Superpower China?
CHINA’S big military parade in October led many to ask if it’s gearing up to upend America’s sole superpower status. Being a superpower has many axes: economic, military, scientific, political and soft power. How do China’s muscles compare with America’s on them? Also, the superpower contest is unlike a body building one, where one displays muscles without using them. A superpower must use its muscles to not only keep its status but also run the global order. Is China ready to lead or create a bipolar world soon?
China contributes 27 per cent of global industrial output against 17pc by the US and is far more productive. The US is ahead in high-end areas like aerospace. But China may close that gap soon. The economy has another key sub-axis: finance and other services. There, the US contributes over 30pc of global output against China’s 15pc. The gap in finance is bigger with the US dollar denominating over 50pc of global trade, foreign reserves and currency flows against less than 5pc in China’s yuan. The finance and information sectors are more critical as they control industry too. National per capita incomes too rise faster when high-end services expand. In factories, only a few managers have high wages. But in high-end service firms, most jobs are white-collar ones.
China faces far stronger headwinds in closing this gap than the residual industrial gap. Firstly, its tightly state-controlled finance sector lags far behind US in innovation and flexibility. Excelling in the top-down industrial sector blends well with China’s hierarchical culture and politics. But these traits blend poorly with the creativity and non-hierarchy high-end service that firms need.
An expansion in such sectors may stress China’s autocratic politics as people in white-collar jobs seek more freedom. Secondly, as US trends show, there is a conflict between being an industrial and financial superpower. An industrial power needs a weak currency to boost exports while a financial superpower’s currency appreciates fast given its global use and massive money inflows.
So, China will either have to find a magic formula to beat this conflict or choose between the two. If it chooses industry, it won’t dominate global economics or have high incomes. If it chooses finance, it may lose industrial jobs and create many jobs to employ its huge population. But this will bring it in conflict with the West which is already chafing at losing industrial jobs to China. The West will have nowhere to go as China’s industrial jobs may shift to large Asian states like India and Indonesia (we with our inept rulers may miss even that boat).
Is China ready to lead or create a bipolar world?
Scientifically, China is closing the gap fast and may surpass the US soon. China is catching up militarily, too, but faces more challenges in surpassing the US. Its military muscles are much smaller. The US has a global presence and major alliances while China is a regional power with no major alliances as such. The US military has been war-tested often while China has only had minor border wars. The US projects its military power unabashedly while China is still cautious on that front. As with finance, China’s military rise will up tensions with the US.
Politically, the US has far stronger political alliances and runs global institutions. China has only made minor forays into global politics (for instance, in Saudi-Iran talks). Smaller states like South Africa were far more active on Gaza than China. Finally, America’s media, entertainment and educational sectors lend it immense soft power but its political and military atrocities lessen it, while China’s rapid economic rise and political stance bestow global respect on it but its internal autocracy lessens this.
So, China still focuses on industrial progress and seems unwilling to expend political and economic capital to shape the global order. It prefers to rise in a US-led global system rather than challenge it or even create a bipolar world. Even if it tries to do so, it will face far greater internal and external stresses than in becoming an industrial superpower.
Will the world gain if China tries and wins? The US’s ugly hegemony and its falling powers demand a change to the current order. America now creates more global problems than it solves. But will China be a more benign superpower? The US, too, resembled today’s benign China before World War II but later became a monster. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The world will be better off with global democracy than by trading one king with another. The king is dead; long live democracy.
The writer has a PhD degree in political economy from the University of California, Berkeley, and 25 years of grassroots to senior-level experiences across 50 countries.
Published in Dawn, December 9th, 2025