This year marks the 10th anniversary of President Xi Jinping\u2019s launch of China\u2019s flagship, One Belt One Road (OBOR), later referred to as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Echoing the historic Silk Road, the ancient trade network of Eurasia that connected the East and West, BRI is the most ambitious and expensive infrastructure plan in world history. Writing about BRI\u2019s future, the British Economist once worried that \u201cAll roads lead to Beijing.\u201d<\/p>\n
In September 2013, on a visit to Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan, President Xi advocated the establishment of a \u201cSilk Road Economic Belt.\u201d A month later, addressing the Indonesian parliament, he proposed a \u201cMaritime Silk Road of the 20th Century. The trans-continental corridor links China with Southeast Asia, South Asia, Russia and Europe by land. The new sea trade route connects Chinese coast regions with southeast and south Asia, the South Pacific, the Middle East and Eastern Africa, all the way to Europe.<\/p>\n
BRI was later extended to include Latin America and initiatives to Polar regions through the \u201cSilk Road on Ice\u201d in the Arctic, a Digital Silk Road and another to outer space via the Space Information Corridor. Lastly, special mention should be made of The Green Silk Road, the scope of which includes reducing climate emissions, reducing pollution and protecting biodiversity. This is part of China\u2019s prioritizing sustainable development under the United Nations\u2019 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In sum, the BRI seeks to promote economic globalization, multipolarity, poverty reduction, livelihood improvement, cultural diversification and environmental protection.<\/p>\n
The BRI is China\u2019s signature foreign policy effort, in Xi\u2019s words, to help achieve a \u201ccommunity of common destiny\u201d which encompasses a \u201ccommonality of shared interests\u201d as it \u201ccomplements other economies\u201d on the way to providing \u201cone home for man.\u201d Tang Qifang, a scholar at the China Institute of International Studies, describes BRI as \u201cThe concept of a community of common destiny transcending all sorts of differences in human society and targets the greatest possible benefits for all.\u201d This embodies, \u201cThe Chinese aspiration to share power and development with the world.\u201d (When Noam Chomsky was asked what he thought about the China-proposed \u201chuman community with a shared future, he replied \u201cThat\u2019s exactly what we need.\u201d)<\/p>\n
And, Xi has repeatedly stressed that the nation\u2019s destiny is \u201cinterwoven with that of another dialogue rather than confrontation, partnerships instead of alliances should be the pursuit of all nations in a win-win project.\u201d [1] In keeping with this sentiment, China will transfer its competitive productive capacity as its industries possess a competitive edge. <\/p>\n
In a 2018 speech Xi said,<\/p>\n
\nTo respond to the call of the times, China is ready to jointly promote the Belt and Road Initiative with partners. We hope to create new drivers to power common development through this new platform of international cooperation; and we hope to turn it into a road of peace, prosperity, openness, green development and innovation. And a road brings together different civilizations.\u201d [2] <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
On numerous occasions, Xi has stressed that \u201cWe Chinese love peace. No matter how strong it may become China will never seek hegemony or expansion. It will never inflict its past suffering on any nation.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not lost on the peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America that when colonizers built infrastructure it facilitated outward-bound routes whereas the Chinese infrastructure serves internal connections within the continent. W. Gyude Moore, former Minister for Public Works in Liberia, didn\u2019t mince words when he said, \u201cChina has built more infrastructure in Africa than the West did in centuries.\u201d [3]<\/p>\n
As of January 2023, 152 countries and 32 international organizations had signed a Memorandum of \u00a0Understanding (MOU) \u00a0and this includes 75% of the world\u2019s population and half of the world GDP. Some economic forecasts predict that by 2027, BRI\u2019s worldwide projects will number 2,600 valued at $3.7 trillion.<\/p>\n
\u00a0The banishment of selfishness from foreign policy. What a concept. Brotherhood in action.<\/b><\/p>\n
Further, data show that the cumulative value of trade in goods between China and countries along the BRI routes reached nearly $11 trillion between 2013 and 2021, with a two-way investment reaching more than $230 billion.<\/p>\n
