美中关系与'修昔底德陷阱'

choi

VOA Chinese, June 18, 2013.
http://www.voachinese.com/conten ... 130617/1684398.html

Note:
(a) 修昔底德陷阱  Thucydides's trap

Graham Allison, Avoiding Thucydides’s Trap. Financial Times, Aug 22, 2012 (op-ed)
http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard. ... ucydidess_trap.html
(i) "Classical Athens was the centre of civilisation. * * * This dramatic rise shocked Sparta, the established land power on the Peloponnese. * * * At the end of 30 years of war, both states had been destroyed.  Thucydides wrote of these events: 'It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable.'”
(A) Peloponnese
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peloponnese
(a peninsula; "name derives from ancient Greek mythology, specifically the legend of the hero Pelops, who was said to have conquered the entire region. The name Peloponnesos means 'Island of Pelops'")
*νῆσος  (transliteration: nesos): "isle"   (In Greek, νησί (transliteration: nhsí) is "island" in English.)
(B) Peloponnesian War
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peloponnesian_War
(431-404 BC; Athens, the strongest city-state in Greece prior to the war's beginning, was reduced to a state of near-complete subjection, while Sparta became established as the leading power of Greece [with costs])

This does not gel with Professor Allison’s thesis. I double check. See next.
(C) Peloponnesian War. Encyclopaedia Britannica, undated
www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/449362/Peloponnesian-War
(At the outset of the War, “the Athenians had the stronger navy and the Spartans the stronger army. Further, the Athenians were better prepared financially than their enemies”)
(D) Thucydides
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thucydides
(c 460 – c 395 BC; wrote History of the Peloponnesian War)

(ii) "In a generation, a state whose gross domestic product was smaller than Spain’s has become the second-largest economy in the world."
(A) List of countries by past and future GDP (nominal)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_past_and_future_GDP_(nominal)

* The earliest data pair (IMF estimate; in millions of United States dollars (USD); not been adjusted for inflation) show, in 1980, China and Spain were 202,458 and 224,368, respectively. Both economies contracted in 1981 but Spain’s was still bigger than China’s. Since 1982
(inclusive), China has overtaken Spain.
* Around that time in US (and likely the world), there were two recessions: January–July 1980 (6 months); July 1981 to November 1982 (1 year and 4 months)
(B) GDP (current US$). World Bank, undated
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?page=6

indicates the reversal occurred in 1982 (China’s 203,183,214,982 v Spain’s 190,301,806,354)
(C) Real GDP (2005 dollars) Historical. Economic Research Service (ERS), US Department of Agriculture, undated
http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-pro ... nomic-data-set.aspx
(Updated: 11/03/2012; Source: World Bank World Development Indicators, International Financial Statistics of the IMF, IHS Global Insight, and Oxford Economic Forecasting, as well as estimated and projected values developed by the Economic Research Service all converted to a 2005 base year; $billions)       

instead shows that the last time Spain’s economy was bigger than China’s was 1993 (747.83 and 747.35, respectively).

* Of note, in the first year the data is displayed in the ERS spreadsheet (1969), GDP (subject to the same quotation above) were: Canada (377.86), US (4258.2), France (840.96), Germany (1239.84), UK (967.72), China (99.10), Hong Kong (18.89), Japan 1494.58, S Korea (74.70), Taiwan (28.06), and Singapore (8.75).
* Second National Population Census of the People's Republic of China]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_National_Population_Census_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China
(1964: 694,581,759 persons)
* The second census conducted by Taiwan after Chiang Kai-shek fled there was in 1966: population 13,505,000. See

demographics of Taiwan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Taiwan
(section 1.1 Population census)
* That is to say, China’s population was about 51 times of Taiwan’s. However, China’s nominal GDP was just 3.5 times (ie 99.10/28.06) of Taiwan’s. (Granted China was in the throes of Cultural Revolution.) In other words, per capita nominal GDP of Taiwan was 15 times of China’s in late 1960s.

(c) “而在经济方面，也有麻省理工学院的经济史学家查尔斯•金德尔伯格(Charles Kindleberger)以两次世界大战之间经济合作的崩溃导致美国取代英国成为经济强权为鉴，告诫当前的美中关系或许会导致相似的结局。”

Charles Kindleberger (1910-2003) is dead; he can not possibly China. Indeed, google him and China both, one will find nothing written by him. China was not a juggernaut (in any aspect) in his time.

(d) “在华盛顿重要经济智囊机构彼得森国际经济研究所近日举行的一个政策报告发布会上，该所高级研究员阿文德•萨勃拉曼尼亚(Arvind Subramanian)就将奥巴马和习近平在经济方面面临的挑战称作“金德尔伯格难题”(Kindleberger Conundrum)：参照历史上的强权更迭，如今国力上升的中国或许不愿意维持战后美国建立起来的开放型、建立在规则基础上的多边经济体系；而当今的强权，也就是美国，则难以只手撑起这个体系。”
(i) Google and one will find “Thucydides's trap” and “Kindleberger Conundrum” are used (almost exclusively) by Allison and Subramanian.
(ii) Subramanian has not fully laid out the exact meaning of “Kindleberger Conundrum.” See, eg,

Arvind Subramanian, Preserving the Open Global economic System; A strategic blueprint for China and the United States. Peterson Institute for International Economics, June 2103 (Policy Brief number P B 13-16)
http://www.iie.com/publications/pb/pb13-16.pdf
(“But in the economic sphere, the paramount challenge for Obama and Xi is to overcome what might be called the Kindleberger Conundrum: the preservation of the open, rules-based multilateral economic system against the background of the historic shift in which the rising power (China) might be unwilling to sustain it at a time when the declining power (the United States) is increasingly unable to single-handedly shoulder the burdens of leadership”)
(iii) Kindleberger’s theories:
(A) Hegemonic stability theory
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemonic_stability_theory
(“Charles P. Kindleberger is one of the scholars most closely associated with HST, and is even regarded by some as the father of HST. Kindleberger argued, in his 1973 book The World in Depression: 1929-1939, that the economic chaos between World War I and World War II that led to the Great Depression, can be blamed in part on the lack of a world leader with a dominant economy. The theory is about more than economics though: the central idea behind HST is that the stability of the global system, in terms of politics, international law, and so on, relies on the hegemon to develop and enforce the rules of the system”)
(B) Charles Kindleberger, Dominance and Leadership in the International Economy. International Studies Quarterly, 25: 242-54 (1981)
http://www.people.fas.harvard.ed ... indleberger1981.pdf

(e) Reading the VOA Chinese report alone, one might conclude that both Allison and Kindleberger were panelists also. But they were not. See

Event: Preserving the Open Global Economic System: A Strategic Blueprint for China and the United States. PIIE, undated
http://www.piie.com/events/print.cfm?EventID=286

Oddly, The report does not mention Kurt Campbell’s view. I am more interested in his, for he is not a theorist but a pragmatist.