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The Beijing Consensus: How China’s Authoritarian Model Will Dominate the Twenty-First Century
By Stefan Halper
(Basic Books, 296 pages, $28.95)

No state can dominate the globe forever. The United States will not soon disappear from the international scene, but Washington will eventually have to share top billing. Its most likely peer competitor will be China.

While war seems unlikely, other challenges await. Stefan Halper, director of the Donner Atlantic Studies Programme at Cambridge University, writes in The Beijing Consensus: "Of immediate concern is that China's governing model is more appealing to the developing world and some of the middle-sized powers than America's market-democratic model."

He rightly worries less about Chinese military and economic power and more about the threat to "the moral authority and Western inheritance that has animated America's appeal for two hundred years." Still, the People's Republic of China has far to go to overtake the U.S. model.

Much good has happened with the PRC over the last four decades. "Long gone are the ideological crusades of the 1960s -- crusades that took Maoism to Africa, spread revolution in Southeast Asia, and sought to overthrow the great powers of the West," writes Halper.

The U.S.-Chinese relationship is usually civil, despite occasional controversies. Recent history backs Halper's observation that "Chinese leaders want neither the strain on finances nor the negative and potentially costly atmospherics that would accompany a genuine arms race with the United States."

But competition remains. "Ideas have traditionally been among the West's most important exports," notes Halper. Alas, the 2008 financial crisis and nation-building debacle in Iraq have weakened America's appeal.

Halper details "the rise and fall of the Washington consensus." He probably overstates the failure of the Western development model -- markets remain far superior to any variant of collectivism -- but he is correct that Western institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund, have failed to consistently deliver economic growth and progress. Indeed, U.S. bilateral and multilateral foreign "aid" often has inhibited development.

Many Third World states understandably desire an alternative to Western assistance and conditions. Explains Halper: "China has become the symbolic leader of a growing world beyond the West, where elites embrace the power of market mechanisms and capitalist economic growth but continue to protect their choices from the demands of foreign interference and Western liberalism."

The good news, though, is that these nations have found the price of the PRC's assistance to be high. "The China effect," as Halper calls it, might end up being less dominating than he fears. Beijing might find it as hard to buy friends as did the West with trillions of dollars worth of foreign aid.

Halper also worries that "The marriage of free politics and free economics is being replaced by governments determined to reassert control over their economies, enhancing both their autocratic base and their global influence." China does pose a particularly potent challenge, but it still could fail. Russia also is practicing this strategy, without great effect on other states. Even Singapore long has mixed free markets with political autocracy.

Although Beijing challenges the West's capitalist-democratic model, in contrast to the Soviet Union the PRC has not attempted to impose its system. Moreover, America might be aided by India in promoting both democracy and free markets: today this emerging power also seems to represent the Western model, combining capitalism and democracy, however imperfectly.

With good reason Halper dismisses the contention that the PRC inevitably is headed towards liberalism. Beijing has adapted to globalization but consciously, and so far successfully, resisted pressure to democratize. Halper explains: "Chinese leaders have therefore extracted what they've needed from Western development models in terms of commercial relations, markets, private ownership, and the circulation of assets, and they've rejected what they don't, in terms of liberal norms and political pluralism."

If anything, the PRC has been moving backwards on human rights. Still, there remains substantial social ferment in China. Halper acknowledges that the Chinese people often find ways to hold government officials to account. But he believes -- correctly, I'm afraid -- that the potential for significant political change is limited for now.

Writes Halper: "the Internet demonstrates the limits of arbitrary power for the government. But it also demonstrates the limits of the people's power and their appetite to fight for pluralism in a Western sense. Technology has given the masses greater capacity to criticize the government and demand redress for specific grievances. But this is different from challenging the nation's theory of state."