Why Iraq? How to explain the Bush administration's obsessive fixation on Saddam Hussein and the manufacturing of crisis after crisis? Numerous explanations have been advanced and widely debated over the past several months. One view, heard very often, is that the United States' main interest is to win control of Iraq's vast oil reserves so as to reduce its dependence on Saudi Arabia. Another interpretation is that Israel and its American friends have incited the US to attack Iraq and overthrow Saddam in order to 'reshape' the region and protect Israel's supremacy. Another less plausible argument, given the US penchant for propping up dictators, is that America's ambition is to transform Iraq into a 'model democracy' for the whole Arab world.

Yet another explanation is that America, still under the shock of 11 September, wants at all costs to avoid another mass-casualty terrorist attack. Its fear is that terrorists will somehow gain possession of weapons of mass destruction, perhaps from some 'rogue state', and will use them. Hence America's determination to disarm Iraq, a country it smashed in 1991 but which, in spite of punitive sanctions and repeated bombing, has remained defiant, challenging America's own supremacy in the Gulf region. Some people even go so far as to view the US-Iraqi quarrel in oedipal terms, claiming that Bush junior is anxious to destroy a leader who survived the assaults of his father, Bush senior, in the Gulf War. The trouble with such explanations is that they suggest that America is a monolith. But, as everyone knows, there are numerous competing forces and factions, each with its own agenda, inside and outside the administration, all of which exert some power in the shaping of American foreign policy.

The rise of a rival superpower

It is worth remembering, however, that before the devastating events of 11 September, America's main strategic preoccupation was not with Iraq, or terrorism, or Islamic radicalism, but with the rise of China as a rival superpower. After the implosion of the Soviet Union and the breakup of the Soviet 'empire' in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, American strategists identified China as the only credible long-term 'enemy', the only power that might eventually challenge America's global hegemony. It was argued then that China was America's 'strategic adversary' and that, of all the world's trouble spots, the Taiwan Straits was likely to provide the flashpoint for a Third World War.

Much has changed in the last couple of years. The US and China have made efforts to improve their relations, in 2001 China joined the World Trade Organization with America's blessing, and Jiang Zemin, China's outgoing Communist Party Secretary General, paid a visit to George W Bush at his ranch in Texas. Annual two-way trade is now over $100 billion with the US absorbing a quarter of China's booming exports.

But the underlying rivalry persists, and is unlikely to go away. There were harsh criticisms of China in ‘The National Security Strategy of the United States’, the Bush administration’s basic declaration of policy published last September. ‘China’s leaders,’ the document states, ‘have not yet made… the fundamental choices about the character of their state.’ There followed several disapproving remarks about China’s growing military capabilities, its one-party rule, its human rights record, its lack of openness, its neglect for the rule of law -- and of course its threat to absorb Taiwan by force.

A striking feature of the ‘Bush doctrine’ is America’s determination to fight off all rivals and remain the world’s pre-eminent power. As the above-mentioned document stated clearly: ‘Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States.’

Some analysts believe the contest with China is the real reason the United States is so anxious to impose its military will on Iraq. To contain China, the US needs to take sole control of the strategic Gulf area, which contains more than 25% of the world’s oil reserves – a resource China desperately needs as it seeks to consolidate and expand its already formidable economic power.

There is no doubt that China is the emerging superpower. Experts believe that by 2010, in less than a decade, it will have outstripped Japan, America’s key ally in Asia, to become the world’s second economic power. China’s stock market, capitalized at about $540 billion and consisting of 1,212 companies, is Asia’s second largest, after Japan’s. A second prediction is that China will catch up with the United States in about fifteen years time, say between 2015 and 2020.

The central fact about modern China is that two decades of economic reforms, begun under Deng Xiaoping and continued by Jiang Zemin, have sucked in some $450 billion of foreign money and produced remarkable economic and social change. This year, foreign direct investment in China will exceed $50 billion – a total greater than anywhere else in the world, including the United States. With average workers’ salaries around $150 a month, China has become a low-cost production base for hundreds of foreign firms. It is rapidly manoeuvring itself becoming a formidable production platform for the world.

Next year, China will account for more than 25% of the world’s steel consumption. Its annual exports, already totaling some $250 billion, are expected to grow by 15% this year, while its Gross Domestic product is expected to reach 8%.

All is not rosy, however. Unemployment is an acute problem with, at any one time, 100 million people on the move within its borders and looking for work. Official corruption is endemic while the breakneck pace of growth has widened the gap between rich and poor. New social forces are now demanding a share of political power.

Almost every statistic about China is awesome, beginning with its population of 1.3 billion people. To help release the natural commercial talents of the Chinese, billions of dollars are spent each year on the infrastructure of commerce – roads, high-speed trains, telecommunications networks, airports and seaports. By 2020, it is predicted, 100 million Chinese will holiday abroad every year. The world will, in fact, soon radically alter its image of China. Already, a powerful middle class has emerged of some 375 million people, largely living in China’s coastal cities, and anxious to rival the West’s consumer society.

Some 60,000 Chinese are studying in the United States and will in due course return to contribute to their country’s phenomenal rise. Jiang Zemin’s son, Jiang Minheng, 48, studied in the US, worked for Hewlett-Packard in Silicon Valley, and now heads China Netcom. He is known as the ‘prince’ of China’s information technologies. The son of the outgoing prime minister Zhu Rongi also studied in the US and works for a US-Chinese banking group, while his daughter, after a spell with JP Morgan, now works for the Hong Kong branch of the Bank of China.

The emergence of Hu Jintao

Such is the background to the 16th Congress of China’s Communist Party, held in Beijing this month, from 8 to 14 November, which appointed Hu Jintao, 59, as China’s new leader, replacing Jiang Zemin, now 76, who has ruled for the past 13 years. Described as a bland but brilliant party apparatchik with a talent for political survival, Hu will have the dual task of expanding and streamlining China’s already huge economy but without touching the political superstructure of Communist rule.

Two things are becoming increasingly clear about modern China. The first is that the ruling Communist Party has diluted its Marxist ideology. It has virtually given up the notion of ‘class struggle’ and replaced it by rampant capitalist development. Private entrepreneurs, once the class enemy, now account for 20% of the Party’s 60 million members.

The second is that China’s new middle class has now virtually taken power. Hu Jintao is evidently a product of this new managerial class. The son of a tea merchant, he graduated as a hydraulic engineer from Beijing’s prestigious Quinghua polytechnic university. He joined the Party in 1965, spent much of the 1970s working on a hydroelectric project in western China, before being sent to Beijing in 1981 to attend a school for rising party cadres. In 1984 he became head of the Young Communist League and the following year was named as party secretary of the poor, mountainous province of Guizhou in south-west China. Then came promotion to party secretary in Tibet where, in 1989, he ferociously crushed dissent, thus convincing the then ruler Deng Xiaoping that he was cut out to be a potential leader.

Unlikely as it may sound, Hu Jintao may be the real reason George Bush would like to see off Saddam Hussein.

end