China's Not a Superpower
Minxin Pei
The Diplomat, December 29, 2009
In world history, only one country--the United States--has truly acquired all the capabilities of a superpower: a technologically advanced economy, a hi-tech military, a fully integrated nation, insuperable military and economic advantages vis-a-vis potential competitors, capacity to provide global public goods and an appealing ideology. Even in its heydays, the former Soviet Union was, at best, a one-dimensional superpower--capable of competing against the United States militarily, but lacking all the other crucial instruments of national power.
Meanwhile, the challenges China faces in becoming the next superpower are truly daunting. Even as its economic output is expected to exceed $5 trillion in 2010, per capita income in China will remain under $4000, roughly one-tenth of the level of the United States and Japan. More than half of the Chinese population still live in villages, most without access to safe drinking water, basic healthcare, or decent education. With urbanization growing at about 1 percent a year, it will take another three decades for China to reduce the size of its peasantry to a quarter of the population. As long as China has an oversized peasantry, with hundreds of millions of low-income rural residents surviving on the margins of modernity, it is unlikely to become a real superpower.
In fact, the likelihood that Chinas growth will slow down significantly in the next two decades is real and even substantial. Several favourable structural factors, such as the demographic dividend (derived from a relatively younger population), virtually unlimited access to the global markets, high savings rates and discounted environmental costs, will gradually disappear. Like Japan,
As the worlds second largest exporter (although China is expected to surpass Germany as the worlds largest exporter in 2010), China is encountering protectionist resistance in its major markets (the United States and Europe). In particular, Chinas policy of maintaining an under-valued currency to keep its exports competitive is now being blamed for worsening global imbalances and weakening the economies of its trading partners.
A third constraint on Chinas future growth is environmental degradation. Over the past three decades, China has neglected its environment for the sake of economic growth, with disastrous consequences. Today, air and water pollution kills about 750,000 people a year. The aggregate costs of pollution are roughly 8 percent of the GDP. Official estimates suggest that mitigating environmental degradation requires an investment of an additional 1.5 percent of GDP each year. Climate change will severely affect Chinas water supplies and exacerbate the drought in the north. Chinas business-as-usual approach to growth, which relies on cheap energy and no-cost pollution, will no longer be sustainable
First and foremost, Chinese leaders will find themselves in search of a global vision and a political mission. Countries dont become superpowers merely because they have acquired hard power. The exercise of power must be informed by ideas and visions that have universal appeal
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At the moment, China is economically prosperous but ideologically bankrupt. It believes in neither communism nor liberal democracy
China's Not a Superpower - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace