A few days ago I said I was "on the fence" over the issue of China hawkery. A few people suggested I expand a bit on this, and why not?
The nickel answer is that China is an ascendant power that's often a bad actor on the world stage, but it's also a country with a lot of weaknesses that make it less dangerous than it seems at first. So here's a brief rundown of China basics, both the scary and benign. When you add them all up, I'd say there's reason to be concerned about China but no real reason to panic.
Manufacturing
This is the big one, and there's no question that China massively dominates the world manufacturing scene these days:
But there's more to the story. First, manufacturing has become steadily less important to global output, and countries like Vietnam and India are starting to eat into China's labor advantage. In a sense, China has hinged its future on a dying sector. There's also this:
This is a measure of a country's capability to produce goods and services. China has made impressive strides, but the US still ranks highest in the world.
Military
China has spent a lot to upgrade its military in recent decades, but it still doesn't spend as much as us:
China's navy is technically larger than ours, but we lead substantially in cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and aircraft carriers. You might reasonably wonder what else there is, and it turns out the answer is that China has lots and lots of frigates, corvettes, and auxiliaries. But those don't add up to much:
Needless to say, there's considerable disagreement about what this really means. Is the huge US lead in capital ships relevant, or is it actually a disadvantage in an era of drones and highly accurate cruise missiles? And what about China's widespread practice of building dual-use civilian ships?
There are lots of ifs here, and it's hard to come to a firm conclusion. China is certainly a peer military competitor with enormous productive capacity, but on most metrics they're still well behind the US—and even further behind if you count US allies.
Military intentions
This is a different subject. China may be expanding its military aggressively, but what do they intend to do with it?
A lot of people scoff at this, but I remain influenced by China's recent history on this score: They really don't seem to be an expansionist power. Aside from Korea in the '50s and Vietnam very briefly in the '70s, they've never shown much interest in military adventurism beyond their own borders.
What they have shown is an extreme dedication toward protecting territory they view as within their borders. This has produced border clashes with India; repression of Tibet; crackdowns in Hong Kong; endless gunboat bullying in the South China Sea; and, most famously, threats against Taiwan.
The hostility here is real, but it's limited. What's more, aside from Taiwan, China has virtually no capacity to project power beyond its immediate borders and has shown no intention of building one.
All of this is of dubious importance in a potential future of drone and AI warfare, but that's a much broader subject than just China. At the moment, China simply doesn't seem to have designs on any territory it doesn't already consider its own.
Taiwan
After Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan in 2022, China made its displeasure extremely visible. They increased exercises designed to simulate an invasion; they shot lots of missiles over Taiwan; they began a series of reckless encounters with US and allied forces; and they ramped up intrusions into Taiwanese airspace.
At the same time, there's little evidence that China has made any recent plans to do anything more. They don't appear to be any closer to an invasion or blockade than they've ever been.
One thing that influences my thinking on this subject is Taiwan itself: they just don't seem all that concerned. They continue to spend a modest 2.2% of GDP on military defenses, which is not much for a country supposedly at high risk of attack. Even South Korea spends more, and they've never truly been in much danger from North Korea. Places under serious military threat, like Israel, Russia, Lebanon, Ukraine, and others, spend twice as much or more.
Economy
China's economic growth has been spectacular over the past few decades. There's no questioning that. But it's still way, way behind the US:
China is growing faster than the US on a percentage basis, but over the past decade absolute GDP per capita has increased $30,000 in the US compared to only $15,000 for China. They have a lot of catch-up to do, and despite everything, China is still stuck in the doldrums of other mid-tier countries. They just aren't going to be a rich country anytime soon:
And another thing: Chinese growth has been wildly uneven. GDP per capita may be a respectable $25,000 these days, but only in a few rich coastal provinces. Its vast interior is still desperately poor:
Strategic exports
China really has only two truly strategic exports: minerals and pharmaceuticals. They can hurt us with both, but not in the long run. China's strategic minerals (rare earths and others) have built up world dominance not because only China has them, but because China supplies them cheaply and doesn't much care about environmental safety. The West has already begun to restart mining and refining of strategic minerals and will most likely become self sufficient within the next 5-10 years.
As for pharmaceuticals, China has no special advantages at all. The rest of the world still has huge manufacturing capacity that can be ramped up if necessary, and low-income countries like India and Malaysia are increasing their production. This is a paper tiger at most.
2017
I don't have a better name for this category, but something went suddenly wrong in China around 2017-18. Youth unemployment doubled:
And fertility rates plummeted:
Fertility rates have been dropping worldwide, but China's decline has been truly extraordinary. Taken together, these two trends point to some kind of serious disillusionment among China's young people. I have no idea what's behind it, but it's real.
Xi Jinping
It's easy to make the mistake of confusing Xi Jinping's aggressiveness for strength and smarts. It's neither. Xi is a paranoid nationalist who has sent China down a rabbit hole of bad policies.
The reality: Xi has united practically the entire world against China. He has adopted shortsighted economic policies that protect state power—and his own—at the expense of difficult but essential market reforms. He fights America and the West even though productive cooperation was always on the table. His behavior during the COVID pandemic displayed all the usual feckless Chinese hypersensitivity to perceived criticism. He has wasted endless resources on his dream of panopticon surveillance and the Great Firewall to keep his people under tight control. He has ramped up China's pointless excesses of commercial espionage and cyber warfare. The Chinese property sector remains a massive shitshow that he seems helpless against.
No country can take on the whole world, and building a few ports in Africa and South America don't change that. China hasn't a single friend among its neighbors, and I include both Russia and North Korea in that assessment. Rich countries are increasingly united against China's economic belligerency. And even poor countries that were the supposed beneficiaries of Xi's Belt and Road initiative have turned against him when their loans came due.
China is unquestionably powerful and ascendant, but it's also alone and struggling. Once you account for that, "on the fence" over the Chinese threat is probably about the right place to be.
Democrats have some issues to address, but 2024 was a fairly routine loss, not a world historical realignment. Let's get a grip here.