According to a 2022 World Bank forecast, if only the BRI transportation infrastructure projects are eventually carried out, by 2030, the BRI will generate $1.6 trillion in revenues for the globe or 1.3 percent of global GDP. And up to 90 percent of the revenues will go the partnering countries. [4]<\/p>\n
Thousands of projects (3,000 in Africa, alone), initially focused on roads. ports, railways, pipelines, power stations. More recently, there are cross-border fiber optic cables, space networks, schools, hospitals, solar panels, health care and financial services. Projects range from the Sudanese Railways Authority receiving a first installment of 21 locomotives which will significantly improve rail capacity, and 620 Lifan taxi cars in Montevideo, Uruguay to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. At a cost of $95.5 billion, it involves a port, highways, airport, fiber optic cables, railways and power plants.\u00a0 Many of the latter are running on solar, hydro and wind power.<\/p>\n
\u00a0In June, 2023, Egypt and China announced a BRI investment deal worth more than $8 billion for the Suez Canal Zone which will allow Chinese companies access to African and European markets, while taking advantage of the canal\u2019s strategic position. Another notable project, the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail in Indonesia at at cost between $6-8 billion encountered logistical problems after being scheduled to begin service in July, 2023. The Chinese would be the first to acknowledge that BRI is not a miracle worker, success is not invariably guaranteed and although it originated in China, BRI belongs to all the members.<\/p>\n
Recent BRI projects in Latin America include the $1.52 billion Fourth Bridge over the Panama Canal and the $5 billion Bogota metro line 1 in Colombia. In early June, 2023(, in official visits to Beijing, Honduran President Xiomara Castro expressed interest in joining BRI and signed 17 trade agreements with China and Argentina agreed to projects involving infrastructure, energy, economy and trade. Other projects are underway in Chile, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago. At the end of 2021, Chinese investments in Latin America exceeded $450 billion.\u00a0 It should be noted that the U.S. has expressed its pique over BRI projects, especially in Panama, and has warned Latin America about Chinese BRI deals that were \u201ctoo good to be true.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clearly, Latin America will not be amenable if China exhibits neo-imperial behavior and begins contradicting Xi\u2019s pledge of \u201cproviding harmony, security and prosperity to both China and its neighbors\u201d and seeks to impose its influence. Seemingly recognizing this, China\u2019s Foreign Minister Wang Yi has taken pains to emphasize that BRI \u201cshould not be viewed \u201cthrough the outdated Cold War mentality.\u201d [5]<\/p>\n
Addressing and expanding this concern, Peng Guangquin, a retired major general and advisor to the Chinese National Security Commission, writes that: \u00a0\u201cBRI does not limit the nature of a given country\u2019s \u00a0political system, is not underline by ideology, does not create tiny circles of friends, does not set up trade protectionism, does not set up economic blockade, does not exercise control of other countries\u2019 economic lifelines or change other countries\u2019 political systems. [6]<\/p>\n
Finally, more than 700 million of the globe\u2019s extremely poor people live along the BRI\u2019s and addressing the wealth disparity of the international order imposed on the Global South is a BRI priority. China, with a population of 1.4 billion, is now free of extreme poverty after it was eradicated for 850 million people. Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang has said that the Belt and Road initiative had accomplished this for 40 million people. This number accords with a World Bank study from four years ago that concluded BRI could lift 32 million out of moderate poverty and 7.6 out of extreme poverty.<\/p>\n
Will BRI flounder and fizzle out? Back in 2017, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres praised BRI\u2019s \u201cimmense potential,\u201d lauded it for having \u201csustainable development as the overarching objective\u201d and pledged the \u201cUnited Nations system stands ready to travel this road with you.\u201d [7] In 2022, China\u2019s engagement through financial investment and contractural cooperation in 147 countries was USD 67-8 billion on over 200 deals. This was about the same as in 2021 and for 2023, and more BRI engagement is expected because strict COVID restrictions were lifted.<\/p>\n
