Chinese Century

Debates and factors

China's economy was estimated to be the largest in the 16th, 17th and early 18th century. Joseph Stiglitz said the "Chinese Century" had begun in 2014. The Economist has argued that "the Chinese Century is well under way", citing China's GDP since 2013, if calculated on a purchasing-power-parity basis.

From 2013, China created the Belt and Road Initiative, with future investments of almost $1 trillion which according to analysts has been a geostrategic push for taking a larger role in global affairs. It has also been argued that China co-founded the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and New Development Bank to compete with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in development finance. In 2015, China launched the Made in China 2025 strategic plan to further develop the manufacturing sector, with the aim of upgrading the manufacturing capabilities of Chinese industries and growing from labor-intensive workshops into a more technology-intensive powerhouse.

In November 2020, China signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership as a free trade agreement in counter to the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The deal has been considered by some commentators as a "huge victory" for China, although it has been shown that it would add just 0.08% to China's 2030 GDP without India's participation.

Ryan Hass, a senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, said that much of the narrative of China "inexorably rising and on the verge of overtaking a faltering United States" was promoted by China's state-affiliated media outlets, adding, "Authoritarian systems excel at showcasing their strengths and concealing their weaknesses." Political scientist Matthew Kroenig said, "the plans often cited as evidence of China's farsighted vision, the Belt and Road Initiative and Made in China 2025, were announced by Xi only in 2013 and 2015, respectively. Both are way too recent to be celebrated as brilliant examples of successful, long-term strategic planning."

According to Barry Naughton, a professor and China expert at the University of California, San Diego, the average income in China was for urban households and for rural households in 2019. Even at the purchasing power parity conversion rate, the average urban income was just over and the average rural income was just under in China. Naughton questioned whether it is sensible for a middle income country of this kind to be taking "such a disproportionate part of the risky expenditure involved in pioneering new technologies". He commented that while it does not make sense from a purely economic perspective, Chinese policymakers have "other considerations" when implementing their industrial policy such as Made in China 2025.

Depending on different assumptions of scenarios, it has been estimated that China would either overtake the U.S. to become the world's biggest economy in the 2030s or never be able to do so.

International relations

In 2011, Michael Beckley, then a research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, released his journal China's Century? Why America's Edge Will Endure which rejects that the U.S. is in decline relative to China or that the hegemonic burdens the U.S. bears to sustain a globalized system contributes to its decline. Beckley argues the U.S. power is durable, and "unipolarity" and globalization are the main reasons. He says, "The United States derives competitive advantages from its preponderant position, and globalization allows it to exploit these advantages, attracting economic activity and manipulating the international system to its benefit."

Beckley believes that if the United States was in terminal decline, it would adopt neomercantilist economic policies and disengage from military commitments in Asia. "If however, the United States is not in decline, and if globalization and hegemony are the main reasons why, then the United States should do the opposite: it should contain China’s growth by maintaining a liberal international economic policy, and it should subdue China’s ambitions by sustaining a robust political and military presence in Asia." Beckley believes that the United States benefits from being an extant hegemon—the U.S. did not overturn the international order to its benefit in 1990, but rather, the existing order collapsed around it.

Scholars that are skeptical of the U.S.'s ability to maintain a leading position include Robert Pape, who has calculated that "one of the largest relative declines in modern history" stems from "the spread of technology to the rest of the world". Similarly, Fareed Zakaria writes, "The unipolar order of the last two decades is waning not because of Iraq but because of the broader diffusion of power across the world." Paul Kipchumba in Africa in China's 21st Century: In Search of a Strategy predicts a deadly cold war between the U.S. and China in the 21st century, and, if that cold war does not occur, he predicts China will supplant the U.S. in all aspects of global hegemony.

