Is 2013 the New 1913

BEIJING â€" It’s a provocative idea â€" and a disturbing one. The world in 2013 looks “eerily” like the world in 1913, writes Charles Emmerson, a senior research fellow at Chatham House.

Substitute the United States for the United Kingdom, and China for Germany, and the parallels are fairly clear.

“The leading power of the age is in relative decline, beset by political crisis at home and by steadily eroding economic prowess,” Mr. Emmerson writes in “Eve of Disaster,” a piece in Foreign Policy magazine.

“Rising powers are jostling for position in the four corners of the world, some seeking a new place for themselves within the current global order, others questioning its very legitimacy. Democracy and despotism are locked in uneasy competition.

“A world economy is interconnected as never before by flows of money, trade, and people, and by the nprecedented spread of new, distance-destroying technologies. A global society, perhaps even a global moral consciousness, is emerging as a result. Small-town America rails at the excessive power of Wall Street. Asia is rising once again. And, yes, there’s trouble in the Middle East,” he writes, asking: “Sound familiar”

Yes, perhaps especially in Asia, where the rise of China is being felt strongly.

Consider this: In Hong Kong over the weekend, Shotaro Yachi, the foreign policy adviser to the Japanese prime minister, accused China of “breaching the rule of international order” (his remarks were delivered by a former Japanese official, Takujiro Hamada, The South China Morning Post reported).

“You will be a superpower â€" much feared but not much liked,” Mr. Yachi warned China at the third Sino-U.S. Colloquium, organized by the China Energy Fund Committ! ee.

China is asserting territorial claims by force, said Mr. Yachi, referring to Beijing’s actions at the Diaoyu Islands, which Japan calls the Senkakus and which are claimed by China, Japan and Taiwan.

“I should like to ask you: Is this a China you want to show to the world” he said. “Is this a China that your children will be proud of”

A retired People’s Liberation Army major general, Pan Zhenqiang, now an adviser to the Chinese government, characterized Mr. Yachi’s statement as “very rude and arrogant” and warned Tokyo to treat China as an enemy at its peril, The Post reported.

Jostling nations, a shifting global order: sound familiar

Deeply involved in the quarrel is the United States, which has a security treaty with Japan.

On Sunday, China harshly criticized the U.S. secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, for presenting what it said was a distorted picture of its dispute with Japan over the islands in the East China Sea, as my colleague Jane Perlez wrote.

In Asia, the escalation is, arguably, increasingly reflected in national politics, with the December election of Japan’s nationalist and conservative prime minister, Shinzo Abe, a sign of a rightward swing driven at least in part by fear of China, analysts say.

In fact, China’s rise is “distorting” domestic politics among its neighbors, including Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, as they respond to its growing challenge, said Mark Harrison, a politics and culture specialist at the University of Tasmania.

In Japan, “a dimension of the right-wing resurgence is due to anxiety about China,” Mr. Harrison said in a telephone interview.

Just how far that resurgence is going needs to be noted. Consider the following pieces of information about Mr. Abe’s conservative cabinet, according to The Economist. Each is guaranteed to infuriate other Asian countries with memories of Japan’s World War II brutality in the region, amid feelings in some quarters that Japan never really apologized enough.

“Fourteen in the cabinet belong to the League for Going to Worship Together at Yasukuni, a controversial Tokyo shrine that honors leaders executed for war crimes,” The Economist notes. “Thirteen support Nihon Kaigi, a nationalist think-tank that advocates a return to ‘traditional values’ and rejects Japan’s ‘apology diplomacy’ for its wartime misdeeds. Nine belong to a parliamentary association that wants the teaching of history in schools to give a better gloss to Japan’s militarist era.”

Sound familiar

In his essay, Mr. Emmerson notes that “the United States in 2013 may not be a perfect analogue for Britain in 1913 (nor Chinain 2013 a perfect analogue for Germany in 1913).” But, he says, “The world of 1913 â€" brilliant, dynamic, interdependent â€" offers a warning.”

“In 2013, at a time of similar global flux, the biggest mistake we could possibly make is to assume that the operating system of our own world will continue indefinitely, that all we need to do is stroll into the future, and that the future will inevitably be what we want it to be,” he writes. “Those comforting times are over. We need to prepare ourselves for a much rougher ride ahead.”