Commentary: China is not the problem for U.S.

[TexasTowelie]

By Joseph S. Nye Jr./Special to The Washington Post
Nye is a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

In the last century, the United States rose from the status of second-tier power to being the world’s sole superpower. Some worry that the United States will be eclipsed in this century by China, but that is not the problem.

There is never just one possible outcome. Instead, there are always a range of possibilities, particularly regarding political change in China. Aside from the political uncertainties, China’s size and high rate of economic growth will almost certainly increase its strength in relation to the United States. But even when China becomes the world’s largest economy, it will lag decades behind the United States in per-capita income, which is a better measure of an economy’s sophistication. Moreover, given our energy resources, the U.S. economy will be less vulnerable than the Chinese economy to external shocks.

Growth will bring China closer to the United States in power resources, but as Singapore’s former prime minister Lee Kwan Yew has noted, that does not necessarily mean that China will surpass the United States as the world’s most powerful country. Even if China suffers no major domestic political setbacks, projections based on growth in gross domestic product alone ignore U.S. military and “soft power” advantages as well as China’s geopolitical disadvantages in the Asian balance of power.

The U.S. culture of openness and innovation will keep this country central in an information age in which networks supplement, if not fully replace, hierarchical power. The United States is well positioned to benefit from such networks and alliances if our leaders follow smart strategies. In structural terms, it matters that the two entities with per-capita income and sophisticated economies similar to that of the United States — Europe and Japan — are both allied with the United States. In terms of balances-of-power resources, that makes a large difference for the net position of American power, but only if U.S. leaders maintain the alliances and institutional cooperation. In addition, in a more positive sum view of power with, rather than over, other countries, Europe and Japan provide the largest pools of resources for dealing with common transnational problems.

More at http://www.santafenewmexican.com/opinion/commentary/article_e84be31e-3a41-5fa1-b0e1-af474329da8f.html .

[Populist_Prole]

1. Not China as such, but multinational corporations using it for labor arbitrage

Sorry, but the article reads like a white-washing feel-good piece of the de-industrialization of the US replaced with some abstract, squishy hyperbole of some geoploitical "victory" just because the US and western europe isn't a dictatorhip ( yet )

Yarrbles.

[dipsydoodle]

2. China isn't reliant on the petrodolar recycling scam

whereas the US is so.

Remove that , as will progressively happen , the US will lose its ability to create the fiat money which funds it's antics abroad.

Russia and China already trade using their own currencies and that includes the recent deal for $200 billion in oil.