Academic Rosemary Foot writes that the rise of China has led to some renegotiations of the U.S. hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region, but inconsistency between China's stated ambitions and policy actions has prompted various forms of resistance which leaves U.S. hegemony only partially challenged. Meanwhile, C. Raja Mohan observes that "many of China’s neighbors are steadily drifting toward either neutrality between Beijing and Washington or simply acceptance of being dominated by their giant neighbor." However, he also notes that Australia, India, and Japan have readily challenged Beijing. Richard Heyderian proposes that "America’s edge over China is its broad and surprisingly durable network of regional alliances, particularly with middle powers Japan, Australia and, increasingly, India, which share common, though not identical, concerns over China’s rising assertiveness."

In the midst of global concerns that China's economic influence included political leverage, Chinese leader Xi Jinping stated "No matter how far China develops, it will never seek hegemony". At several international summits, one being the World Economic Forum in January 2021, Chinese leader Xi Jinping stated a preference for multilateralism and international cooperation. However, political scientist Stephen Walt contrasts the public message with China's intimidation of neighboring countries. Stephen Walt suggests that the U.S. "should take Xi up on his stated preference for multilateral engagement and use America’s vastly larger array of allies and partners to pursue favorable outcomes within various multilateral forums." Though encouraging the possibility of mutually beneficial cooperation, he argues that "competition between the two largest powers is to a considerable extent hardwired into the emerging structure of the international system." According to former Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, China will "[initially] want to share this century as co-equals with the U.S.", but have "the intention to be the greatest power in the world" eventually.

Writing in the Asia Europe Journal, Lei Yu and Sophia Sui suggest that the China-Russia strategic partnership "shows China’s strategic intention of enhancing its 'hard' power in order to elevate its status at the systemic (global) level."

In 2018, Xiangming Chen wrote that China was potentially creating a New Great Game, shifted to geoeconomic competition compared with the original Great Game. Chen stated that China would play the role of the British Empire (and Russia the role of the 19th century Russian Empire) in the analogy as the "dominant power players vs. the weaker independent Central Asian states". Additionally, he suggested that ultimately the Belt and Road Initiative could turn the "China-Central Asia nexus into a vassal relationship characterized by cross-border investment by China for border security and political stability."

Science and technology

Main article: Made in China 2025

Military strength

Main article: Modernization of the People's Liberation Army

Demography

China's emergence as a global economic power is tied to its large, working population. However, the population in China is aging faster than almost any other country in history. In 2050, the proportion of Chinese over retirement age will become 39 percent of the total population according to projections. China is rapidly aging at an earlier stage of its development than other countries. Current demographic trends could hinder economic growth, create challenging social problems, and limit China's capabilities to act as a new global hegemony.

Brendan O'Reilly, a guest expert at Geopolitical Intelligence Services, wrote, "A dark scenario of demographic decline sparking a negative feedback loop of economic crisis, political instability, emigration and further decreased fertility is very real for China". Nicholas Eberstadt, an economist and demographic expert at the American Enterprise Institute, said that current demographic trends will overwhelm China's economy and geopolitics, making its rise much more uncertain. He said, "The age of heroic economic growth is over."

Ryan Hass at the Brookings said that China's "working-age population is already shrinking; by 2050, China will go from having eight workers per retiree now to two workers per retiree. Moreover, it has already squeezed out most of the large productivity gains that come with a population becoming more educated and urban and adopting technologies to make manufacturing more efficient."

According to American economist Scott Rozelle and researcher Natalie Hell, "China looks a lot more like 1980s Mexico or Turkey than 1980s Taiwan or South Korea. No country has ever made it to high-income status with high school attainment rates below 50 percent. With China's high school attainment rate of 30 percent, the country could be in grave trouble." They warn that China risks falling into the middle income trap due to the rural urban divide in education and structural unemployment. Economists Martin Chorzempa and Tianlei Huang of the Peterson Institute agree with this assessment, adding that "China has overlooked rural development much too long", and must invest in the educational and health resources of its rural communities to solve an ongoing human capital crisis.

