Will China replace America?
It’s a question that scholars and students often debate at cocktail parties: Will China dominate the 21st century?
The answer, according to British author and China scholar Jonathan Fenby, is a resounding no.
Why? He wrote a book:
Like a contemporary Chinese history cheat sheet, it explains how a multitude of factors, from China’s top-down political system to its insufficient pension system, contribute to his conclusion. For all the change China has undergone, it “has reverted again and again to a model that has become outdated.”
How likely is it that China can repair their base of power (economy and loyal people) and continue advancing to achieve dominance in the future?
Strategypage has bad news for those who think China can overcome their challenges:
A third of China’s most successful businessmen (and some women) are moving their families and fortunes overseas. Many of these economic refugees are obtaining dual citizenship wherever they can. Many are sending their wives to give birth in the United States, so that some of their children will be United States citizens. These refugees already have moved over half a trillion dollars in assets out of China and at current rates that will double in the next three years.
These wealthy refugees fear the pollution and corruption in China and are losing faith in the current government (a dictatorship run by the Chinese Communist Party) to set things right before the country collapses into another period of civil strife and economic collapse. There is little faith in the armed forces, who are seen as just another bunch of corrupt government bureaucrats.
While the government says that everything is under control, the one group of non-government employees most likely to know what’s really going on are running for the exits.
This exodus is noticed and the government doesn't know how to stop it without causing a stir.
It doesn't seem so odd that China's leaders seem worried about the French Revolution:
If Tocqueville's book [about the French Revolution] is being read, it is because at least some of the men who rule China are wondering whether their country is near a tipping point -- in which a seemingly minor event (the self-immolation of a Tunisian street vendor, for example) sets off a conflagration.
China might reach a point where they think they must risk war rather than risk a revolution that destroys the Chinese Communist Party as the dominant political and military power.
And worse, I don't assume that civil strife and economic collapse means that simply somebody other than the Chinese Communist Party runs China. There could be many Chinas after that civil strife:
With a state both cruel and failing economically, governing a continent-sized population with a history of fragmentation, I don't know why we need to guess which course the government of China will follow. The continent of China is big enough that it could follow all the possible paths.
Who knows? The communists could even run one or two of them. China is a big place after all--if not world sized, then at least continent sized.
