Chapter 8 - China and the United States of America

Summary

The reason he projects such an “unthinkable” future, where in the worst case, two nuclear-armed superpowers enter into a war that ends civilization, is the Thucydides Trap. According to Allison (2017), going back to the Peloponnesian War Thucydides wrote about, that brought about the end of the golden era of Greek civilization 2,500 years ago, twelve out of sixteen cases when a rising power faced a ruling power in relative decline resolved themselves through war. The “natural, inevitable discombobulation that occurs when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power” leads to feelings of frustration in the rising power that the ruling power is preventing them from achieving their rightful place in the world, and in the ruling power gives rise to feelings of threat that the rising power will upset their existing way of life. If these subjective perceptions, rooted in aspects of the objective situation, are not managed well, the situation will resolve itself through warfare. In the time of Thucydides, this resulted in disaster for both Athens (the defeated) and Sparta (the victor). In the time of the twentieth century, this resulted in calamity for Germany, and the end of empire for Great Britain. In the time of the twenty-first century, this could spell disaster for human civilization. Widespread understanding of the history and identity of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the USA is a form of inoculation against such a possible future. Because so much of this book has reported on American collective remembering, this chapter focuses more on Chinese collective memory, and how it informs a global understanding of China.