First, in terms of “lunacy” about China policy, I would put it in more neutral terms: there are and always have been left-right concerns about China. There was a left-right coalition that tried and to block ChinaR17;s ascension to the WTO. On the left, one mostly hears concerns about unfair trading practices, environmental damage and human rights abuses. On the right, the main concerns center around national security challenges. Both sides are correct in raising these concerns. James Mann is correct in pointing out that China policy since Nixon has been a particularly elite endeavor that does not have firm and deep support within the American polity.

Going back to the issue of soft power – Nye defines it as cooptive, countries and people want to emulate you for your values and ideas, and to some extent culture. The raising of lady liberty during the Tiananmen protests would be a prime example. Chinese democrats today study the American founders, Tocqueville, Locke. No one in Africa is going to raise the banner of Mao as a rallying cry, Hu Jintao’s pronouncements will not speak to the deepest impulses for liberty or justice among Africans. The Confucian analects will not have much to say to Latin Americans. I do not think China has much soft power. Countries may want to grow as fast as China, but that is about it in terms of a Chinese “demonstration effect.” And, ChinaR17;s own economic model was a copy of JapanR17;s and the Asian Tigers’.

It would be very hard to “get around the West.” The U.S.-EU contributions to worldwide GDP, collective security, development and humanitarian aid simply dwarf what China and the “non-West” can supply. We are a long way away from a time when China can take the lead in disaster relief in Pakistan and Indonesia, stop ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and so forth, even if it wanted to do so. Or, as Josh pointed out, when will China be able to provide the public goods on the high seas that the U.S. Navy supplies? Would it want to do so if it could? Human nature being what it is, America has at times fallen short as the hegemon, but unlike preceding dominant powers it has chosen to provide collective goods to sustain the international system.

China and its partners can be a nuisance, and frustrate the West’s aims, but it would be difficult to render the West irrelevant. If China can sustain its levels of growth (and that is a big if) for a long period of time it could try and re-write the global rules in ways that really matter.