Yet More China

Another long-saved but unused link, this time Fareed Zakaria's recent Newsweek article about the rise of China. One extremely telling paragraph:

In November 2004, President George W. Bush and China's President Hu Jintao traveled through Asia. I was in the region a few weeks afterward and was struck by how almost everyone I spoke with rated Hu's visits as far more successful than Bush's. Karim Raslan, a Malaysian writer, explained: "Bush talked obsessively about terror. He sees all of us through that one prism. Yes, we worry about terror, but frankly that's not the sum of our lives. We have many other problems. We're retooling our economies, we're wondering how to deal with the rise of China, we're trying to address health, social and environmental problems. Hu talked about all this; he talked about our agenda, not just his agenda." From Indonesia to Brazil, China is winning new friends.

I think, in the future, this will be seen as the biggest failure of George W. Bush's presidency - the failure to use American diplomacy and "soft power" to effectively manage the rise of China. Rather than see China as an ally and friend, Bush insists on drawing lines through the world, and placing people on one side or the other. Well, that only works if people want to be on your side. If China looks more appealing (as it increasingly does throughout the developing world), your approach is self-defeating in the end.

I'm not Zakaria's biggest fan, but this article is pretty good. Go read it.