Until the global financial crisis, few in the United States believed the country was in decline. A minority now recognize this might be the case. The challenge to America’s position as premier global power comes from China. The fact it is only a developing country, with an economy much smaller than America’s and far less advanced, persuades many than this is a distant prospect.
China’s reemergence as a major power doesn’t challenge U.S.
BEIJING (Caixin Online) — In a long-term view, the rise of China is to be welcomed, but today China remains what the journalist Martin Wolf calls a “premature superpower.”
China’s current reputation for power benefits from projections about the future. In one poll, 44% of respondents mistakenly thought that China already had the world’s largest economy, compared to 27% who accurately picked the United States (which is three times larger). Martin Jacques even entitled his recent book “When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order.”