Posted on 08/30/2011 4:54:34 AM PDT by Clive
The notion that China is going to replace the United States as sole superpower is possibly the greatest myth of our time.
China lacks superpower qualities, and hasn’t discovered any in its mad dash into capitalism.
China may post impressive, bottom-line numbers, but key numbers are regularly omitted when touting China’s economic rise. In 2010, the IMF ranked China 94th in terms of GDP per capita, with $7,519.
It ranked the United States seventh, with $47,284. Even the most vocal proponent of China’s impending hegemony, Martin Jacques, author of When China Rules the World, concedes that roughly 60% of exports in China come from foreign companies.
Foreign companies are responsible for 85% of all high-tech exports.
Nearly two-thirds of China’s populace can be classified as peasants, and, by its own calculation, the Asian nation has the sharpest rich-poor divide in the world, a situation the Chinese themselves are deeply unhappy with.
There are literally tens of thousands of “mass incidents” each year in China, such as demonstrations and strikes. Such incidents regularly involve thousands of angry civilians and hundreds of armed police. According to China’s Ministry of Public Security, there were 87,000 such incidents in 2005, up from 74,000 in 2004.
Indeed, it’s the facts and figures associated with China’s colossal boom that are most disturbing. Never has there been such a grand industrial experiment, and never has the planet and its inhabitants seen such devastating consequences. According to the World Bank, China is now the world’s most polluted nation, laying claim to 16 of the 20 most despoiled cities on Earth.
The New York Times has reported that only 1% of China’s 560 million urban residents breathe air deemed safe by the European Union, and 500 million Chinese lack access to safe drinking water. Not surprisingly, China’s ministry of health now lists cancer as the No. 1 cause of death.
But China’s pollution is something that needs to be experienced to be appreciated. Even in the countryside, air quality can be abysmal (with trees just 50 yards away out of focus), and in cities it can be downright frightening. There are industrial towns in China where it’s rare to see the sun. Economists might wow about the Communist leviathan’s command economy, but the statistics it produces come at a terrible — perhaps irreversible — cost.
A basic requirement for China’s moving toward anything approaching a superpower would be its evolution from world’s-factory floor to a more-brains-less-brawn economy, but that appears untenable. China’s advancement is hindered by its poorly educated citizenry, and central planning or not, the Chinese government fears the consequences of genuinely educating its people.
Superpowers are not built on dollars alone. Britain wasn’t; neither was the United States. America owes its superpower status to historical and cultural circumstances: It won the Second World War and the Cold War and has cultivated its status since with everything from military power to soft power.
Unlike China, America exports its education, values, innovation and ideas. It possesses an extensive list of favourable attributes China isn’t even aware of. China’s “ruling the world” ranges between mantra and marketing ploy, and is the wrong lens through which to view that country.
China has become influential and Americans would do well to examine it, but they don’t need to fear being replaced by it.
— Parfitt's Why China Will Never Rule the World goes on sale next month.
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Here’s an interesting take on China’s rise.
Sounds like there could be a Civil War in China’s not too distant future...
An idiotic article which forgets the Soviet Union existed and gave us a run for our money.
Unless, of course the kenyan America simply abdicates. Maybe it already has. The mugabe is striving mightily for just that result.
Wake me up when the Chi-Comm apes discover how to anneal a bolt.
China lacks superpower qualities...
Really, like size (land, resources, people), technology, military, ambition... Just what superpower quality does China lack?
...and hasn’t discovered any in its mad dash into capitalism.
Ah, characterizing this as a "mad dash" shows the author's disdain for Capitalism. A good socialist here writing this I guess...
China may post impressive, bottom-line numbers, but key numbers are regularly omitted when touting China’s economic rise. In 2010, the IMF ranked China 94th in terms of GDP per capita...
Per capita - yeah, way to manipulate statistics. Just because they happen to be the most populous Country on Earth. Use that population to pull down other numbers. Neat, if completely transparent, trick. We're not buying it.
Was thinking the same. With the coastal/interior geographic split reinforcing the industial/peasant divide, how long before it comes to blows?
No offense intended, but the Soviet Union did NOT “give us a run for our money.”
Sure we spent billions, if not trillions of dollars “fighting” the cold war, but the Soviet Union and its satellite states never came close to replacing us as a global superpower.
The author has a valid point, and I disagree with your statement that it is “an idiotic article”. Does China pose a threat to the USA? Absolutely. But the bigger threat is the asshat in the Whitehouse and the Democratic Party. We need to defeat those clowns first, then focus on China.
I, for one, am not trembling in my boots about China at present. Nor should you or anybody else in the US. Let’s get rid of Mawgli first.
The US “world power” status truly dates from about 1910. How did US “per capita” income stack up against Britain & France in 1900?
Per capita income, it would seem, is a lagging indicator.
And India went the other route...
because pretty definitely in 1910, Britain's navy was larger, more powerful and more feared. The land armies of the Tsar, Germany and Austro-Hungary dwarfed ours and the French 'soft power' was far, far in advance of the US's
World War I changed the first two and put in a sharp decline in the latter (which we overtook with 'talkies').
then, post WWII, the rest of the world was mostly ruined and the US was supreme for a few decades until the 70s when we got our challengers in the form of Germany and Japan and got hit by the oil crisis. Then the Asian tigers arose to start the change and in the late 90s the giant potentials of India and China arose and Eastern Europe emerged from communism and South America wizened up.
Oh, what a wonderful antidote to the poison of the Mainstream Media!
Thank you, Toronto Sun, Troy Parfitt and Clive! Thank you! Thank you!
The truth shall make you (us) free!
(”Mr. Gorbachev, TAKE DOWN THAT WALL!” THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA IS THE EVIL EMPIRE!)
I concur. The Europeans who founded America were not peasantry. America had a God-fearing population. America - this is starting around 1600, so for 150 years or about 7 generations BEFORE the Revolution - had a burgeoning population of craftsmen and tradesmen, and an intellectual elite whose morality and education was second to none. Most of the roots of these people are in the Reformation wars of Europe, and the earliest settlers were Protestants coming here for religious freedom. These were not ignorant people; they knew how to farm and manufacture and were possessed of a great work ethic to go with their skills. America was very unlike the undeveloped nations of today.
No. It's a way to clarify statistics.
That China is the world's second largest economy sounds ominous to some; but that it's 94th in per capita GDP puts it into context. The author is correct -- about time we read some sense about China.
1910 is roughly the point where US manufacturing output reached parity with Britain. The US fleet was numerically strong, but the “HMS Dreadnaught” ignited a new round in the naval shipbuilding race that very year.
The annual production numbers for coal, steel, farm produce & textiles were roughly even in 1910.
question about the “reached parity with Britain” — technically at that time Britain included the dominions of Canada and Australia as well as the colonies of India, South Africa, Malaysia, singapore, hong kong etc. — did we overtake all of these combined in 1910?
I doubt it, but many of those British dominions were markets and one’s like Canada & Australia were quasi-independent. Let me find the book & I’ll freepmail you the citation.
China also has serious geographic problems: desertification, limited ground water, lack of mineral
resources.
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