POL 175B — The Clash of Empires: The United States and China in the Struggle for Global Supremacy in the 21st C
[ djw nw ]The United States and China are now the two most powerful nations in the world. Their relationship is important and complex. It is not only bilateral but also international, involving key nations in Asia, Oceana, North and South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Russia. How the U.S. and the PRC manage this relationship will impact a) who rules the world—authoritarian China or democratic America and its allies--and b) whether the intensifying competition between these two superpowers explodes into war. We will focus on both the past and the present relationship. We will pay special attention to the attempt of the PRC ruling group to drive the U.S. out of the Western Pacific, and to how the U.S. and U.S.-aligned democracies (including South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, India, and Australia) are dealing with this challenge. We also will focus on the economic competition to control and dominate new internet ecosystems, smartphone technologies and new generation 5-G technology, Blockchain technology, maritime logistics infrastructure and global supply chains, information systems used to track online dissidents, and critical national defense and strategic military technologies. We also will study China’s expansion into Southeast Asia, the South China Sea, and Africa, focusing on the U.S. response to China’s attempt to seize land and mineral resources and develop industrial and technological infrastructure in these areas. In this edition of the course, we are particularly interested in whether current militant nationalism, combined with China’s economic woes, might increase the prospects for a war with the U.S. and its allies over Taiwan or the South China Sea, which in either case would greatly damage the global economy. Usually offered every year.
Ralph Thaxton