Kenyan Editorial: Steal the U.S. Constitution, China-Style

I was struck this morning by a piece in Kenya's leading paper, the Daily Nation. In it, editorialist Donald B. Kipkorir called upon the national government to appropriate concepts from the U.S. Constitution as a path towards Kenyan stability. The most interesting passage from the article is this one:

In the amendments, we shall borrow heavily from the constitutions of the US, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. From its 1949 Revolution to the Tiananmen revolt of 1989, China was a backwater giant busy making bicycles. It realised that to prevent future revolts, the people had to be rich, and to be rich, the economy had to be turned around.

The country made a deliberate policy to leap-frog primitive technology by increasing its recurrent and development budget and openly stealing technology from the West. Through ingenuity and craftiness, China is now the world’s fastest growing economy and greatest exporter.

As national harmony is created by either economic growth that makes everyone middle-class and happy or a constitutional order that is fair to all, Kenya can only choose the latter. Because of their unique culture and excellent education systems, the Asian countries have decided to postpone political development to concentrate on the economy.

Kenya cannot follow the Asian model of development, but we will borrow the Chinese one of borrowing, nay stealing, that which is best in the West. China stole the technology; we will steal their constitutional practices.

What's interesting about this editorial, at least to me, is how it contains evidence of waning American global hegemony. As Parag Khanna explained a few weeks ago in the New York Times:

[N]ow, rather than bestriding the globe, we are competing — and losing — in a geopolitical marketplace alongside the world’s other superpowers: the European Union and China. This is geopolitics in the 21st century: the new Big Three. Not Russia, an increasingly depopulated expanse run by Gazprom.gov; not an incoherent Islam embroiled in internal wars; and not India, lagging decades behind China in both development and strategic appetite. The Big Three make the rules — their own rules — without any one of them dominating. And the others are left to choose their suitors in this post-American world.

In other words, there's a new set of Axis Powers in town.