We do know, from a report issued by Ernst & Young that Chinese trade with BRI countries in Q1 of this year was U.S. $31.66 billion, an increase of 9.2%. It should be mentioned that there is no budget line for BRI in the Chinese government\u2019s budget, rather, it remains a platform for launching a multitude of projects from vision to reality. In the future, we should expect less bilateral arrangements and more emphasis on bringing other countries into a quasi-governance structure, something on the order of BRI steering committee. And also more collaboration with the UN acting as an umbrella-type body. [8]<\/p>\n
In 2017, the BRI was written into the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s Constitution as an indicator of its importance. Australian Professor Jane Colley, who has studied BRI from its inception, believes \u201cThey are absolutely still advancing it\u201d and as far as outside pressure, she adds that, \u201cAny idea of containing them or forcing countries to pick a side \u2014 it\u2019s a very risky game to play.\u201d [9] And after a comprehensive look at BRI, the mainstream publication Euromone<\/em>y, concedes that,\u201cThe BRI is neither dead nor dying but is quietly mutating into something much larger and \u2014 whisper it \u2014 perhaps better.\u201d [10]<\/p>\n
Will the BRI prove to be a platform that offers an alternative to the capitalist world order?\u00a0 The most comprehensive and objective \u00a0attempt at predicting what BRI will resemble in 2035 contains various scenarios. The most optimistic, the \u201cinternational BRI,\u201d assumes the world will have entered a new phase of globalization. This world will be less Chinese, although the renminbi RMB) will be widely accepted as a reserve currency.<\/p>\n
This BRI will incorporate \u201cChinese values\u201d but this stage will be neither Western nor Chinese nor will it lead to China as the new hegemonal state. There will be increased cooperation, the option China committed to at the 75th UN General Assembly. [11] In short, it will be a \u201cthoroughly hybrid paradigm of global cooperation. [12] One factor, that might tend to mitigate that optimistic rendering is that the amount of finance available to for BRI projects might be constrained by the need to focus on domestic economic priorities.<\/p>\n
U.S Opposition to BRI<\/strong><\/p>\n
In 2011, two years before President Xi unveiled BRI, Yan Xuetang penned an opinion piece in the New York Times<\/em>, titled \u201cHow China Can Defeat America.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yan, one of China\u2019s foremost international relations scholars and Dean of the Institute of International Relations at Tsinghua University in Beijing, offered his explanation for China\u2019s eventual rise and the slow decline of the United States. By interrogating the particulars of national leadership in China\u2019s past, Yan concluded that morality might well play a key role in competition between the two great powers.<\/p>\n
Yan identifies \u00a0himself as a political realist, a school which assumes international international politics is a zero-sum game. But unlike most scholars in this field, Yen argued that \u201cmorally informed authority\u201dcan play a key role in shaping international competition between the China and the United States. This \u201chumane authority,\u201d creates a desirable model at home that inspires people abroad\u201d and in the international competition between the two great powers, this will win hearts and minds and \u201cseparate the winners from the losers.\u201d [13] One gets the sense that Yan is implicitly implying that the U.S. will fail in this competition but he\u2019s also challenging his own government to take advantage of this opportunity.<\/p>\n
Eight years later, in his 2019 groundbreaking book \u201cLeadership and the Rise of Great Powers,\u201d Yan wrote that \u201cmoral actions help [a rising power] to establish credibility.\u201d Yan never abjures the existence of power hierarchies and that anarchy prevails in relations among nations. However, morally informed leadership can determine the outcome of the competition \u2014 without resorting to military confrontation. This moral realism \u201cwith Chinese characteristics\u201d can be described as a form of enlightened self-interest.<\/p>\n
This \u201cmorally informed leadership\u2026 the side that wins the most international support will win the competition.\u201d This should be a prime consideration in conducting foreign policy gains and \u201cenables its leadership to become favorable to the majority of UN members.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the BRI was first announced by China in 2013, it did not immediately set off alarm bells in Washington. But later, a study done for the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, an organization which sets the American empire\u2019s imperial agenda, warned that \u201cThe BRI is here to stay and poses significant risks to U.S. economic and political interests and to longer term security implications.\u201d [14]<\/p>\n
