It has almost become a piece of conventional wisdom among some segments of the media and academia that America is declining and China is rising to take its place. The American Age is rapidly fading, the narrative goes, and the Chinese Age is dawning. As Chinese President Hu Jintao made his visit to Washington this week, this meme was in overdrive.
Do yourself a favor and don’t believe it. While history obviously can’t be forecast in advance – if it could, psychics would be the best historians – the safest bet is that the 21st century will be a lot like the 20th century in so far as it is another American Century.
America has its problems, no question. We have an ever-growing debt crisis and face a very real threat from international terrorism, among other concerns. But the declinists seem to only take into account America’s problems as if America is the only country that has serious hurdles to overcome in the 21st century. China, conversely, is too often viewed as on an unalterable upward trajectory – like American home values circa 2006.
At one point in our culture this would have been called a fairytale, but today we call such analysis serious political science.
It’s not.
For starters, far from having this unimpeded path towards superpower-dom, China must deal with the fact that it is growing old – rapidly. China’s one-child policy has sunk China’s fertility rate far below the replacement rate – which means that China is destined to become the world’s largest geriatrics ward. That is why some experts have noted China will grow old before it grows rich.
While it is undeniably true that hundreds of millions of Chinese people have seen their standard of living rise since China’s “reform and opening” three decades ago, it is also true that there remains roughly 800 million rural poor in China that exist in an unenviable condition, a possible recipe for instability.
These are just a couple of the glaring challenges that China must overcome. But let us not forget its philosophical problem as well. China is an authoritarian state and as much as it has allowed in some elements of the free market system, at the end of the day China is a command economy with central planners. History says that this approach is bound to falter.
Last summer, the press heralded the fact that China surpassed Japan to become the second-biggest economy in the world as an important feat. It is certainly good news for China. But let’s keep it in perspective. China has roughly ten times the population of Japan. You could frame it the way the media did. You might also put it this way: China is now only 10 times poorer than Japan on a per capita basis. In other words, China still remains very poor — as in more than twice as poor as Mexico on a per capita basis.
The United States has enumerable advantages over China and other so-called rising powers that are often too little noted. We remain the only country that can project military power across the globe – it will be a long time until China can project military power even outside of the Asian sphere. We are the worldwide leader in “industries of the future” like nanotechnology and biotechnology, we have a fertility rate at or near-replacement, the American idea remains attractive to the beaten down masses of the world, American popular culture is widely followed and desired across the globe, our welfare state may be problematic but it is nowhere as burdensome as many other countries, we do a pretty great job of assimilating our immigrants unlike too many countries, and our universities are far and away the best in the world and a source of great technological innovation as well as a magnet for the world’s best and brightest. And this is just for starters.
So, yes, America has problems. But our problems are not nearly as difficult to correct as the problems of others — especially China’s — even if we recognize that they are serious. For instance, for America to make the 21st century another American century, we have to right our fiscal ship through serious entitlement reform. For years, this seemed impossible.
But we have an example in New Jersey right now of a governor, Chris Christie, not only taking on many taboo subjects once thought to be too politically risky to tackle, but taking them on and remaining popular with his electorate. This is an important example for Washington politicians to see, especially as it applies to taking on entitlement reform.
In addition to entitlement reform, if we put in place a comprehensive immigration policy that protects our borders but allows for the steady inflow of immigrants – especially skilled but unskilled as well – and reform our tax code in order to unleash the creative energies of our entrepreneurial class, our ship will be more than steadied.
It seems to be a favorite game of some to periodically come up with a new country that is rapidly overtaking the United States as a global power. At one time it was the Soviet Union, in the 1980s it was Japan, then the European Union, and now China. Before you know it, it will be Afghanistan — with their surprising and unforeseen Afghan economic miracle — that will be prophesied from ivory tower citadels as a threat to American hegemony.
Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer is right when he says decline is a choice. Our national leaders should be making it abundantly clear to friend and foe alike that it is a choice we have no intention of taking.