There’s a post by Daniel C. Lynch at the blog of Stanford University Press which presents what might for some be a counter-intuitive argument—China’s precipitous rise is over.
The Rise of China is over.
Note, by the way, that in saying the rise of China is over, I am not saying that China is on the verge of a collapse—I am not even certain what a collapse would look like. There are many people outside of China, portentously predicting a collapse, who evidently have in mind something like the disintegration of the Soviet Union—which, given the multiethnic, empire-like nature of the PRC, one could never rule out completely. But after poring over interviews, books, “internal circulation only†(neibu) policy analyses, and open source journals concerning what Chinese elites think the future holds, I found no suggestion that anyone of influence in the PRC expects a collapse—they do however, express anxiety over an impending “leveling offâ€.
Read the whole thing. His hypothesis is hardly surprising. It even has a name: “the middle income trap”. It’s a commonplace in developing countries, meteoric rise up to a certain point and then much, much slower growth.
I think that China will continue to be a very powerful country and it will continue to grow. It won’t threaten the United States which I presume will be a disappointment to some in Washington who are longing to fight a “near peer” war with a technologically advanced enemy.