After the BRI had been in existence for seven years, it was characterized as China\u2019s \u201cmeans of weaponizing globalization to create commercial and political order centered around dependence on China.\u201d [15] \u00a0Both of these succinct summations reveal that the U.S. view of the BRI cannot be divorced from how U.S. oligarchs and the military industrial complex perceive China more generally and here we return to the aforementioned realist school of international relations.<\/p>\n
American political scientist Hans Morgenthau\u2019s book Politics Among Nations<\/em>, first published in 1948, became the centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy for at least four decades. It\u2019s fair to say that Morgenthau was the father of the realist school and his book was adopted as the primary text in colleges and universities across the country. My undergraduate political science professor had been one of Morgenthau\u2019s graduate students at the University of Chicago and my copy of Politics Among Nations was heavily underlined in preparation for class discussion and exams.<\/p>\n
In brief, the political realist assumes that all people are by \u201cnature\u201d greedy, aggressive and fiercely competitive. Morgenthau counseled that \u201cPolitics is governed by objective laws that have their roots in human nature.\u201d [16] Further, \u201cThe struggle for power is universal in time and space and is an unavoidable fact of experience.\u201d As such, the realist concludes that states, the actors on the international stage, must focus on power. No universal morality exists and power politics is amoral.<\/p>\n
At the time his book was published, the outcome of the Chinese Revolution was still a year away but in an essay written in the 1960s, Morgenthau predicted that \u201cChina may well in the long run carry the gravest implications for the rest of the world.\u201d Given this likelihood, he advised that U.S. strategy should be to establish an island chain running from Japan down to the Philippines so that one power could not attain a hegemonic position in Asia. [17] It should noted that prudence was a key concept in Morgenthau\u2019s theory and the wise leader should be extremely careful in determining the national interest. It was on that basis that he was an early and active opponent of the Vietnam War. Whether Morgenthau would find common cause with those willing to go war over Taiwan remains an open question.<\/p>\n
John Mearsheimer, University of Chicago political science professor and arguably the most influential realist today, asserts that \u201cThe ultimate goal of every great power is to maximize its share of world power and eventually to dominate the system.\u201d [18] In terms of geopolitics \u201cThe U.S. will have no choice but to adopt a realist policy, simply because it must prevent China from becoming a regional hegemon in Asia.\u201d Further, he explains<\/a> that,<\/p>\n
\nThe U.S. does not tolerate peer competitors. As it demonstrated in the 20th century, it is determined to remain the world\u2019s only regional hegemon. Therefore, the U.S. can be expected to go to great lengths to contain China and ultimately weaken it to the point where it is no longer capable of ruling the roost in Asia. In essence, the U.S. is likely to behave towards China much the way it behaved towards the Soviet Union during the Cold War. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
A contemporary and highly influential iteration of the realist school is defense analyst Elsbridge Colby\u2019s Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict. [19] Colby, grandson of former CIA Director William Colby, was the primary architect of the Pentagon\u2019s National Defense Strategy. Colby\u2019s effort is the best example I know of that lays out, chapter and verse, how the U.S. foreign policy elite is preparing for possible limited war with China and if necessary, nuclear war. Reaction from other realist strategies is typified by Robert Kaplan\u2019s book cover blurb in which he gushes that Colby \u201creaches a level of theoretical mastery akin to Hans Morgenthau\u2019s \u201cPolitics Among Nations.\u201d<\/p>\n
To maintain U.S. global domination, Colby \u00a0states the following about China:<\/p>\n
\nWe are facing a peer superpower \u2014 a generational challenger\u2026China\u2019s first step is a hegemonic position over Asia\u2026then from that position they will be able to gain global predominance from which China will be able to essentially hold sway or influence over the entire world, including of course, Europe, but also the United States.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
To prevent this outcome,<\/p>\n
\nRequires that we ruthlessly focus, and that take controversial and aggressive steps ready ourselves now to avoid worse outcomes later. The problem is that we have not been doing nearly enough of these things. On our current course we are courting disaster.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
