The Economist with an article by Yale historian Paul Kennedy on what to watch as China overtakes the US.
Kennedy argues China will pull ahead citing three significant and longer-term shifts: in international relations, military strength and economic power.
1. The distribution of power has shifted from bipolar (US/USSR) to now multipolar:
- China, America, India and Russia, followed by the European Union and Japan, and even Indonesia and Iran.
2. America's armed forces are considerably smaller and older than they were in the 1980s
- 70-year-old B-52 bombers
- 30-year-old Arleigh Burke destroyers
3. Relative economic strength. The biggest global transformation since the 1980s has been in the sheer size of the Chinese economy today as compared to America's.
- an amazing flip is happening in world affairs due to China's combination of demographic size and rising prosperity. With a population of 1.4bn compared to America's 330m, its citizens need only to achieve half the income of the average American for its total economy to be twice as large.
There is more detail at the Economist piece, link here (may be gated)
