KARACHI: Rise of China is an inescapable reality in the contemporary world. If we compare current Chinese economic indicators with the indicators of 1970s then we can say that China is rapidly catching up with economic preponderance of the US, said Nevilly Wylie from the University of Nottingham on Tuesday.

Mr Wylie, who is dean of the faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the Malaysia campus of the university, was expressing these views while addressing a seminar titled ‘From unipolarity to multipolarity?’ organised by the Department of International Relations, the University of Karachi.

He said there existed an intense security competition between the US and China with strong potential of war. Nevertheless, one should not neglect the increasing independence between the two countries as both countries had huge financial stakes in each other’s markets, he added. He was of the opinion that China was also facing internal challenges in terms of human security that Beijing had to take seriously for the sake of sustainable growth.

While talking about ‘aggressive’ Russian foreign policy, he said that the real Russian concern in the post cold war period was the expansion of Nato and the EU in the eastern Europe. He emphasised on the role of global institutions and said that the significance of multilateral arrangements should not be undermined when it came to understanding the dynamics of global politics. He said that these institutions were inherently inclusive in their nature and had the potential to absorb different constellations of power.

Besides Russia and China, the EU also was an important actor when it was about shift from unipolarity to multipolarity, said Dr Mutahir Ahmed, chairman of International Relations Department.

He said that the biggest threat to Chinese ambitions of attaining the super power status was uneven development in China.

Dr Farhan Hanif Siddiqui said that global shift of power was not a new phenomenon as the world had seen such shifts in the 20th century from multipolarity to bipolarity and then unipolarity. He said that neo-liberal institutional framework still possessed capacity to contain the emergence of any counter narrative.

Dr Moonis Ahmar, dean of the KU Arts faculty, said that Russia had not been able to absorb the shock of losing the status of superpower after the cold war.

He said that China was full of contradictions due to their highly autocratic political system and liberalised economy. He said that as long as the West remained united, Russian aggressive power ambitions would not pose any threat to the status quo in Europe.

The seminar was followed by a lively questions and answers session.