What else does China need to become a great power?

China has achieved a rise that has been sought in vain in human history: the country is experiencing above-average economic growth. At $ 13 trillion, economic output is 43 times higher than it was in 1978. Military spending has been increasing for years, and China has also caught up with innovations in recent decades. President Xi Jinping talks about the “Chinese dream”. According to him, the People’s Republic should become a “superpower” by turning 100 in a good 30 years. So is the United States of America lurching into decline as a world power and China taking its place?

In science, a whole line of research deals with the transfer of power and the rise and fall of hegemony, the most powerful state in the international system. Political scientist Iris Wurm from Goethe University in Frankfurt explains that two indicators provide information on whether states are going up or down. “First of all, it’s about the power you have,” says Wurm. This power can be defined and evaluated in different ways: the analysis of the transfers of power included “objectively measurable indicators” such as economic growth, innovative capacity and military spending of a state. Second, it depends on whether states convert this objectively obtained power into a will to shape. Does the winning state want to change the international order at all? “

How the United States Became a World Power

The rivalry between Washington and Beijing threatens the success of the globalized world. On the one hand, President Trump is taking a confrontational course against Beijing, keyword trade war. On the other hand, Washington abandons multilateral treaties such as the Paris Agreement on Climate Change; suspends payments to the World Health Organization and blocks the World Trade Organization. “If the hegemony in exercise is only focused on itself, this can be seen as an indication that its will to power is waning, and with it its interest in shaping the international order,” says the scientist. Is that the consequence of “America First”?

A Look Back: The United States’ rise to world power began with the Spanish-American War of 1898. The United States intervened in Cuba, and the Philippines, a colony of Spaniards at the time, lured Asia as an attractive “spoil of war.” The result of the war was that Spain was expelled as a regional hegemon, the United States expanded its territory and thus assured its political, strategic and economic interests.

Then the United States began to rise to become a great maritime power. Washington viewed the Navy as an important element of national defense. In addition to the urgency to validate foreign policy and the struggle for expansion, innovations and the rise to an economic power played an important role. While Britain was still far ahead of the United States in 1870, by 1913 the young nation already accounted for the majority of economic output compared to Russia, France, Great Britain, and Germany. In the United States, the population grew rapidly, as did the proportion of the urban population, contributing to a significantly higher level of industrialization. The per capita income of Americans exceeded that of other nations as early as 1914.