Economic growth and debt

The People's Republic of China was the only major economy that reported growth in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The economy of China expanded by 2.3% while the U.S. economy and the eurozone are expected to have shrunk by 3.6% and 7.4% respectively. China's share of the global GDP rose to 16.8%, while the U.S. economy accounted for 22.2% of global GDP in 2020. By the end of 2024, however, the Chinese economy is expected to be smaller than what was previously projected, while the U.S. economy is expected to be larger, according to the International Monetary Funds 2021 report on the global economic outlook.

China's increased lending has been primarily driven by its desire to increase economic growth as fast as possible. The performance of local government officials has for decades been evaluated almost entirely on their ability to produce economic growth. Amanda Lee reports in the South China Morning Post that "as China’s growth has slowed, there are growing concerns that many of these debts are at risk of default, which could trigger a systemic crisis in China’s state-dominated financial system".

Diana Choyleva of Enodo Economics predicts that China's debt ratio will soon surpass that of Japan at the peak of its crisis. Choyleva argues "For evidence that Beijing realizes it is drowning in debt and needs a lifebuoy, look no further than the government's own actions. It is finally injecting a degree of pricing discipline into the corporate bond market and it is actively encouraging foreign investors to help finance the reduction of a huge pile of bad debt."

China's debt-to-GDP ratio increased from 178% in the first quarter of 2010 to 275% in the first quarter of 2020. China's debt-to-GDP ratio approached 335% in the second and third quarters of 2020. Ryan Hass at the Brookings said, "China is running out of productive places to invest in infrastructure, and rising debt levels will further complicate its growth path."

The PRC government regularly revises its GDP figures, often toward the end of the year. As local governments face political pressure to meet pre-set growth targets, there is some contention on the accuracy of their statistical data. However, the Peterson Institute for International Economics notes that China's National Bureau of Statistics is increasing its adoption of international standards on macroeconomic data.

According to American strategist and historian Edward Luttwak, China will not be burdened by huge economic or population problems, but will fail strategically because "the emperor makes all the decisions and he doesn't have anybody to correct him." He said that geopolitically, China "gained one year in the race" in 2020 by using the measures of a totalitarian government, but this has brought the "China threat" to the fore, pushing other governments to respond.

Sociologist Ho-Fung Hung stated that, although China's extensive lending during the COVID-19 pandemic allowed a quick rebound after the initial lockdown, it contributed to the already deep indebtedness of many of China's corporations, slowing the economy by 2021 and depressing long-term performance. Hung also pointed out that in 2008, although it was claimed mainly in propaganda that the Chinese yuan could overtake the US dollar as a reserve currency, after a decade the yuan has since stalled and decreased in international usage, ranking below the British pound sterling, let alone the dollar.

Chinese decline

Some scholars argue that China's rise will be over by the 2020s. According to foreign policy experts Michael Beckley and Hal Brands, China, as a revisionist power, has little time to change the status quo of the world in its favor due to "severe resource scarcity", "demographic collapse", and "losing access to the welcoming world that enabled its advance", adding that "peak China" has already come.

According to Andrew Erickson of the U.S. Naval War College and Gabriel Collins of the Baker Institute, China's power is peaking, creating "a decade of danger from a system that increasingly realizes it only has a short time to fulfill some of its most critical, long-held goals". David Von Drehle, a columnist for The Washington Post, wrote that it would be more difficult for the West to manage China's decline than its rise.

According to John Mueller at the Cato Institute, a "descent or at least prolonged stagnation might come about, rather than a continued rise" for China. He listed the environment, corruption, ethnic and religious tensions, Chinese hostility toward foreign businesses, among others, as contributing factors to China's impending decline.

According to Yi Fuxian, a demographer and reproductive health researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Chinese Century is "already over". In contrast, Thomas L. Friedman, a columnist for The New York Times wrote: "There was a time when people came to America to see the future ... Now they come here [to China]."

