‘Gāo jìshù tiáojiàn xià zhànzhēng yǔ hépíng de xīn tèdiǎn’ [Features of Future War andPeace in a High-Tech Environment].38 Ibid., 12.HCSS Report 55