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Journalist James Fallows Optimistic About U.S.-Asia Relationship

Rex Graham | Nov. 22, 2010

James Fallows speaks at IR/PS last week.

More than two decades before Toyota passed Chrysler, Ford and General Motors to become the world’s largest car maker, magazine journalist, author and Emmy Award-winning documentary producer James Fallows accurately predicted that Japanese auto makers would become preeminent. The journalistic oracle said during his recent visit to UC San Diego that he felt “ratified in kind of an unpleasant way” by his predictions.

But Fallows, an expert on Asian politics and business, hedged his predictions about China in a Nov. 16 talk at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS).

While Japan’s single-minded focus was riveted two decades earlier on manufacturing, it likely held back the country on the world political stage. But Fallows said China is fundamentally different. After living in the country for four years, Fallows thinks the relatively cooperative relationship between the United States and China (with inevitable disagreements) will continue.

Fallows grew up in Redlands, Calif., and studied history at Harvard University, where he and IR/PS Professor Peter Gourevitch worked side-by-side at The Harvard Crimson, the university’s daily newspaper.

After graduating from Harvard, Fallows studied economics at Oxford and in 1979 became a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly. He continues to write for the magazine on topics ranging from computer technology to the Iraq War, but China has been his focus for the past few years.

Fallows most recent book, Postcards from Tomorrow Square: Reports from China (2009, Knopf), is refreshing, even to Chinese readers. “This book enquires into the heart of some of the most important issues facing China, and America, rather than picking at them from the sides,” wrote Chinese writer and blogger Xujun Eberlein. “As such, it forms one of the best collections of writing on China I have seen.”

“Jim’s career reflects the trajectory of the engagement of the U.S. with Asia, particularly over the 25-year life of IR/PS,” said Peter Cowhey, dean of the school.  “Like many scholars at IR/PS, Jim was skeptical that Japan would become a preeminent world power. China is a much bigger country with far greater potential because of its scale.”

One of America’s lasting impressions of China’s scale was created during the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. The $100 million opening ceremony extravaganza included thousands of Chinese drummers performing in near-perfect unison. Fallows said such social synchronization is absent at subway stations as part of the nation’s daily public scrum to board trains.

Fallows adresses a standing-room only crowd at the Robinson Auditorium.

“It’s an every-man-is-a-king society, making it even more remarkable that Mao was able to dragoon them in the opposite way for a while,” said Fallows. China’s sheer size, diversity and political complexity make predictions of its future difficult.

“You can imagine almost any scenario happening: very robust economic growth continuing, an environmental catastrophe that brings everything down, or even another political crackdown,” Fallows told a packed audience attending his talk at IR/PS.
 
Fallows, who also was a speech writer for President Jimmy Carter, says the United States will inevitably differ over currency and environmental policies, but our nation and China will most likely enjoy a continued partnership – albeit with serious differences.
“Both countries are financially exposed to the vagaries of each other’s economies,” he said. “The take-home point to Americans is that we should take China and the region seriously without being frightened of them.”

Cowhey said most IR/PS scholars agree that the odds are China won’t be a predatory power.

“Our view is that China will go through a period of rapid growth that Jim has described so well, which we are now in the middle of,” Cowhey said. “At some point, growth will slow and many of the social, economic, environmental and political issues that have been postponed during the happy moment of rapid growth will have to be confronted by China. Of course, rapid growth also introduces societal volatility and that can translate into unstable foreign policy.  That’s one point of risk for world stability.  Another is an unsuccessful accommodation between the economic needs of the two countries; accommodation is a manageable task in theory but we could stumble.”

In Cowhey’s view, a successful relationship between the United States and China will require stronger regional or global institutions to help the two countries and others work through problems rather than expecting them to resolve their issues by themselves. The entire Pacific region would benefit from such an institution.

“The management of global environmental issues will be more tractable if the U.S., China, India and Brazil agree, which can’t be done on a bilateral basis,” said Cowhey. “We think of a regional and global context for this U.S.-China relationship, because as big as China is, it is part of a larger story.”

IR/PS is involved in exploring significant questions as part of the larger narrative of the Pacific region covering the Americas and Asia:

  • Why has India been more successful with software development than hardware development?
  • Why is Mexico, which looks like it should be a higher-growth country, lagging?
  • What makes some environmental programs yield much better results than others?

Faculty research and the curriculum at IR/PS focus on the tools needed to answer these questions. “IR/PS  is as much about teaching students the tools needed for analysis and understanding  of many societies and countries so that we can be much more precise about questions such as what growth rates will enable China to succeed,” said Cowhey. “These are the kind of questions and issues that are universal to the Pacific region that our students are learning how to answer.”

Fallows and Cowhey agreed that the United States tends to focus on other countries as the main problem in international relations rather than problems of our own making, such as the current economic slump.

“If we can revive the growth potential of the U.S. economy, our international challenges are much easier to manage,” said Cowhey. “If U.S. growth resumes, our international challenges will be much easier to manage, the credibility of the U.S. as a leader will be higher and we will be able to explain to the American people that cooperation with other countries does not come at the expense of this one. Putting our own house in order is a key to successful international leadership for the United States.”


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