154 China in World History
on both sides. The United States often criticizes China’s human rights
record, but since the 1990s, economics has trumped human rights in
U.S.-China relations. China and America have become, surprisingly,
deeply interdependent. As the largest holder of U.S. debt in the world,
China props up the U.S. dollar, thereby enabling Americans to keep
interest rates low, despite a ballooning national debt, and to purchase
Chinese products with money borrowed from China.^11 The American
banking crisis of 2008–09 is likely to speed China’s relative rise, because
China is unburdened by debt and can readily encourage more domes-
tic consumption to keep its economy growing despite the worldwide
recession.
Today it is much more than cheap labor that draws investors to
China from all corners of the world. With a relatively new industrial
plant, China now has the world’s most modern productive processes with
cutting-edge effi ciency, and any entrepreneurs who want to enjoy the
benefi ts of this technology are in China or feel they need to be there.
After the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York
City on September 11, 2001, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao proclaimed
China Washington’s ally in the “war on terror” that was proclaimed
by U.S. president George W. Bush (as they see separatist movements in
Tibet and Xinjiang as terrorist). Since then, America’s preoccupation
with the Middle East, coupled with China’s economic boom and the
American fi nancial crisis, has led many Asian countries, for the fi rst
time since World War II, to see China as politically and economically
more important than the United States.
No history is predetermined. The past 3,000 years of Chinese his-
tory have been shaped by millions of choices by the Chinese people.
For about two hundred years, starting in the late eighteenth century,
China was seen by the world as weak, poor, and backward. Now China
has reemerged as one of the world’s most powerful countries, as it was
through much of its 3,000-year history. China has many problems and
many shortcomings, as well as an immensely talented and energetic
population. Whether it can continue its rapid economic growth without
changing its political system or suffering serious instability is a major
question. Whether, in the process, it can avoid an environmental catas-
trophe, is another.
One of the key principles of the ancient Chinese classic the Book of
Changes is sure to apply still today: change is an unavoidable constant
in human history. The past is never a straitjacket, and the Chinese people
will continue to make choices in the future as they have in the past. The
pace of change in China has been accelerating for the past century, and