|
The UK Bible Students Website Christian Biblical Studies |
CHINA: TOO LATE TO THE DANCE
Commentary
By Will Resume
IT HAS BECOME FASHIONABLE for the media to breathlessly toss around the expression, ‘the next superpower’, with reference to China. The term dates to at least 1944, when it was applied to the British Empire, the United States of America, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). With the dismantlement of the British Empire, the definition embraced the Soviet Union and the USA, measured with reference to the level of nuclear armaments possessed by each nation, many times more than those held by other acknowledged nuclear powers (Britain, France and China), and the political clout each exercised via proxies and alliances – the sphere of influence.
Strictly speaking, the USSR did not meet the full definition of the word. Notwithstanding its achievements in space (Sputnik, Yuri Gagarin – the first man in earth-orbit), the Soviet Union had by the 1960s become a hollowed-out society, with rampant poverty and a medieval, regressive attachment to political repression, exemplified by the concrete and barbed-wire barrier, the Berlin Wall. Since, then of course, the mighty USSR has ‘shrunk’ into Russia, a nation smaller in power and political terms, though at over ten million square miles and ranging across nine time zones, geographically larger than any other. (By comparison, Canada, the next largest country, is a mere four million square miles, and straddles five time zones.)
That leaves the United States, which does fit the definition of ‘superpower’ more aptly than the USSR did or ever could. Indeed, in this early part of the twenty-first century, the United States is the definition of ‘superpower’, a description which implies global reach in more than mere military or political terms.
The Three-Legged Stool
To be a true superpower a nation must possess at least these three characteristics:
Military Superiority
Economic-Financial Dominance
Cultural Penetration
The USSR never did fit this more
complete definition, lacking as it did the Economic-Financial and Cultural
components. The mark of a true superpower is its ability to reshape the
essential characteristics and identity of all other nations with which it comes
into contact.
China is unlikely to do so.
Creating the Modern World
The foundations of our modern industrial-political order began to be laid in the late 1700s, first by Great Britain and reinforced subsequently by the United States. With its global reach on the military and economic fronts during the 1800s and early 1900s (augmented by its early, innovative lead in the Industrial Revolution), Great Britain was the military and economic superpower of its day. Through a series of progressive social reforms, urbanisation, its central position in world banking (including the pre-eminence of Sterling as the main reserve currency), the transplanting of democratic parliaments around the world, and its industrial innovation, Great Britain came to define the modern state. In addition, the country’s rich heritage, expressed through the three L’s – Law, Literature and Language – carried the influence of this island-nation far beyond its shores, its iconic status reverberating around the world long after the nation’s military and economic dominance had subsided.
The United States has built upon these legal, social, and commercial traditions, and carried them further, securing English as the principal language of commerce, international law and the film industry, and installing it as the chief second language around the world. From the introduction of the railway into the United States (much of it financed by Britain) to the trade in cotton and agricultural products, America got rich from its relationship with its former ‘mother country’. Despite their competitive spirit, the close religious and cultural ties between these two countries – political, philosophical, academic – in addition to their military alliances at critical points during the twentieth century, ensured that the modern world would develop predominantly along Anglo-American, capitalistic lines.
Bullish on
China?
This is not to say that China will not rise. But she will not rise as high as predictions suggest. Quite apart from the ongoing efforts by the United States to prevent China dominating the world, China has certain structural problems, which cannot be easily overcome, including a too-large, under-educated, and poor population (which will keep on growing), and a political structure which is out of step with the country’s quasi-capitalist aims. Even were the country to develop a solid middle-class of, say, three- to four-hundred million – less than one-third of its current population – it would be left with a largely agrarian, less-well-off citizenry, who would flood into its already-congested cities. And all this assumes that Europe and North America and the rest of the world economy will recover from the doldrums and expand and, importantly, resume buying the things which China makes.
But, assuming for the sake of argument that in the next ten to twenty years China becomes the world’s dominant military power and that its national wealth will exceed that of all other countries, it is unlikely that the rest of us will be routinely speaking or writing Mandarin, reading Chinese literature, or watching mainly Chinese films. Even now, a large percentage of the goods which come from China are manufactured at the behest and under the control of foreign companies (American, British, German), a development which has ‘westernised’ China more than Chinese influence has ‘orientalised’ the consuming nations.
Perhaps the biggest single factor weighing against China’s rise to true superpower status is this: its opportunity has arrived too late. We live in a world which, from an industrial, financial and economic aspect has matured. Britain in the nineteenth century forged ahead across technological and industrial frontiers which were new and untested, and with the advantage of an early start. The power, prosperity and influence of the United States, and its rise to empire, flowed from the advantages conferred by Britain’s dominant military, financial and cultural position in the world.’[fn1] In this fact lies both an explanation for the crossroads of history at which we live, and the reason why no one could have seen it coming.
No Future for
Predictions
From the standpoint of Bible students of the dispensational persuasion, the present stage of history often poses vexing questions. For according to expectations based on (prophetic) chronology, we ought not to be at this juncture, discussing the rise of China.
As late as 1901, Pastor Charles Taze Russell, that remarkably lucid teacher on Biblical matters, wrote:
. . . there is scarcely time enough to permit a panic and period of general prostration and then another period of prosperity and inflation and another panic, etc., by the time which we think the Scriptures indicate as the time for the great cataclysm of trouble; by which the present institutions of Christendom are all to go down in anarchistic chaos. The culmination of the trouble in October, 1914, is clearly marked in the Scriptures; and we are bound therefore to expect a beginning of that severe trouble not later than 1910; – with severe spasms between now and then.
Views from
the Watch Tower
(September 1, 1901; Zion’s Watch Tower, Allegheny, USA), 292, 293.
