By Ademola Adebisi
In the dying days of year 2019, the Coronavirus disease stealthily crept into the world via Wuhan in Hubei Province of the Chinese Republic. A disease that was thought would end in China soonest has today, engulfed the entire globe sparing no continent of affliction and rapid and bewildering death reminiscent of the 1918-1919 ravage of the world by Spanish Flu which consumed between 40-50million lives across the world, a mortality rate higher than the 15million deaths recorded during the First World War in which arms and ammunitions were deployed.
Although COVID-19 is still ravaging, its negative effects at this moment on lives, economy, property and other aspects of life have been monumental. As at the time of writing this piece, America, China, Italy, France and Spain had lost a total of, 5,113; 3,318; 13,155; 4,032; and 10,003 lives respectively. According to the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, it is feared that the mortality figure across the world may reach one million in the next few days amidst further spread across our world made now more penetrable by the boundary-eroding process of globalisation driven by information and communication technology.
Since the disease loomed on the world stage, different theories have been thrown up to ascertain the source of the disease, or whether it is natural or man-made. Of these theories and intelligent cum unintelligent guesses, standing out is the one that contends that, China probably introduced the virus with a view to weakening the economies of the world powers such as the, U.K, France and the USA in particular, and compelling the entire globe to submit to its world leadership and pay obeisance to it.
This is further buttressed with the fact that, in the battle against the disease, China ahead of these world powers, has been able to overcome its further spread in its country and offered to help other countries including the great powers, who from all appearances, are helpless and overwhelmed to fight the disease. While this theory of the Chinese as the germ of the disease is still doubtful, the manner in which China has seized the moment and offered to help other great powers, has given room for this suspicion. In any event, what is crucial at this moment is not much of the politics of the disease, but rather it should be, how humanity can urgently curb this calamitous COVID-19 phenomenon.
But again, this should not prevent us from examining the global leadership question this pandemic has precipitated more so that such analysis might illuminate what this health crisis may culminate in, in the years ahead should China be found culpable. The germane questions are these: is China really a just rising power? On account of its capability to contain the disease ahead of other great powers, can it be said to be now more powerful than other great powers particularly the USA?
With this development, is it true that the American state is in the throes of the decline of its power and glory? Better still, is it true that over the years the American strength has been exaggerated? As it is argued on the one hand, if the Roman and British Empires could collapse, the collapse of the America power and hegemony is here now: is this correct? It has also been argued that, every country must experience the anthropological law of rise and fall: must this necessarily hold?
Now the answers to these catholic of questions without following their ordering: First, is China just a rising power? No of course. As Nye whose views I profoundly and copiously share in this piece has observed, “the rise of China is a misnomer. Re-emergence would be more accurate, because by size and history the Middle Kingdom has long been a major power in East Asia. Technically and economically, China was the world’s leader (though without global reach) from 500 to 1500AD.
Only in the last half-millennium was it overtaken by Europe and America, which were first to benefit from the Industrial Revolution.” This being the case, it is correct to assert that, these great powers had been in competition with one another and had overtaken one another at different epochs without anyone getting absolutely vitiated and tired. Also, that China had been a top dog as a world power for thousands of years is a possible puncture of the anthropological law of state’s inevitable rise and decline.
That America and other European powers have sought the helping hand of China in combating COVID-19 is not also symptomatic of the decline of the American and European powers. Rather, it is a proof of the fact that, no matter its strength, no country can be an island unto itself. The military, human and other resources of American and European powers are still strong and intact. China has indeed also profited from international cooperation at different times. After all, it cannot divorce its fast-growing economy from its economic reforms largely borrowed from the American and European free market economy and support.
Furthermore, we must not also use the collapse of the Roman and British empires as an evidence and assurance that the American power in particular will soon or is about to inevitably collapse. This is because, unlike the British empire, America is not an empire; it has no colonies which can gain independence and consequently liquidate like the British empire. Although America has satellites, these satellites are run on more tolerable American soft power rather than on hard power by which the Roman and British empires were run. The country, unlike the Roman and British empires, which thrived on wonky leg of travesty of justice, is contrarily made attractive or magnetic to many parts of the world by its preachment and pursuit of the core values and ideas of democracy, the rule of law, respect for human rights and social justice. Indeed, those who believe that China is rising should not also be oblivious of the fact that its fast-growing pace can be speed checked by the internal contradictions being harboured by its authoritarian-unitarism.
Aside, it should not also be assumed that as China is believed to be leaping in all fronts, America has gone into slumber. Not at all. For the country has not ceased from engaging in research and development in its consciousness of the need to innovate and reinvent itself as a long-lasting power in the world system. The Trump phenomenon at this time of the world health crisis may have also created a façade of the decline of the American power and glory to some analysts.
However, the Trump phenomenon is just a passing phase which is not bad enough to weaken the US and more importantly as it will cease whenever Trump is dethroned electorally. True it is that, every country has its high and low moments, however, the American decline seems not in sight yet. As Nye has again argued, countries can overtake one another in power terms without necessarily suggesting decline in power in the absolute meaning of the word decline. Should China be guilty of the conspiracy theory, only heaven can save it from not getting the Japan treatment in the course of the WWII.
- Dr. Adebisi writes from the Federal College of Agriculture, Akure, Ondo State.
