After the decline of the Western industrial civilization becomes clear, some people will try to find a new answer in Asian civilization, notably in China's tradition and experiences. This attempt, to my mind, is difficult to achieve in the near future.
Modern China has not been and will not be in a position to offer an “alternative paradigm” to save human beings from difficulties arising from modernity, because China has followed the Western and Japanese paths of modernization. From the 19th century on, they have been humiliated by their national disaster of being subordinated to the developed nations in the West and even to Japan. Therefore, they have been trying to catch up and surpass the advanced West. The means they adopted in this process were quite modern in the Western sense. Especially in the field of international relations, where they have felt national humiliation most clearly, they have tried to emulate the Powers in the 19th century and early 20th century. For that reason, they are most classically “realistic” in their approach to this rapidly changing world.
They tend to stick to power politics with military power as the main source of “power.” They are strict over non-intervention in internal affairs of other sovereign nations. They try to build a homogeneous nation out of the old Qing Empire. Thus, the perception gaps between Chinese images of their place in the world and their deserved future place in the 21st century, on one hand, and the changing and groping world, on the other.
So far as the main trend in this direction continues, it is difficult to imagine that we can find a new source of desirable future image of the world in China's experience. Rather, when the world is changing, China will become a conservative factor in the way of a possible transformation.
It is neccesary, therefore, to integrate the country into the changing international society, before we can expect a new contribution from China.

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