They were mostly right.Ĭhina’s economic clout, beyond any other consideration, still serves as the foundation for the country’s vast influence. When Washington looked to be terminally weakened by the 2008 financial crisis, Chinese officials made their move, betting that overseas investments and economic coercion were the keys to outcompeting the West. Indeed, for decades before Xi’s ascent into power, CCP elites made clear this dictum would be discarded as soon as the international balance of power shifted in China’s favor. But the decision to jettison China’s policy of hiding its capabilities and biding its time began much earlier. Xi is often said to have tapped into Chinese resentment over its colonial-era humiliations to kick-start its modern-day competition with the United States. In a contested resource environment, tensions will almost certainly emerge between China’s army, navy, and domestic security apparatus. This raises a tantalizing question: What if, instead of being a competitor, China cannot actually afford to compete at all? More important is that China’s fizzling economic miracle may soon undercut the CCP’s ability to wage a sustained struggle for geostrategic dominance.
It suggests he lacks confidence in his own plan to transform China’s unsustainable economic model into one that can deliver on the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) promise of “high quality” growth. More surprising is that Xi, in an attempt to stabilize China’s finances, has largely abandoned his ambitious plans to overhaul China’s growth model, choosing instead to double down on the very economic policies that got China into today’s economic bind in the first place. economy is forecast to grow faster than China’s for the first time since 1976, with strong indications that China has entered a prolonged era of slow growth. Yet more and more signs point to a China that is fully unprepared for the competition with the United States it once sought.Ĭhina’s economy, long in decline, is now in freefall-thanks to Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s mismanagement.
What if the new era of great-power competition was over before it had even begun? Many of today’s fears about a multigeneration conflict with Beijing rest on linear extrapolations of yesteryear’s data, harkening back to a time when China appeared on track to supplant the United States as the world’s largest economy.