References

References

1. Brands, Hal. (February 19, 2018). "The Chinese Century?". [[The National Interest]].
2. Rees-Mogg, William. (3 January 2005). "This is the Chinese century". [[The Times]].
3. admin. (2014-06-04). "Empires and Colonialism in the 19th Century".
4. "Global Economy Watch - Projections > Real GDP / Inflation > Share of 2016 world GDP".
5. Thurow, Lester. (August 19, 2007). "A Chinese Century? Maybe It's the Next One (Published 2007)". [[The New York Times]].
6. (23 September 2008). "China's Rise".
7. (2020-03-01). "China's Rise and Balance of Power Politics". The Chinese Journal of International Politics.
8. (21 June 2016). "China's one belt, one road initiative set to transform economy by connecting with trading partners along ancient Silk Road". [[South China Morning Post]].
9. (2014-12-10). "One Belt, One Road". Caixin Online.
10. (5 June 2018). "What Does China's Belt and Road Initiative Mean for US Grand Strategy?".
11. "AIIB Vs. NDB: Can New Players Change the Rules of Development Financing?". [[Caixin]].
12. Cohn, Theodore H.. (2016-05-05). "Global Political Economy: Theory and Practice". Routledge.
13. (October 18, 2017). "American Hegemony after the Great Recession". [[Palgrave Macmillan]] UK.
14. Eberstadt, Nicholas. (June 11, 2019). "With Great Demographics Comes Great Power".
15. Sasse, Ben. (January 26, 2020). "The Responsibility to Counter China's Ambitions Falls to Us". [[The Atlantic]].
16. (2018-10-27). "The Chinese century is well under way". The Economist.
17. Elliot, Larry. (26 December 2020). "China to overtake US as world's biggest economy by 2028, report predicts". [[The Guardian]].
18. (February 2021). "New chart shows China could overtake the U.S. as the world's largest economy earlier than expected". CNBC.
19. Holodny, Elena. "The rise, fall, and comeback of the Chinese economy over the past 800 years".
20. Stiglitz, Joseph E.. (4 December 2014). "China Has Overtaken the U.S. as the World's Largest Economy".
21. (2018-10-27). "The Chinese century is well under way". The Economist.
22. (2 March 2016). "China is spending nearly $1 trillion to rebuild the Silk Road". [[PBS]].
23. (15 November 2020). "RCEP: China, ASEAN to sign world's biggest trade pact today, leave door open for India". [[Business Today (India).
24. (15 November 2020). "RCEP: Asia-Pacific countries form world's largest trading bloc". [[BBC News]].
25. (16 November 2020). "China signs huge Asia Pacific trade deal with 14 countries". [[CNN]].
26. (22 November 2016). "China Touts Its Own Trade Pact as U.S.-Backed One Withers". [[The Wall Street Journal]].
27. (10 November 2016). "Beijing plans rival Asia-Pacific trade deal after Trump victory". [[Financial Times]].
28. (23 January 2017). "China Eager to Fill Political Vacuum Created by Trump's TPP Withdrawal". [[Bloomberg News]].
29. (2020-11-15). "World's biggest trade deal signed – and doesn't include US".
30. "RCEP, a huge victory in rough times".
31. Bird, Mike. (November 5, 2019). "Asia's Huge Trade Pact Is a Paper Tiger in the Making". [[The Wall Street Journal]].
32. (September 10, 2019). "Can the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership minimise the harm from the United States–China trade war?". Wiley.
33. Kroenig, Matthew. (April 3, 2020). "Why the U.S. Will Outcompete China". [[The Atlantic]].
34. Barry Naughton. "The Rise of China's Industrial Policy, 1978 to 2020". Lynne Rienner Publishers.
35. (11 February 2022). "When Will China Rule the World? Maybe Never".
36. (April 2024). "Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2023". [[Stockholm International Peace Research Institute]].
