The world all over has slumped into a crisis, shocking developed and industrialized countries that now find themselves on the brink of a disaster — could this be the end of their Golden Age?
This “crisis” not only encompasses socioeconomic sectors, ethnic groups or nations, the environment or public sentiment, but also targets a waning golden age previously unseen in history in terms of the number of people affected, the countries and duration. Most of Europe over the past 60 years could peacefully develop the economic vitality and prosperity that had fueled the American dream before, a model for others to frantically copy, including the most populous nations, China and India (which had their own good times much earlier).
The West and East had experienced a number of periods when “great” empires flourished, long before Roman times and spanning as far as the Arabian and continental Asian space. Only centuries later, when Indian kingdoms and the Tang Empire had already seen intensive transactions across the seas, the Europeans in the 16th century began traveling overseas with their trading fleets.
Competing traders from Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, France and England were new in the rediscovered Americas, but beyond Africa they followed old trading routes to gain fame as monsoon traders (some of their transferred commodities and booties are now being exhibited in the UK’s National Maritime Museum).
The 17th century has often been described as the “Golden Age” of the Dutch and the 18th and 19th centuries as that of the British. However, those times were not at all shrouded in “great peace, prosperity and happiness,” a state that was more imaginary than real. This romanticized term would rather apply to classical mythology (the “first and best age of the world”), or to humankind’s outstanding periods of poetry, art and critical literary movements.
Therefore, the periods and purports of Western and Eastern civilizations do not always seem to correlate, due to their distinct geographical, material and immaterial environments. While the West was defining the 18th century as the “Age of Enlightenment” and the intellectual movement mobilizing the power of reason to reform society and advance technology, China ushered in the “golden” Kangxi (康熙)–Qianlong (乾隆) period, when scholar-bureaucrats, with the help of Western technology, tried to consolidate the ostensive boundless Qing Empire.
The more dynamic peninsular Europe had produced a series of adventurous seafarers, the last yet most persistent ones arriving from England. Their grimly competing private companies took hold in South and Southeastern Asia, from where they accumulated riches by trading tea, spices, ceramics and other wares. The East India Company established trading posts along the Indian coast and started “free trade” with China in 1684. This was 127 years after the arrival of the Portuguese in Macau, when for the first time East Indiamen (merchant ships chartered under the East India Company) navigated the Pearl River upstream to Whampoa Island (Huangpu), the restricted hub of the famed Canton System.
When England lost its 13 colonies in what is now the northeast US, global trade routes became even more intensive, although Europe slipped from crisis to crisis, and wars decided its political and economic reordering, as did the two world wars in the 20th century. The establishment of an economic union after 1945 (eventually leading to the EU) was like a miracle, as the centuries-old feudal divisions, antagonism and animosity gave way to unprecedented economic and political cooperation, peace, welfare and opportunities. The EU became a model for global integration, also thanks to its godfather, Uncle Sam.
Today, the US is paying a high price for its dominating role in world trade, as it is stricken by assaults, wars, constant fears and a declining economy, and Europe is now also hanging in the balance. As for Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development chief economist Pier Carlo Padoan, who predicted a “possible halt of world trade,” not only is the EU’s further enlargement at risk, but its very existence is under threat, as is the eurozone. Rising debts have dragged the EU into a crisis that cannot be solved by simply devaluating the euro (China’s strategy) or printing more money (like the US).
The EU, with its sovereign nation-states full of traditional self-belief, has come under pressure in the midst of an age that has been better than the US’ “Gilded Age.” Who would dare to say that the EU could be replaced and face a destiny like that of the former Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires or the Soviet Union, or like that which the existing “super-nations” Russia, China, India and the US might face? Or would copying the EU model at this moment be wise to sustain the core governance of superpowers?
Scottish historian Niall Ferguson has emphasized the EU’s laws, property rights and work ethic. These great achievements and virtues are well worth emulating, thereby challenging those countries known for abysmal socioeconomic conditions and squandering their trustworthiness, while looking for world power.
The problem is that the global crisis has now also burdened Europe, where no one wants to see the situation get any worse, especially not as Ferguson controversially prefigures: eg, the splitting of Belgium into two countries and the shifting of the EU capital from Brussels to Vienna, the replacement of the euro by an electronic payment system, the UK’s exit from the EU and becoming a Chinese investment paradise for the super-rich, the eventual collapse of the EU and the creation of a “United States of Europe.” The United States of Europe would come under the leadership of Germany, which has withstood threats and pressures to ensure further bailouts, or it could be earmarked as a money-transfer club with rich members persistently sustaining (or entertaining) its “poor members.”
In the face of the European crisis, which is girdled by other, more severe crunches, such as Japan’s colossal debt (230 percent of GDP), the threat of conflict with Iran and a faltering US democracy, Germany — no longer willing to be the EU’s cash cow — has had the guts to issue a distinct “no” to euro bonds and money printing, instantly prompting old inimical tirades from her jealous neighbors, the UK and France.
Europe’s old colonial powers might have forgotten about their sometimes forcefully global role in establishing international trade, as seen by the inglorious Opium Wars to enter China’s markets, or the avoidable and poorly explained world wars in the 20th century.
If the UK had simply lived according to the values of the Victorian Age (Pax Britannica), when it was the world’s most powerful and “happiest” country, Europe’s Belle Epoque at the turn of the 20th century and the post-World War II Golden Age could have continued uninterrupted, despite the flipside of the 19th century is that it was also the age of imperialism.
To safeguard resources, many modern nation-states were established in the post-World War 2 years, mostly by the British and French powers. They include states in the Middle East that are presently suffering from a tumultuous and bloody transformation, an addition to the whole “Mediterranean crisis.”
As the EU member states are all suffering in the current crisis, which is more than just a banking and euro crisis — caused not only by modern freeloaders — debt imbalances are reflected by the persistence of far more serious global mismatches. These have risen from economic disequilibrium, as well as the absence of those values, which have defined the rise of the West and at least permitted golden ages at one time or another.
With the US calling for a Trans-Pacific Partnership, the time has come to streamline and coordinate regulations related to global commerce and trade (full protection of intellectual property rights, adjustment of undue subsidies and tariff barriers, etc), and to call for open economies across the whole Asia-Pacific region.
The establishment of the ASEAN-China free-trade area, an attempt at new East-West cooperation, might impact on the enchanted Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) “black box,” which did nothing but marginalize Taiwan further and put her in a tighter squeeze between opposing powers. The old and the new West are desperate to develop new markets and jobs back home, and to consolidate Western supremacy over the high seas to assert the resumption of an ethical and economic trustworthiness that increases well-being for all.
Engelbert Altenburger is an associate professor in the Department of International Business at I-Shou University.
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