And further, if all else fails, \u201cIf China is willing to use nuclear weapons and the United States is not, Beijing will dominate over whatever interests are at stake \u2014 whether Taiwan\u2019s fate, that of another U.S. ally or free American access to Asia more generally.\u201d And in a dire warning, Colby asserts that \u201cIf China succeeds we can forget about housing, food, savings, affording college for our kids and other domestic needs. The end of ordinary citizen\u2019s property will be here. China would make American society worse off and more susceptible to intense disputes over a stagnant economic pie.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prudence was a key concept in Morgenthau\u2019s theory and the wise leader should be careful in circumscribing the \u201cnational interest.\u201d It was on that basis that Morgenthau was an early and active opponent of the Vietnam War which he felt lay outside U.S. national interest.<\/p>\n
Given the preceding, it\u2019s my sense that U.S. realists view BRI as vast and growing phalanx of Trojan Horses out of which will emerge the means to challenge Washington\u2019s unipolar position. A system that features peaceful development and the promise of \u201ccommon prosperity\u201d can\u2019t be accommodated within the realist school. As Mearsheimer asserts, irrespective of ideology, \u201cThe ultimate goal of every great power is to maximize its share of world power and eventually dominate the globe.\u201d<\/p>\n
The BRI is seen as part of a zero-sum game in which Washington\u2019s unipolar world dominance will be eliminated along with a \u201crules-based international order. \u201d Speaking on the CBS program 60 Minutes<\/em> (May 2, 2021), U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, \u201cOur purpose is\u2026to uphold this rules-based order that China is posing a challenge to. Anyone who poses a challenge to that order, we\u2019re doing to stand up and defend it.\u201d In truth, this order is one which the United States imposed on the world to perpetuate its hegemony. This elusive set of rules, a copy of which ordinary Americans have yet to see, has been thoroughly dissected by Kim Petersen who notes<\/a>: \u201cIt is a given that the rules-based order is an American linguistic instrument designed to preserve it as a global hegemon.\u201d <\/p>\n
BRI notions of win-win outcomes and a common destiny for mankind simply can\u2019t be accommodated in the mindset of the realist practitioners within the U.S. national security state.\u00a0 They only see it as a geopolitical tool, wielded by China, who CIA Director William Burns claims, is the \u201cmost important geopolitical threat facing\u201d the United States and if not stopped will eventually challenge American global hegemony.<\/p>\n
Given the preceding, it\u2019s unwarranted to surmise that a decade of BRI\u2019s positive contributions to national development and the promise of more to come, is even viewed as more of a threat to U.S. monopoly capital\u2019s interests than China\u2019s rapidly growing military preparedness. That is, BRI is a type of normative power that might allow for the creation of a new international order with multilateral institutions that replace the existing ones without engaging in military conflict with the United States, thus \u201ckilling two birds with one stone.\u201d For the realist, intent on defending the U.S. empire:<\/p>\n
\nIt goes without saying that this counter-hegemonic geopolitical endeavor is much more threatening to the United States than the geo-strategic actorness of China than the territorial empire which is mainly limited to military actions in China\u2019s maritime vicinity. [20]\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
This is because BRI\u2019s projects in the Global South stand in sharp relief to their collective memory of the American empire\u2019s history brutal exploitation at the expense of other, of military intervention, giving covert support to opposition groups, stealing natural resources, regime change, CIA coups, assassinations and, of course, the prolongation of structural violence. And even after achieving independence, sometimes after years of liberation struggles, the only development option available has been the capitalist one with its mandated austerity measures that further hastened widespread misery.<\/p>\n
The U.S. and its European vassals cannot compete in terms of scale, financing or political will and therefore have nothing to offer but more of the same.\u00a0Biden\u2019s \u201cBuild Back Better\u201d and the EU\u2019s \u201cGlobal Gateway\u201d are rudderless and lack any domestic support.\u00a0BRI has no serious competitors. Predatory capitalism is in deep trouble and the window of opportunity to act is closing. As such, the Pentagon may try to sabotage BRI<\/a> by other means, including provoking China into a military confrontation, possibly in the South China Sea, with all the risks of confrontation between two nuclear powers. <\/p>\n
