China and its ‘rise’

The NYT’s Joseph Kahn has an intriguing piece in today’s paper, about how China’s main national t.v. network has been airing what looks like an important new 12-part series, “describing the reasons nine nations rose to become great powers. The series was based on research by a team of elite Chinese historians, who also briefed the ruling Politburo about their findings.”
He considers this a step toward the country’s leaders starting to deal more openly– in front of their own citizens and for others around the world– with the fact and implications of its emergence to a new prominence in the global order. This, after the Chinese leaders have done a lot in recent years to stick to the stance laid down by the late Deng Xiaoping: “‘tao guang yang hui,’ literally to hide its ambitions and disguise its claws.”
Kahn notes that,

The series, which took three years to make, emanated from a Politburo study session in 2003. It is not a jingoistic call to arms. It mentions China only in passing, and it never explicitly addresses the reality that China has already become a big power.
Yet its version of history, which partly tracks the work done by Paul Kennedy in his 1980s bestseller, “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers,” differs markedly from that of the textbooks still in use in many schools.
Its stentorian narrator and epic soundtrack present the emergence of the nine countries, from Portugal in the 15th century to the United States in the 20th, and cites numerous achievements worthy of emulation: Spain had a risk-taking queen; Britain’s nimble navy secured vital commodities overseas; the United States regulated markets and fought for national unity.
The documentary also emphasizes historical themes that coincide with policies Chinese leaders promote at home. Social stability, industrial investment, peaceful foreign relations and national unity are presented as more vital than, say, military strength, political liberalization or the rule of law.
In the 90 minutes devoted to examining the rise of the United States, Lincoln is accorded a prominent part for his efforts to “preserve national unity” during the Civil War. China has made reunification with Taiwan a top national priority. Franklin D. Roosevelt wins praise for creating a bigger role for the government in managing the market economy but gets less attention for his wartime leadership.

Kahn says that the “intellectual father” of the series is Qian Chengdan, a professor at Beijing University who was guest of honor at a small dinner we went to when we visited Beijing in May 2004. (I guess he was working on it at the time.)
Kahn writes that,

Yan Xuetong, a foreign affairs specialist at Qinghua University in Beijing, argued in a scholarly journal this summer that China had already surpassed Japan, Russia, Britain, France, Germany and India in measures of its economic, military and political power. That leaves it second only to the United States, he said.
While the military gap between China and the United States may remain for some time, he argued, China’s faster economic growth and increasing political strength may whittle down America’s overall advantage.
“China will enjoy the status of a semi-superpower between the United States and the other major powers,” Mr. Yan predicted in the article, which appeared in the China Journal of International Politics.
He added, “China’s fast growth in political and economic power will dramatically narrow its power gap with the United States.”

And of course, so long as the US stays trapped in the quagmire of Iraq, the gap-narrowing will be accelerated.
This is all sort of history-on-steroids. Much, much better than any form of a unipolar world. But still, a situation where we all, citizens of the world, need to remain calm, flexible, and hold on to some very basic principles like the respect for human equality and the toleration of difference.