The past two or three years have marked a new moment in the global perception of China. There is suddenly a new awareness that encompasses both a recognition of China’s economic transformation and an understanding that, because of its huge size and cohesive character, it will have a profound impact on the rest of the world, albeit in ways still only dimly understood. Until recently, China’s economic rise always seemed to be qualified by the rider that something was likely to go amiss — a rider that is now rarely heard. China has arrived and will increasingly shape our future, not just its own.
A number of factors lie behind this new global perception of China: its continuing staggering growth; the recognition that China is a major factor in the rise in oil prices; the fact that Chinese oil majors have become players in countries such as Sudan and Iran; the (unsuccessful) attempt to take over the US oil company Unilocal; the recognition that Chinese companies will increasingly become global players (of which Chinese involvement in Rover is a foretaste); the almost universal dawning that Chinese production is driving down the prices of footwear and clothing, and western fears for domestic textile industries; and the Pentagon report earlier this year warning that Chinese military expenditure will grow significantly, and that it might be driven by energy concerns and expansionary desires.
Recognition of the new reality is provoking an intense debate among national policy elites, including China’s. How should countries respond to China’s new position and power — and how should China use it? These are questions that more or less everywhere — except perhaps Japan — are still in the melting pot, not least in the US. Over the next decade, perhaps rather less, positions will begin to be struck that will have huge consequences for the world. But we can already list the ways in which this new perception of China’s rise has served to change the nature of the debate about China itself and about the shape of the global future.
In the 1990s, the process of globalization was overwhelmingly seen as a process of Westernization. That hubris has receded in the wake of China’s rise. There are few who believe that China’s modernization will simply result in a Western-style state. On the contrary, there is an implicit recognition that China will be a very different kind of nation in almost every respect. Moreover, it would appear that China has been as much a beneficiary of globalization as the US, perhaps more so.
A widespread belief that the 21st century would be an American century found even clearer expression in the aftermath of 9/11, with the pursuit of the neoconservative project. However, as doubts grow about America’s enterprise in Iraq, and more widely in the Middle East, there is a recognition that China is now a serious candidate to assume the role of “the other superpower”. It is projected that China will overtake the US in terms of GDP purchasing power parity before 2020. The American century could turn out to be more like a half-century.
There is a growing understanding that the future is unlikely to be dominated by the Western world in the manner of the past two centuries. The major reason for this shift in perception is the rise of China and, to a lesser extent, India — which together account for well over a third of the world’s population. The world is likely to look very different from the one with which we have become so familiar — and comfortable — since Britain’s industrial revolution began in the 18th century.
From 1800 — some would argue much earlier — and until very recently, the center of global developments was Europe. Admittedly, its hold became tenuous after 1945, but its bisection by the Cold War fault line sustained its status — a status that was lost with the events of 1989. Now, without question, the most important region in the world is East Asia. It is economically the strongest, outdistancing both North America and Europe by some considerable margin. The main reason, of course, is China, together with Japan and, to a lesser extent, the Asian tigers.
But East Asia’s centrality is not just a question of economic strength, even if this underpins it — East Asia is also where the future will be played out, where the world will first see the wider meaning and implications of China’s rise: Not least in growing Sino-Japanese tensions, and in increasing pressure on the US’ role in the region.
The rise of China contradicts the commonsense view in the West, particularly strong in Europe, that the nation-state is in decline and that the future belongs to unions of nation-states, along the lines of the European Union and AEAN. On the contrary, the rise of China — and India — marks the ascendancy of a new kind of mega- nation-state, which, together with the US, the EU, Japan and Russia, will dominate the 21st century. In the 90s, after Tiananmen Square, China was overwhelmingly seen through the prism of human rights and democracy. For a long time it was virtually impossible to start a discussion in the West about China except in these terms, or when this question was a central part of the agenda. This remains part of the Western agenda, but a much less important one in the light of China’s stunning transformation.
The question of Western-style democracy remains no closer now than it was in the wake of Tiananmen. On the contrary, the regime has not only survived but prospered to an extraordinary extent over the last quarter-century. The final point is the least recognized and least discussed, but it is nonetheless a striking feature of China’s rise. And it presents us with a profoundly paradoxical feature of the era in which we live. The events of 1989 represented the end of European communism. The Chinese Communist party was expected to go the same way — wasn’t that supposed to be the import of Tiananmen?
We couldn’t have been more wrong. What everyone expected never happened. A communist party is presiding over arguably the most remarkable economic transformation in human history. It is true, of course, that the Chinese party is a very different creature to its European counterparts, not least in its ability, since 1978, to undertake the most extraordinary regeneration. This paradox presents us with one of the great enigmas of the early 21st century. But these points, profound as they are, are merely the hors d’oeuvre to the kind of impact that China will have on the world over the next few decades.

