When I heard that Japanese Prime Minister had gone to
America with his prototype for the Maglev, the train that levitates on a
magnetic field, and offered it royalty-free for the Americans to try out, I
felt a tiny bit of incredulity. For such a smart people, it appears the
Japanese are not to up to date with the American aversion, and outright
hostility, to public transport.
For a country like
America that has depended upon the internal combustion engine and its gas
guzzling propensity to rule the world, the Maglev brings the quiet hiss of
revolution. And the ruling elites, unsurprisingly, will resist this at all
costs. America’s influence around the world would wane if people started to use
magnets to get around—forcing this gas-dependent giant to quickly reconsider
priorities. The wars of the Middle East would cool down as oil became a fuel of
the past century. Much of America’s
spending, now dedicated to a war machine of insatiable proportions, would
shrink, and could finally be redirected to renovate its aging transport and
other publicworks, education and food security.
The Maglev, of course, is hope for the rest of us who have
never ruled the world. We comprise the majority of the world’s population, and
we will eventually shape a future which is more sustainable and creates a
cooler planet through safer technologies. People from poorer places have a
greater stake and willingness to bring down their carbon footprints. Unlike
America, the rest of the world has no aversion to public transport, if its done
right and is offered at the right price.
Who can do this? China, of course. I have no doubt China’s
interest has already been perked by this new technology—as has many others who
don’t want to keep being dependent on petrol for mass transport. That includes
almost every country in Asia, Africa and other parts of the world which doesn’t
have a direct pipeline to oil. Even countries that do have reservoirs have
ethical considerations about using it, considering massive climate change.
China has been thought to lack the R and D necessary to be a
true leader of industrial and technological progress. But if we think of Asia
as a sum of its parts, Asia already has two powerhouses—the R and D can come
from Japan, the Litlle Dragon, and the industrial capacity to create vast
publicworks can come from China, the Big Dragon. If they work together in
tandem, there are no limits to the quick changes that can occur to change all
the 20th century challenges we face, as a planet and as a race of
human beings.
China and Japan are traditionally portrayed as being at odds
with one another, due to old historical grievances. But the time has now come
for this to change. A new century has arrived, and practical needs to provide
ethically sustainable leadership dictates that these two countries put aside
differences to think about ways to move forwards.
If Japan can get over its historical conflicts with China,
and vice versa, and learn to work together in tandem, the two can create technologies that shape a world
which will not just be cooler, more sustainable and more friendly to the mass
of global humanity, but may also reshape global foreign policy priorities, and
ways of competing and winning.
The old notion of “Spheres of influence”, in which one
Superpower dictates and shapes the foreign policy of countries and regions it
may be geographically quite far from, must change in the changing realities of
this new century. Our priorities now should be to think in environmental and
sustainable ways, and in collaboration with old and new allies and enemies, to
solve the 21 Century problems of global warming, climate change, water
shortages, education, healthcare and poverty. There is no time to be wasted on
wasteful wars, the outmoded forms of which continue as the elites of the
previous century refuse to give up their priviledges.
A strong Asia created with the partnership of Japan and
China could bring about poverty reduction in not just poorer parts of Asia, but
also Africa and Eastern Europe. As the Northern Europeans try to ensure their
wine-and-cheese lifestyle at all costs, it must be increasingly clear to people
from poorer parts of Europe that there has to be a new mode of moving forward
into this new century. Youth are out of work and the population is aging.
Squabbles about the form of currency to use won’t solve these two issues.
Africa has also benefited tremendously from China’s
approach—a low key engagement with business alliances, allowing for mutual
gain. China has made it clear it is interested to create business partnerships
and opportunities for regular people, and is not there just to exploit
resources, as Europeans and Americans have done, in the old colonial (and
post-colonial) style. Although there’s plenty of criticism from different parts
of Africa about China’s growing presence in the continent, it is also clear
that sharpest edge of poverty may have been reduced by China’s willingness to
engage and do business. China’s approach reaches the poorest of the poor, while
the Americans and Europeans often engaged only with elites, creating puppet
regimes friendly to their own economic interests, thereby exacerbating poverty.
A strong China-Japan alliance, with Japan providing the R
and D, and China providing the industrial backbone, could take our planet into
the next century, with the next phase of mass transportation and personal
transport, completely changing the old world order. It is urgent, more than
ever, to encourage these kinds of alliances.
The outmoded Western
notions of “Great Powers,” “Spheres of Influence”, and other old school
thinking has to now come to an end. The West’s primary mode of operation, ie;
old school pillage and resource colonization, has led to rapacious exploitation
of natural resources of poor countries, coupled with the seemingly benevolent
but ultimately spurious fig leaf of foreign aid. This has only led to perpetual
poverty for the planet. This way of thinking must now come to an end.
Sushma Joshi has a BA in international relations from Brown University.
__________
Comments