Over the last decade many analysts have forecast the relative decline of the US in the face of rapid economic growth and developmental success in China. There has also been concern that China's rise carries with it a risk of direct Sino-American military conflict over Taiwan, or even indirect war as the result of the US acting as a security guarantor for such east Asian allies as Japan and South Korea. Ou and gas resources under the disputed territorial waters of Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, and Malaysia could become sources of conflict as Beijing tries to secure the energy it needs to keep its growth miracle on track while attempting to ease itself off a heavy dependence on dirty coal. Is China destined to replace the US as the world's leading hegemonic state? Is it likely to challenge the US as the most capable military power within the next 20 years? The answer to both questions is no.China has too many fundamental liabilities on its geostrategic balance sheet and its domestic political economy is too fraught with problems and major environmental strains for its elite to spend much time and expense in a bid for complete functional parity with the world's sole military superpower. The global military eagle will continue to soar, and the Chinese military dragon will mostly stay in a crouched posture, confined to its territorial base and the coastal regions of the western Pacific - except for troops in support of UN peacekeeping, a field in which Beijing has made modest strides.1 The Chinese military-industrial-scientific complex is still too smaU and too young to be able to challenge the American military developmental behemoth. The Chinese defence budget is too smaU, and successive Chinese governments have spent too long depending on a nuclear minimum deterrent that is highly vulnerable to preventive strikes with conventional weapons by American naval and air forces.2 Chinese leaders have not impressed their neighbours with their appeal for a harmonious region operating on China's terms. It has territorial disputes with Japan, South Korea, southeast Asian states, and India. Its economic rise has been impressive and Asian states' trade with China has grown impressively, but most fear China's rise even as they profit from it. And few want the Americans to go home. The great American empire still holds the most important political and diplomatic cards in any bilateral game of poker with Beijing, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.Over the past decade China became the greatest carbon emitter on the planet, surpassing the US, as well as the largest auto market in the world - again surpassing the US. In 2010 China's GDP overtook that of Japan to take the number two position in global economic production.3 In 2011 economists think Chinese overall research and development will surpass Japan's for the first time, again locking up the global number two spot after the US.4Not surprisingly, China's defence industries have grown apace as well. From fighter jets to ballistic missiles and from assault weapons to land mines and anti-ship cruise missiles, Chinese aerospace and defence industries have pushed the country up the rankings of international arms exporters. Chinese technologies are part of the reason for the success of Pakistan's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile capability, and they may be part of Iran's success in building its nuclear infrastructure too. In 2010 China leapfrogged up the international arms exporters list, just ahead of the UK and France, and just behind the US, Russia, and Germany, in that order.5 Chinese weapons exports were a little less than one quarter of Russia's and about one sixth of the Americans', but the rapid Chinese growth in this indicator became cause for further concern among threat analysts in Washington. Such concern is arguably misplaced but will not dissipate because Washington's security bureaucracy needs a Chinese threat to sustain the world's most voracious mnitary-industrial-scientific complex. …
Search from 250 M+ research papersSearch from 250 M+ research papers
Open Access
Jun 5, 2024
Miaoru Lin 