37. Beckley, Michael. (Winter 2011–2012). "China's Century? Why America's Edge Will Endure". International Security.
38. Pape, Robert. (January–February 2009). "Empire Falls". The National Interest.
39. Zakaria, Fareed. (2009). "The Post-American World". W. W. Norton.
40. Kipchumba, Paul, ''Africa in China's 21st Century: In Search of a Strategy'', Nairobi: Kipchumba Foundation, 2017, {{ISBN. 197345680X {{ISBN. 978-1973456803
41. Foot, Rosemary. (2020-04-01). "China's rise and US hegemony: Renegotiating hegemonic order in East Asia?". International Politics.
42. Mohan, C. Raja. "A New Pivot to Asia".
43. Heydarian, Richard Javad. (2019-12-08). "Will the Chinese Century End Quicker Than It Began?".
44. (2018-12-18). "China will 'never seek hegemony,' Xi says in reform speech".
45. Walt, Stephen M.. "Xi Tells the World What He Really Wants".
46. (2020-09-01). "China-Russia military cooperation in the context of Sino-Russian strategic partnership". Asia Europe Journal.
47. (2018-06-19). "Re-centering Central Asia: China's "New Great Game" in the old Eurasian Heartland". Palgrave Communications.
48. (Feb 15, 2016). "Does China have an aging problem?".
49. Kapadia, Reshma. (September 7, 2019). "What Americans Can Learn From the Rest of the World About Retirement". [[Barron's (newspaper).
50. (December 20, 2017). "Changes in the structure of populations are major drivers of geopolitical events". Geopolitical Intelligence Services.
51. O'Reilly, Brendan. (September 21, 2016). "China has few resources to prepare its economy for the impact of an aging and shrinking population". Geopolitical Intelligence Services.
52. LeVine, Steve. (July 3, 2019). "Demographics may decide the U.S-China rivalry". [[Axios (website).
53. Hass, Ryan. (March 3, 2021). "China Is Not Ten Feet Tall". [[Foreign Affairs]].
54. Chorzempa, Martin. "China Will Run Out of Growth if It Doesn't Fix Its Rural Crisis".
55. Xie, Stella Yifan. (2021-01-13). "China's Economy Powers Ahead While the Rest of the World Reels". Wall Street Journal.
56. Albert, Eleanor. "China's Xi Champions Multilateralism at Davos, Again".
57. (23 March 2021). "World Economic Outlook, April 2021: Managing Divergent Recoveries". [[International Monetary Fund]].
58. (2020-05-19). "How big is China's debt, who owns it and what is next?".
59. "China's local government debts should be the real worry".
60. Cheng, Evelyn. (2020-12-30). "China revises 2019 GDP lower with a $77 billion cut to manufacturing".
61. Wildau, Gabriel. (2019-03-07). "China's economy is 12% smaller than official data say, study finds".
62. (7 March 2019). "China's economy might be nearly a seventh smaller than reported". The Economist.
63. (10 March 2025). "China's major economic data continue to improve". Peterson Institute for International Economics.
64. Sankei Shimbun. (December 31, 2020). "Edward Luttwak Predicts that 'Technological Acceleration' Will Drive Forward 2021". JAPAN Forward.
65. Hung, Ho-fung. (10 January 2022). "It's Too Soon to Announce the Dawn of a Chinese Century".
66. (2021-12-09). "The End of China's Rise". Foreign Affairs.
67. "A Dangerous Decade of Chinese Power Is Here". Foreign Policy.
68. Von Drehle, David. (2021-10-08). "Opinion {{!}} What if, instead of confronting China's rise, we must manage its decline?". Washington Post.
69. John Mueller. (21 May 2021). "China: Rise or Demise?". Cato Institute.
70. Yi, Fuxian. (10 March 2023). "The Chinese century is already over". The Japan Times.
71. (2025-04-02). "Opinion {{!}} I Just Saw the Future. It Was Not in America.". The New York Times.