For most of history China has been the most powerful nation in the world, with the largest economy, and the most advanced technology.
That is, in the long run, normal.
Today China rises. Having been humiliated by the West in the 19th and early 20th century, it has systematically increases its manufacturing base until China is the largest manufacturer in the world.
I concentrate on manufacturing because it and resource extraction are the two things which really matter. All the software in the world, all the “financial services” don’t matter if you can’t make, mine, or grow what you need.
If you were China, and you wanted to destroy US hegemony, how would you do it?
The simple answer is “control the means of production”.
Right now many US companies manufacture in China: Apple may be located in California, but its manufacturing base is largely in China. As time goes by, those who make goods, learn how to design them. As companies more and more offshore and outsource their design, this becomes more and more true.
Companies like Apple can build their goods in China because of patent law: the Chinese may know how to make them, but it’s illegal to do so.
The logical path for China would be to wait till they have the actual production facilities for every key sector, then break the patents and let the factories (which are already Chinese owned subcontractors, as a rule) make the goods themselves.
If you do this in one fell-swoop, because the facilities no longer exist in the US or Europe to make the goods, the US and, indeed, Western governments are faced with two choices: go into an economic tailspin, or buy from China either way.
The conventional reply to this is “but the Chinese need Western consumers!”
Do they? Will they forever? Or can they take their huge population and turn that into a consumer base? Can they turn various developing countries into consumers of their goods? Africa, in particular, has been looking more and more to China, because China offers development: building roads and factories and ports and airports, which the West no longer does, at least not without insisting on crippling IMF conditions. China doesn’t do that, it doesn’t care how other countries run their internal affairs: if they want to subsidize food, that’s fine by China.
Russia, of course, will increasingly turn to China as the West isolates it. Much of Latin America is already looking towards China, and find Chinese influence far less problematic than American influence, since the Chinese don’t actively try to overthrow their governments.
Will this happen? Perhaps, perhaps not. But, increasingly, it is a route open to the Chinese. They control the actual means of production: the West has very kindly engaged in massive technology and capital transfer to China, moving expertise and the actual production.
One might argue that cooperation is better for China. But will it always be? Thanks to massive mismanagement of the economy, the environment and both renewable and non-renewable resources, we are increasingly moving into a period of scarcity. In a negative sum game, cutting America, which consumes far more than its per capita share of resources off at the knees may be exactly what China needs to do to ensure its own prosperity and survival.
