Senator Obama is due in Portland, Oregon, this weekend for a fundraiser. Just in case his Portland schedule might also include a stop before The Oregonian editorial board (Portland’s daily paper), I have emailed the editorial board a set of questions about the rise of China that they should ask him. I am going to share just a few of those questions here, all getting at how important or not Senator Obama thinks the rise of China is, and to give you, readers, your chance to pick the most significant question in a poll.
I think China, for better or worse, is the big issue before us. I am an advocate for more Mandarin in the public schools in Oregon. More info is available on my website. But I do wonder what others think.
So, how important is the rise of China (PRC) to our future?
Senator Obama should be asked, I wrote the Oregonian editors, if he agrees with the following thinkers.
NYT columnist Tom Friedman wrote: "the trend that historians will cite as the most significant will not be 9/11 and the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. It will be the rise of China and India."
NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof thinks China will lead the world in 2100.
Former Harvard President Lawrence Summers thinks "growth and change in Asia are the most important things to happen during our lifetimes".
In the book "China: The Balance Sheet: What the World Needs to Know Now about the Emerging Superpower" published by the by Institute for International Economics and Center for Strategic and International Studies, the authors write: "The direction that China and US-China relations take will define the strategic future of the world for years to come. No relationship matters more—for better or for worse—in resolving the enduring challenges of our time: maintaining stability among great powers, sustaining global economic growth, stemming dangerous weapons proliferation, countering terrorism, and confronting new transnational threats of infectious disease, environmental degradation, international crime, and failing states. And for the United States in particular, a rising China has an increasingly important impact on American prosperity and security, calling for some clear-eyed thinking and tough economic, political, and security choices."
Robert D. Kaplan, in his The Atlantic Monthly article (6/05) "How We Would Fight China," subtitled "The Middle East is just a blip. The American military contest with China in the Pacific will define the twenty-first century. And China will be a more formidable adversary than Russia ever was," writes "Pulsing with consumer and martial energy, and boasting a peasantry that, unlike others in history, is overwhelmingly literate, China constitutes the principal conventional threat to America’s liberal imperium."
And former trade negotiator Clyde Prestowitz thinks "we are at a moment of a big swing in the hinge of history" as he discusses in the following youtube:
If, as a member of the Oregonian editorial board, you could ask Senator Obama (or any other candidate) just one questions relating to how important China is to our future, which question below would you pick?
Poll questions:
- Do you agree with NY Times columnist Tom Friedman that the rise of China and India is more significant than 9/11 and the war in Iraq?"
- Do you agree with NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof that China will lead the world in 2100?
- Do you agree with former Harvard president Lawrence Summers that "growth and change in Asia are the most important things to happen during our lifetimes?"
- Do you agree with the statement: "The direction that China and US-China relations take will define the strategic future of the world for years to come?"
- Do you agree with Robert Kaplan that "China constitutes the principal conventional threat to America’s liberal imperium?"
- Do you agree with Clyde Prestowitz that "we are living at a moment of a big swing in the hinge of history?"