Analysis: China has questions it must answer if it is to shape the 21st century

The country’s rapid economic growth, strategic potential, huge internal market, and enormous investment in infrastructure, education, and research and development, as well as its massive military build-up, will see to that.

The outcome for the world would have been far worse if China’s ascent had failed. But what will this world look like? The official policy of “Four Modernisations” (industrial, agricultural, military, and scientific-technological) that has underpinned China’s rise since the late 1970’s has failed to provide an answer to that question, because the “fifth modernisation” – the emergence of democracy and the rule of law – is still missing. Political modernisation faces opposition from the Chinese Communist Party, which has no interest in surrendering its monopoly of power.

Ideologically, Chinese leadership’s rejection of human rights, democracy, and the rule of law is based on the contention that these supposedly universal values are a stalking horse for western interests, and that repudiating them should thus be viewed as a matter of self-respect.

And here we return to the concept of “Asian values”, originally developed in Singapore and Malaysia. But three decades after it was coined, its meaning remains unclear. Essentially, the concept has justified authoritarian rule by aligning it with local tradition and culture.

Given western colonialism in Asia, the desire to maintain a distinct identity is legitimate and understandable, as is the belief in many Asian countries – first and foremost China – that the time has come to settle old scores. But the effort to preserve one’s power, the need for a distinct Asian identity, and the desire to settle historical scores will not solve the question raised by China’s emergence as the century’s dominant power.

A state becomes a world power when its strategic significance and potential give it global reach. As a rule, such states safeguard their interests by imposing their predominance, a recipe for conflict if based on coercion rather than co-operation.

The Soviet Union wasn’t ideologically anti-western, since communism and socialism were western inventions, but it was anti-western politically. It failed not only for economic reasons, but also because its internal and external behaviour was based on compulsion, not consent.

By contrast, the United States’ economic and political model, and that of the west, proved to be its sharpest weapon in the Cold War. The US prevailed not because of military superiority, but because of its soft power.

Which path will China choose? While China will not change its ancient and admirable civilisation, it owes its re-emergence to its embrace of contemporary western modernisation. But the decisive question of political modernisation remains unanswered.

Clearly, national interests, and sometimes pure power, play a part in how the west appllies values such as human rights, the rule of law, democracy, and pluralism. But these values are not mere ideological window dressing for western interests – they are universal, and more so in an era of globalisation.

The contribution of Asia – and of China, in particular – to the development of this universal set of values is not yet foreseeable, but it will surely come if the “fifth modernisation” leads to China’s political transformation.

• Joschka Fischer was German foreign minister and vice-chancellor from 1998-2005