Earlier this year, Air Force General Mike \u201cunrepentant lethality\u201d Minihan predicted a war with China within the next two years. In a memo to those under his command, he stressed preparing \u201cto fight and win inside the first island range, running through Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines. And in speech last September for a 16,000 member aerospace convention, Gen. Minihan declared<\/a>: \u201cLethality matters most. When you kill your enemy, every part of life is better. Your food tastes better. Your marriage is stronger.\u201d It\u2019s not clear to what degree Minihan is an outlier but the Pentagon may try to indirectly sabotage BRI by other means, including provoking China into a military confrontation, possibly in the South China Sea, with of all the risks of a war between two nuclear powers.<\/p>\n
This requires fostering public fears and paranoia about China and that explains why the mass media machine\u2019s demonization of China is picking up speed. It seems to be working: A March 20-26, 2023 Pew Research Poll<\/a>, a large majority (84%) of adult Americans now hold a negative view of China and only 14% a positive view, the lowest share ever recorded. And 4 in 10 describe China as \u201can enemy of the United States,\u201d up 13 points since last year and a majority say the U.S. and China cannot work together to solve international problems. 75% of young Americans (18-25) have an unfavorable opinion of the country and those with a college degree are more likely to hold an unfavorable view than those with some college or less. It\u2019s my sense that within this fevered smearing of \u201cevil\u201d China is an implicit war-mongering message: Something must be done to stop China\u2019s rise in the world. Whether exposure to relentless Sino-phobia will translate into public support for an actual war should never be assumed. And leaves a very narrow and perhaps only temporary opening for counter-narratives that might preserve BRI as an antidote to Western imperialism while increasing the chances for \u201ca human community with a shared destiny.\u201d<\/p>\n
ENDNOTES<\/strong><\/p>\n
1. Xi\u2019s World Vision: A Community of Common Destiny, A Shared Home for Humanity<\/a>, January 15,2017.<\/p>\n
2. Chinese President Xi Jinping, speech at the opening ceremony of the 2018 FOCAC Beijing Summit<\/a>.<\/p>\n
3. W. Gyde Moore, Africa-China Review<\/em>, August, 2020. China has been involved in Africa since the 1950s. Africa welcomed China\u2019s role as a new source of finance and Beijing generally played a constructive role. Deborah Brautigam provides the comprehensive, definitive and corrective account in, The Dragon\u2019s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa<\/em> (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009; also, \u201cChinese Investors in Africa Have Had \u2018Significant and Persistently Positive\u2019 Long-Term Effects Despite Controversy,\u201d Eurasia Review<\/em>, February 1, 2021; And for a thorough debunking of the \u201cChinese Debt Trap Myth<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n
4. \u201cChina\u2019s BRI \u2018circle of friends\u2019 expanding<\/a>,\u201d Helsinki Times<\/em>, 1\/16\/2023.<\/p>\n
5. Z.Wang, \u201cUnderstanding the Belt and Road Initiative from the Relational Perspective,\u201d Chinese Journal of International Relations, Vol.3, No.1 (2021). As such the BRI will assist the gradual evolution of the existing system \u201cinto a more fair and more inclusive system.\u201d Fu Ying, \u201cIs China\u2019s Choice to Submit to the U.S. or Challenge It?\u201d Huffington Post<\/em>, May 26, 2015.<\/p>\n
6. As found in Nedege Rolland, China\u2019s Vision For A New World Order<\/em>, NBR Special Report, No. 83. January 2020, p. 40-41.<\/p>\n
7. Antonio Guerres, \u201cRemarks at the opening of the Belt and Road Forum,” United Nations, May 14, 2017.<\/p>\n
9. Silk Road briefing 2023-05-15 on China’s overseas investments.<\/p>\n
10. For more on the subject, see Huiyao Wang, \u201cHow China can multilaterialize the BRI,\u201d East Asian Forum<\/em>, 11 March 2023.<\/p>\n
11.\u00a0“What is going on with China’s Belt and Road Initiative?<\/a>” 23 May 2023.<\/p>\n
12. Ozturk, I (2019) \u201cThe belt and road initiative as a hybrid international goal<\/a>,\u201d Working Papers in East Asian Studies<\/em>, November 2019.<\/p>\n
12. Elliot Wilson, \u201cNot dead yet: The future of China\u2019s belt and road<\/a>,\u201d Euromoney<\/em>, September 22, 2022.<\/p>\n
13.\u00a0Yan Xuetang, \u201cHow China Can Defeat America<\/a>,\u201d New York Times<\/em>, January 12, 2011. <\/p>\n