Here are some highlights of this popular 2022 book by academics Michael Beckley and Hal Brands:
* China’s economy is ten times larger than Russia’s, and Beijing’s military budget is quadruple the size of Moscow’s. Whereas Russia is essentially a two – dimensional great power that draws influence from its military and energy resources, China possesses a wider spectrum of coercive tools and can challenge the United States and its allies in almost any domain of geopolitical competition.
Xi Jinping presides over the largest military and economy (measured by purchasing power parity) on the planet. Chinese officials occupy leadership positions in many of the world’s major international institutions. More than half of the world’s countries already trade more with China than with the United States; and China has recently become the world’s largest overseas lender, doling out more credit than the World Bank, the IMF, or all twenty – two of the Paris Club governments (a group of the world’s major lending nations) combined. 11 Beijing’s economic power may be peaking, but no other country is so capable of challenging America globally.
As malevolent as an autocratic Russia is, the competition between Washington and Beijing is likely to be the defining geopolitical contest of our era. Failure to prevail in this struggle against a troubled but uniquely potent rival would have world – historical consequences.* “The history of failure in war,” General Douglas MacArthur explained in 1940, “can almost be summed up in two words: too late. Too late in comprehending the deadly purpose of a potential enemy; too late in preparedness; too late in uniting all possible forces for resistance; too late in standing with one’s friends.” It would be “the greatest strategical mistake in all history,” he added, if America failed to grasp “the vital moment.”
* The CCP envisions, rather, using a mix of attraction and coercion to ensure that the economies of maritime Asia are oriented toward Beijing rather than Washington, that smaller powers are properly deferential to the CCP, and that America no longer has the alliances, regional military presence, or influence necessary to create problems for China in its own front yard. As Zbigniew Brzezinski once wrote, “a Chinese sphere of influence can be defined as one in which the first question in the various capitals is, ‘What is Beijing’s view on this?’”
* In 2010, PRC foreign minister Yang Jiechi told ten Southeast Asian countries that they must defer to Beijing’s wishes because “China is a big country and you are small countries, and that is a fact.”
* As the great realist scholar Nicholas Spykman wrote, “The number of cases in which a strong dynamic state has stopped expanding . . . or has set modest limits to its power aims has been very few indeed.”
* In 2014, Xinhua reported that more than 40 percent of China’s arable land was suffering “degradation” from overuse. 40 According to official studies, pollution has destroyed nearly 20 percent of China’s arable land, an area the size of Belgium. 41 An additional 1 million square miles of farmland have become desert, forcing the resettlement of 24,000 villages and pushing the edge of the Gobi Desert to within fifty miles of Beijing. 42 With few options for increasing the food supply, Beijing has turned to belt tightening. In 2021, the government banned binge eating and lavish feasts and started requiring caterers to encourage customers to order smaller servings. Rationing is on the rise.
* China’s official gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate dropped from 15 percent in 2007 to 6 percent in 2019. That was already the slowest rate in thirty years, and then the COVID – 19 pandemic pushed China’s economy into the red.
A growth rate of 6 percent would still be spectacular, but only if it were true. Rigorous studies based on objectively observable data — such as electricity use, construction, tax revenues, and railway freight — show that China’s true growth rate is roughly half the official figure and China’s economy is 20 percent smaller than reported. 60 Senior officials, including the former head of the National Bureau of Statistics of China and the current Chinese premier, have confirmed that the government cooks its economic books.