And here:
The full end of the times of the Gentiles . . . will be reached in A.D. 1914; . . . that date will be the farthest limit of the rule of imperfect men. . . . [A]t that date the Kingdom of God . . . will obtain full, universal control, and that it will then be “set up,” or firmly established, in the earth, on the ruins of present institutions.
The Time
is at Hand (1914;
Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society, Brooklyn, USA), 77.
Russell’s prediction that 1914 would mark the beginning of the ‘time of trouble’ of Matthew 24: 21 (King James Version) was uncannily accurate as to the first year of the First World War (the ‘Great War’). That clash of nations set off a chain reaction of catastrophic events during and after the conflict which shaped the world we live in. We should not underestimate its significance.
But the war of 1914-1918 has been eclipsed to a large extent by the Second World War, a wider-ranging conflict, one closer to historical memory and more accessible through a plethora of film, sound, and eyewitness accounts; and also, in part, because the United States played a much larger role in it than in the First World War. Indeed, it’s safe to say that the Second World War and its aftermath stimulated the growth of the U.S. to the position it holds today. These are events which no one could have foreseen.
To be fair to Russell, he did hedge his prediction. Speaking at a Bible Students convention in 1911 he said:
We are expecting in October, 1914, that a great change will be due. Now, how quickly will it come? Whether on the stroke of the clock or not we do not know. We believe that it will land upon humanity by that time. Perhaps some of it will come before that, but we believe it will be stayed off until that time. Now, dear friends, what if it does not? We are just as well off as the rest. That is what the Bible states. If it does not state that to you, we have no quarrel. And if it does not come we will not try to bring it about. But, on the contrary, we will try to practice peace and holiness withal. We are children of peace and peacemakers, not strife breeders. But we believe the Bible teaches October, 1914, as the time. If that is incorrect for a year, or five, or one hundred years, no matter, it is coming some time, whether we have it right or not.[Emphasis added.]
From transcript of Convention
Report Sermons, 292.
In October 1916, when the Great War was over two years old, and before the United States had joined in, Pastor Russell wrote:
We could not, of course, know in 1889 [when The Time Is At Hand was first published], whether the date 1914, so clearly marked in the Bible as the end of the Gentile lease of power or permission to rule the world, would mean that they would be fully out of power at that time, or whether, their lease expiring, their eviction would begin. The latter we perceive to be the Lord’s program; and promptly in August, 1914, the Gentile kingdoms referred to in the prophecy began the present great struggle, which, according to the Bible, will culminate in the complete overthrow of all human government, opening the way for the full establishment of the Kingdom of God’s dear Son.
The Time
is at Hand (Paul
S.L. Johnson, ed; Philadelphia, USA, 1935), vi (Foreword).
However, Russell’s generalised expectation that Christ’s Kingdom on earth would be set up soon after, proved inaccurate. Subsequent dates offered by others on the winding up of earth’s affairs have self-evidently fallen on stony ground.[fn2] Now, almost one hundred years beyond 1914, most Bible Students have long since lost their appetite for predictions linked to chronology.
The disappointment felt by the ‘watchers’ of prophetic events cannot be underestimated. It has hurt the faith of many. God’s promises and prophecies are sure, but they do not necessarily lend themselves to being distilled and defined according to our own, limited views of time. It is evident that the fullness of time was not ripe in 1914; that the sins of Christendom or mankind in general were not as bad as they would yet become, else we would not still be here, waiting, in 2010.
Failed predictions usually result from insufficient or misinterpreted data. One cannot simply extrapolate a result based on incomplete contemporary trends. Current events of any period have a way of overwhelming sober judgement, a perspective that can only be corrected by looking back on them from a distance. However, we ought not to doubt the certainty of Biblical prophetic outcomes; it’s just that we do not know when they will occur.
Israel: The
Barometer
We do well to keep our eyes peeled for the one event which must occur before the Kingdom on earth is set up – the concerted attack on Israel, prophesied in Zechariah 14: 1-3 and other passages. This event is of paramount consideration. But when will it occur – five, ten, fifteen years from now? And how might it come about? Given the involvement in the history of the Jewish nation by, first, Great Britain and, for the past thirty-five years, by the United States, it’s not unreasonable to look for an acrimonious shift in the relationship between the United States and Israel. This might be triggered by an alteration in America’s political or ideological stance toward Israel, or by an emasculation of American power, such as the aforementioned rise of China (and others).
The Most High rules in the affairs of men, setting up one nation and putting down another. It may be that the United States is the last of earth’s empires – superpowers. We might look for a decline in American prestige and power, and its suffering various defeats on the military and diplomatic fronts, coupled with a long-term erosion of the country’s prosperity and social cohesion. As the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) ascend in whatever time remains to this old world, the United States may be backed into situations in which it must further compromise its founding principles (a process which has been under way for some years).
Perhaps, with respect to the immortal line from Dickens, we are in the ‘worst of times and the best of times’. At the very least, they will prove interesting.
____________________
Notes
^[fn1]
I haven’t discussed in this context the religious linkage between Britain
and the United States, nor the fact that it was Protestantism which underpinned
the legal and libertarian culture held in common between these two countries.
This historic thread accounts for the prominent place accorded to the Bible
(principally the King James Version) and the popular, democratic appeal of the
Gospel message.
^[fn2]
In a rash move, Harold Camping, Bible radio teacher and President
of Family Radio, Inc., in California, has staked his reputation and the
survival of his international broadcasting network on the unambiguous
prediction, based on an interpretation of Bible chronology, that the end of the
world will happen on May 21, 2011. He previously claimed this for 1994. (<http://www.familyradio.com/>)
_______________
Copyright November 2010
ukbiblestudents.co.uk
You are free to reproduce any or all of this article, but please let us know if you do.