The United States and China in Power Transition - Strategic Studies ...

cieties, penetrating into economics, politics, culture,
and many other areas, generating profound changes
in these areas. China pays a heavy price for its leaders’
refusal to heed these valuable observations.
THE CHINA THREAT
In addition to making its modernization drive
cumbersome, China’s uneasy transition to modernity
has external consequences as well. The biggest
problem is perhaps the perpetuation of China as an
outsider to the U.S./West-led international system.
Although China’s economy and many other aspects of
the nation have been gradually integrated with those
of the outside world, its way of government is still out
of place with the prevailing democratic institutions in
this international system. This outsider problem keeps
China in the dissatisfied group of the international system
(in the shaded area of Figure 2-1), largely because
Chinese leaders do not share their core political values
with their counterparts in the world’s leading states.
Thus when China started its upward development, it
automatically became a threat to the U.S./West-led
international system.
The United States has been watching closely and
with great concern about the changes in China. Interestingly,
the United States was instrumental in
bringing about China’s initial changes. Forty years
ago (with President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to
China in 1972), the United States brought China out
of its self-imposed isolation, and in subsequent years
helped with China’s economic development (by way
of substantial American business investment in China
and providing Chinese business the critical access to
the U.S. and worldwide markets along the way). The
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