Adrian Hamilton: A clash of civilisations? I don't think so

The clash is all in the mind of Western onlookers, not the Asian participants

Nothing so betrays the huge gap that has developed between how the West, and Washington in particular, views the world and how the rest of the globe sees it than the question of China.

To read the politicians and the commentators on the Chinese president Hu Jintao's meeting today with President Bush, you would think that a new superpower conflict is emerging, with China challenging the US for world dominance, in which the great issues of democracy versus authoritarianism, new against old world, are being slugged out. "China-US: the Real Clash of Civilisations," as the front page of the latest Newsweek trumpets.

Go to Asia, on the other hand, and no one talks about any clash of civilisations or battle of the global superpowers. Indeed, hardly anyone mentions America at all in my experience on a recent trip to South-east Asia. It wasn't that people were anti-American. They weren't - more slightly despairing, if anything. It was just that America no longer figured much in their lives or on their screens.

China, yes, and the way it was entering virtually every Asian market and is taking over local companies and local sales. India, a bit, although that country hasn't made much impact in Asia as opposed to Europe and America. Certainly not enough to be treated as a potential competitor to China in the region

No, the greatest sense that you get from visiting the US and going to Asia these days is that Washington is almost obsessively concerned with the superpower business, and the need to produce some overarching policy towards the world, while Asia is just getting on with business and pursuing its diplomacy on a largely pragmatic basis. The clash is all in the mind of Western onlookers, not Asian participants.

This is not to say that there isn't a developing sense of competition and even conflict between China and the United States. You cannot have a country the size of China growing at the speed it is without it leading to a huge pull on world resources, particularly energy. The US, which has itself sustained an extraordinarily prolonged period of expansion, might normally have expected to have been in poll position in any such scramble, given its pre-eminent economic position.

That is not proving the case. Thanks partly to its large trade surpluses and the resulting accumulation of foreign reserves, China has been able to outbid even the US for materials. And its position has been further aided by Bush's foreign policy, which has managed to antagonise many of the major energy and raw material producers in the Middle East and Latin America just as the US has need of them.

This is the real "clash of civilisations" and it has nothing to do with civilisation and everything to do with the hard, old-fashioned business of pursuing national self-interest. President Bush and his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice may have put the gloss of America's new moral mission of spreading democracy on its actions. They have certainly used this narrative to suggest a fundamental moral conflict with China around the world. But the more you look at the specifics, the more this looks like a post facto rationalisation rather than a coherent policy.

The real difference between China and the US is in how you exercise power. Even before 11 September the group around Bush, especially the Vice President, Dick Cheney, and Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, saw the projection of US power primarily in military terms. Veterans of the Cold War (like Condi Rice), they felt that America had won because it had outpaced Russia in technology and military investment. And that was how it was going to project itself as the sole remaining superpower.

The attack of 11 September only confirmed their view. The War on Terror replaced the Cold War as the central focus of Washington's foreign concerns, with even greater emphasis on the military. If you look around the world and the way in which the US has allocated its resources since Bush came to power, by far the greatest investment is in military assistance and foreign bases - most of which are in countries such as the Central Asian republics and Pakistan which have precious little to do with democracy or any other moral cause.

Japan, uniquely in Asia, was praised as an ally because it increased its spending on the military. The EU countries were caustically berated for failing in world status because they spent so little on defence.

China, in contrast, has moved in the opposite direction. Where once it projected power through military might, in the last few years it has turned to "soft power", and in particular marketing muscle, to make its presence felt. Even over Taiwan it seems content to play it long, waiting for economics to do the work that was once done by military manoeuvres, while in Tibet and along the Silk Route, it has resorted to immigration and investment to achieve its aim of swamping the local populations.

It doesn't make China any the nicer or any the more stable long-term. It isn't. Nor does it mean that America isn't sincere in wanting a world of democracy. It does in a nebulous sort of way. But it has produced a profound asymmetry between a global superpower that still sees the world in terms of struggle for political and military dominance and an Asia which sees it in terms of markets and growth.

a.hamilton@independent.co.uk