Steve Bannon is wrong about just about everything, but not this: America and China are heading for a showdown in the foreseeable future. It doesn’t necessarily have to involve military force, and it may not be imminent, but it’s going to happen in my lifetime.
In a sense, China is the successor to the USSR as our greatest geopolitical rival, so how do the two stack up? Here’s my analysis:
- Military: Fortunately, China is not a militaristic society. The USSR was a greater threat here. However, China’s superior economy will permit substantial improvements in the country’s military capabilities, if the government, as seems likely, chooses to pursue them. The gap will probably close fairly quickly.
- Ideology: Soviet communism was a universal ideology with considerable appeal to anyone who was willing to close his eyes to how the system actually worked in practice. Chinese “communism” is actually a form of Chinese exceptionalism, which doesn’t have any obvious attractions to the rest of the world. Heavy-handed government actions towards dissidents don’t help, either. The USSR had the edge here.
- Economy: This one isn’t even close; the Soviets didn’t make anything anyone wanted to buy except weapons, while China is clearly destined to become the largest economy in the world.
The bottom line is that China represents a very different challenge than the USSR. Its economic model has serious flaws in the long run, but it is doubtful that the system will just implode, as the USSR did.