The United States has been a world power for almost a
century, was one of two superpowers for over 40 years after
World War II, and for the past 15 years or so has been alone
in its class. However this looks likely to change before
long, as China is growing by leaps and bounds and is
beginning to flex its muscles.
This is most visible in China's immediate neighborhood,
Southeast Asia and the Pacific countries, where students are
beginning to study Chinese instead of English. Beijing is
actively promoting its language and its culture.
As America seals itself off from the world, in fear of
terror, the Chinese are rushing in to fill the gap. America
is also having to retrench economically, even as China is
expanding. It is clear that America is still the military
power, but the direction of the momentum favors China.
For example, China Radio International now broadcasts in
English 24 hours a day, while the Voice of America broadcasts
19 hours and will soon be cut back to 14 hours. The Chinese
also have a state television channel, CCTV-9, that broadcasts
in English worldwide. CNN International, which is private,
cannot compare to it.
American cultural centers run by the State Department's
United States Information Service, which once were all over
and offered English-language training and library services,
were closed as part of worldwide cutbacks in the 1990s.
Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, used to
have three United States information centers. They were shut
down and a new program that provides books, computers and
databases for a handful of Indonesian university libraries
has much less impact.
China is consciously trying to provide concrete alternatives
to the US. The Chinese president and Communist Party chief,
Hu Jintao, told the Australian Parliament last year, "The
Chinese culture belongs not only to the Chinese but also to
the whole world. We stand ready to step up cultural exchanges
with the rest of the world in a joint promotion of cultural
prosperity."
Growing numbers of Asian students are taking advantage of
opportunities for higher education in China. If they cannot
get into elite American universities, Chinese universities
are seen as good enough, even if they are not as good as the
top American schools.
In Indonesia, for example, the first generation of government
technocrats was called the "Berkeley mafia" because so many
were graduates of the Berkeley campus of the University of
California.
Last year, 2,563 Indonesian students received visas to go to
China for study, according to the Chinese Embassy in Jakarta,
a 51 percent increase over the previous year. Only 1,333
Indonesian students received visas for study in the United
States in 2003, the United States consul general in Jakarta
said. In contrast, it issued 6,250 student visas in 2000.
"You are losing ground; that's a fact of life," said Prof.
Tanun Anumanrajadhon, the vice president of international
affairs at Chiang Mai University, told Jane Perlez of the
New York Times. "People here are talking of China and
economics. People don't care about democracy now."
At Mae Fah Luang University in Thailand, the Sirindhorn
Chinese Culture Center opened early this year. When the
university asked the American ambassador to Thailand if he
was interested in arranging something similar, he just
laughed. The ambassador had no hope of any money from
Washington.
The Singapore government still sends a handful of students on
scholarships to the top universities in the United States and
Britain, but it has also introduced a parallel program to
send equal numbers of its best students to China and
India.
It works the other way as well. At Assumption University in
Bangkok, Chinese enrollment was only 50 students five years
ago. This year, 800 Chinese students are studying there.
In the last several years, Chinese tourists have started to
catch up to Japanese tourists in Southeast Asia. In Thailand,
a favorite country for tourists of all kinds, more than
800,000 Chinese travelers visited in 2002, compared with just
over a million Japanese, according to the Pacific Asia Travel
Association. Last year, Chinese tourists to Thailand
outnumbered American.
Even longtime friends of the United States say China's
influence appears to be growing at America's expense.
A Singapore official who studied in both the US and in China
said, "The world revolved around the United States for a very
long time. I think people are beginning to understand that
one day China can become another superpower."