Mind games at Gitmo
Nancy Sherman

I RECENTLY visited the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center with a small group of civilian psychiatrists, psychologists, top military doctors and Department of Defense health affairs officials to discuss detainee medical and mental health care. I am a military ethicist. The unspoken reason for the invitation to go on this unusual day trip was the bruising criticism the Bush administration has received for its use of psychiatrists and psychologists in the interrogation of suspected terrorist detainees. We disembarked from our Navy jet to find an island lush and green from the recent storms. A small boat took us from the airfield to the naval hospital. From the boat there was no sign of Camp Delta, where the detainees are actually held. No sign of prisons or barbed wire or the detention facility’s 505 inmates.
Our host was the commanding officer of Gitmo, Maj. Gen. Jay W. Hood (an artillery officer by training), who replaced Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, implicated in the “migration” of torture methods from Gitmo to Abu Ghraib. Dressed in fatigues, Gen. Hood briefed us using PowerPoint. His intelligence director told us that interrogators have not used harsh “fear up” tactics — the ones designed to terrify — since 2003. We went by bus from the naval hospital to the detention hospital for quick briefings from a psychiatrist and a physician. Still, we were not permitted to see any detainees or any of the hunger-striking inmates in the hospital, despite our requests. During our six hours on the ground, we had only a fleeting glimpse of a few detainees outside their cellblocks behind barbed wire and screened fences.
Indeed, when I got home and saw the play “Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom” (by Victoria Brittain and Gillian Slovo), I had the disquieting feeling that I had absorbed more about detainee life at the theater than I had from actually being at Gitmo. This only amplified my anxiety that what I heard and saw during my VIP visit sidestepped the central moral issue of whether abuse is still occurring at Gitmo and whether health professionals are, or have been, a party to coercive interrogation. The question that the Pentagon leadership has been focusing on, and which was a key subject of discussion during our day at Gitmo, is whether there is an ethical difference between using psychologists rather than psychiatrists on interrogation teams.
What some in the Pentagon would like is to have doctors and psychiatrists, who are bound by the Hippocratic oath to “do no harm,” be the clinicians treating detainees. Psychologists, who do not swear to such an oath, would consult with and advise interrogators. But this is a red herring. It is hair-splitting that detracts from the real issue of whether health professionals of any stripe can ethically be involved in interrogations that may involve coercive techniques or torture. The answer is clearly no. They should not be involved, directly or indirectly, in situations that may lead to the breach of confidential medical records, to torture or to cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment, or to exploitation of fears or phobias. Mental health professionals simply should not be collaborating with interrogators in inflicting psychological torture.
Hood said that “rapport building” was the preferred and effective interrogation technique, but that’s no guarantee that rougher tactics won’t be used. The fact is that there is enormous pressure on the people at Guantanamo Bay to get good intelligence for the war on terror, and it’s as easy for behavioral scientists as it is for interrogators to compromise their moral standards. Cunning and deception to extract information may in some cases be acceptable. But many people have been outraged to learn from media reports that methods military psychologists have developed to train our own troops to resist torture (the so-called survival, evasion, resistance and escape methods taught at Fort Bragg) have been “reverse engineered” at Guantanamo Bay to create coercive, psychologically manipulative interrogation techniques for use against detainees.
Plato warned long ago that a doctor’s skill, abstracted from good character and wisdom, is a neutral ability: It can be used to heal or to harm. So, too, the science of psychological trauma can also be the science of torture. How it is used is a matter of the virtue of the doctor. Doctors should serve at Gitmo to treat patients for medical and mental health conditions. But the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association must insist their members shun practices that compromise professional conduct. Like the good soldier who should resist orders that may be lawful but immoral, the good military doctor must do the same.
 

Internet opens new paths for journalism
Samar Fatany

EMERGING technology is creating interactive channels for mass communication that is redefining media. It is creating a new breed of citizen journalists who can get news to the world without using the well-worn pathways of traditional print and broadcast outlets. It presents great opportunities for common people to report events independent of large media organizations, as well as to voice their views in a new global marketplace of ideas. These were some of the topics discussed recently during a session on citizen journalism at the Arab and World Media Conference in Dubai last week. At this session, a panel of four media specialists explored the opportunities that new technologies offer. They also debated the various risks that citizen journalism poses to traditional media companies.
Although many of the discussions had a global focus, they also had special relevance for the Middle East, where representative governments and more transparent economic and business environments are creating an increasing demand for information. Panelists included Alarabiya.net Editor Ammar Bakkar, Eric Case of Google, Pete Clifton from BBC News Interactive, and software creator and analyst John Clippinger. Their audience also included several internationally known media personalities who weighed in during a spirited question-and-answer period. Bakkar, who also teaches mass communication at the American University in Sharjah, said that more involvement between everyday people and mainstream media is a matter of continuing importance despite recent technological advances. He noted that many people across the Middle East either lack computer literacy or access to the equipment required for web-based interaction, putting a greater burden on traditional media to become more inclusive of constituent viewpoints.
He also spoke about the value of online interaction, which provides people an opportunity to voice their opinions and express their concerns over current issues and world events. The influence of new media technologies such as weblogs (a.k.a. blogs) and online services allow both professional and citizen journalists to help shape breaking news and influence public opinion. Case, who has managed the blog-service provider Blogger for Google since 2003, said the weblogs have created an alternative source for news and a new forum for political opinions. Many young Americans have become skeptical of official reports and the existing channels for reporting, prompting them to instead turn to blogs.
He noted that the US invasion of Iraq helped advance the alternative channel, with American soldiers and Iraqi citizens using blogs to report from inside Iraq, writing diaries and describing the reality on the ground while global mainstream media became dominated by propaganda and censorship. Case said a blog on the Internet gives one the opportunity to voice his or her opinion on the web. It’s a place to share things that you find interesting — whether it’s a political commentary, a personal diary, or links to websites you want to remember. Citizen journalism has reached new levels. The BBC’s Clifton said the July 7 London bombing coverage depended on the reports from people on the scene who provided the network with high-quality photos and videos, as well as e-mailed news material. Clifton said the event signaled the start of a new relationship between the British network and the public.
Today, the BBC continues to encourage people to interact by sending their e-mails and comments, which are aired during programming. Clifton said these new technologies are playing an important role in shaping the news coverage of mainstream media. The new technology is also bringing new challenges to the tenets of traditional newsgathering organizations. Clippinger stressed the need to come up with proper procedures that can create a healthy online community and citizen media. He said legislation imposed on these new media technologies is not the best solution to create an effective media that serves the citizenry. He said the way forward is to encourage norms of social exchange that will ensure the effectiveness of the technology and the success of the media’s contribution to the public interests.