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Now comes China. American primacists are beside themselves that China seems to have the audacity to poke its nose into “the American Century.” Time Editor Henry Luce famously proclaimed the American Century in 1941, and it proved to be a remarkably astute observation and captivating, even mesmerizing, phrase for many Americans. The United States did become by far the world’s most powerful and richest country. And during several decades it often used its power and wealth wisely: founding the United Nations, creating the IMF and World Bank, establishing open trade with much of the world, inventing foreign aid and the Peace Corps, financing the global battle against AIDS.
But now China seems to be crowding the US primacy well before the American Century reaches 100. And China is doing this as a surprise entrant to the race, at least a surprise from the 20th-century perspective, making its recent rise even more unnerving to American primacists. Consider the Chinese economy as recently at 1980. For that year, the IMF estimates that China’s total GDP was a tiny 2.3 percent of the world economy, compared with America’s share, at 21.9 percent. China’s per capita GDP was a minuscule 2.4 percent of the US per capita GDP. Fast forward 37 years. The IMF now calculates that China accounts for 18.3 percent of world output compared with 15.4 percent of the United States. China’s output per person is now around 39 percent of America’s output per person according to the same IMF measurements.
Many American primacists can’t believe their eyes. Some argue that China’s economy is a giant bubble that will soon implode, following the way of the Soviet Union. This is not the case. The Soviet economy was technologically separated from the US-led trading system and, in the end, could not keep up. China, by contrast, has achieved its remarkable economic growth since 1980 precisely by adopting global technologies and integrating the Chinese economy closely with the world economy. China has also become a highly innovative economy as well.
Rather than let China catch up, the primacists say, the United States should badger and harass China economically, engage the Chinese in a new arms race, and even undermine the one-China policy that has been the basis of US-China bilateral relations, so that China ends up in economic retreat, retracing the steps of the British Empire, the Soviet Union, and Japan. One theory making the rounds indeed holds that Trump wants to sidle up to Vladimir Putin to team up against China for just this purpose.
In my view, such an approach toward China would be profoundly misguided and very dangerous. It is based on the false idea that global economics must be about winners versus losers, the United States versus China, rather than about mutual gains through trade and technological advance. Moreover, the idea of cornering China is not only unwise but unachievable.
Trump blames China for the plight of American workers left unemployed by China’s exports to the United States, but he fails to understand or acknowledge the many gains to the United States from our trade with China, including the higher profits and wages of US companies exporting to China and the lower costs enjoyed by US consumers of China’s exports. If Trump really wants to help American workers, he should tax and redistribute the soaring US profits and incomes of the rich, rather than open a trade war with China.
Even worse, an American effort to weaken China is doomed to fail. When the United States pressed Britain to give up its empire, Britain was fighting for its very survival, and with a population just one third that of America’s. When the United States pressured Japan in the 1980s, Japan’s economy was only one-third of America’s, and Japan depended on the United States for its military security.
China, by contrast, has a larger economy, is four times more populous, and is America’s creditor, not its debtor. China has strong and growing trade, investment, and diplomatic relations with other countries all over the world that would likely be strengthened, not weakened, by US belligerence. It’s also important to remember that China’s proud history as a unified nation is 10 times longer than America’s, around 2,250 years compared with around 225 years.
Aside from the usual litany of exaggerated or false charges against China (currency manipulator, unfair trader, etc.), the most recent rap is that China is a dangerously expansionist power. If ever the pot has called the kettle black, here is a case. America has military bases in roughly 70 foreign countries, while China has one small overseas base (in Djibouti). America outspends China on the military by more than two to one. For decades, America has been in nonstop overseas wars and regime-change operations, while China has been in very few overseas conflicts, all short-lived. China, in short, has not been an expansionist or aggressive power, while the United States has sought unrivaled global power.
While the United States cannot dominate China, it need not fear China’s dominance either. Yes, China is now larger economically than the United States, and will remain so, but the United States also remains far richer in per capita terms and will likely continue to be so throughout the 21st century. Moreover, China’s high growth rates are now slowing markedly, not because the Chinese economy is collapsing but because it is maturing. “Catching-up” growth slows down as it succeeds. Also, China is aging rapidly, and will have a median age above 50 years by mid-century. A mature, aging, and slower-growing economy that is still much poorer than the United States in per capita terms is hardly a deep threat to America’s own security.
If Trump tries to provoke China into a new arms race or trade war, the results will be a huge debacle for the United States and a potential threat for the world. America’s well-being depends on the maturity of judgement to cooperate with China as a major global power that can and should share the responsibilities to promote global peace and sustainable development. Working together through the United Nations, China and the United States can and should work together and with other countries to prevent or end regional wars, stop terrorism, and confront common hazards such as global warming and newly emerging diseases.
Jeffrey D. Sachs is University Professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, and author of “The Age of Sustainable Development.”
