The Way the Canoes Are Paddling

I have my disagreements with China perma-bear Gordon Chang. However, I encourage you to read his piece at The National Interest explaining how China’s ascendancy and America’s decline are both greatly exaggerated:

Xi’s reversal of liberal economic policies has been matched by his reversal of political and social policies. He has de-institutionalized the Communist Party, thereby heightening the risk of political instability. At the same time, he has demanded conformity—“absolute loyalty”—and tightened social controls. The institution of a nationwide social credit system , which will assign a score to every resident for all his or her actions, is but one example of the state’s attempt at total control of society.

China, as a result, is moving from authoritarianism back to totalitarianism, readopting a model that brought the People’s Republic to the brink of economic failure twice, once during the Great Leap Forward of the late 1950s and early 1960s and again during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of the mid-1960s to mid-1970s. China’s economy cannot be expected to do well in an increasingly intolerant political atmosphere, as the country’s own history suggests.

And there is one more reason to doubt Chinese economic dominance: demography. China will soon join the ranks of shrinking nations. The population will peak somewhere around 1.44 billion people at the end of next decade according to the U.N.’s World Population Prospects: The 2017 Revision. By the end of the century, China will have a population of 1.02 billion.

That’s why I continue to say “don’t worry about China, worry about the U. S.” China’s problems will catch up with it soon enough. In the meantime we should stop reacting as though they had already surpassed the U. S. and look at them more critically and skeptically.

Americans need to look more closely at the most reliable gauge of the relative status of China and the U. S. There are presently about 110,000 Americans in China, an all-time record. At the same time there are about 3.8 million Chinese in the United States. Look at the direction the canoes are paddling in.