April 20, 2025
China’s superiority has to be countered by a new, advanced coalition of the United States with its allies around the world, according to a just published article in Foreign Affairs, by Kurt Campbell, and Rush Doshi. Underestimating China
I will summarize their essential argument, which is grounded in the flawed axioms of the rules based order and its perverted zero-sum mentality. In brief: 1) China’s superiority over the U.S. has to be acknowledged; 2) China can only be effectively thwarted by a new type of alliance led by the U.S.; 3) U.S. cannot lead such an alliance under President Trump’s current diplomacy.
They argue that the U.S. is weaker than China in vital categories of military and economic capacity, and the West needs a new type of collective strategy with its international partners to respond to China’s hegemony.
This paper was published on April 10, after the imprint of President Donald Trump, but before the consequences of his so called tariff “Liberation Day.” It is more than a wake-up call for the rules-based order, which is already suffering from severe political and financial crises. With brutal honesty and a cache of devastating statistics, the authors attempt to break through any delusions about China’s dominance.
China’s Superiority
They write:
China will remain vastly more powerful than any past U.S. competitor on metrics most relevant for competition…China is the first to outmatch the United States in size alone as well as in several strategically relevant areas…Beijing will remain more formidable than any past challenger.
The greatest risk is not declinism: it is complacency, leading to a lack of strategic intention and a failure to catalyze action to rise to the China challenge. If anything, the United States–particularly in the era of President Trump–risks overestimating unilateral power and underestimating China’s ability to counter it.
The authors’ thesis is that in great power competition, scale and capacity matter-quantity has a quality all its own. That the U.S. cannot catch up to China’s advantage in scale by itself…its only viable path lies in coalition with others.
They warn Trump; it would be particularly unwise to go-it alone in a complex global competition. By retreating to its sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere, the United States would cede the rest of the world to a globally engaged China.
This warning, published in the Anglo-American Establishment’s premier magazine, exposes a challenge for the rules-based order that is unsolvable owing to their ideologically flawed world view. Viewing nations as victors and victims, the mighty and the less mighty, in a zero-sum fixed world, the political-financial elites wrongly perceive China as an enemy whose development must be contained, if not suppressed.
Contrary to the prejudices and false beliefs that dominate the believers of the rules-based order, the universe is not fixed; but actually, growing and expanding. Nations are composed of human beings, who are uniquely endowed with the potential for creative thought. Human-cognitive intervention in the physical universe changes the world in which we live. All nations have a shared interest in providing for the physical and spiritual needs of their citizens, who are universally indistinguishable in their common innate creative power. This understanding of the commonality of human creative thought is overlooked by the overwhelming majority of political leaders and the world’s population but is the secret to all successful foreign and domestic policies.
The authors insist that if Washington and its allies are going to triumph over China, they must not risk:
underestimating both the latent and actual power of the only competitor in a century whose GDP has surpassed 70% of that of the United States. On critical metrics, China has already outmatched the United States. Economically, it boasts twice the manufacturing capacity of the United States. Technologically, it dominates everything from electric vehicles to fourth-generation nuclear reactors and now produces more active patents and top-cited scientific publications annually. Militarily, it features the world’s largest Navy, bolstered by shipbuilding capacity 200 times as large as that of the United States; vastly greater missile stocks; and the world’s most advanced hypersonic capabilities
Washington is filled with seminars and papers by numerous think tanks, that believe inherent weaknesses in China will undermine their future dominance. However, Campbell and Doshi warn: Emphasizing China’s weaknesses risk understating its scale and capacity on the metrics and time frame most relevant for great power competition.
In their attempt to make sure this reality is not overlooked, they write, Accounting for purchasing power and local prices using the world bank’s methodology, although imperfect, reveals that China’s economy surpassed the US economy about a decade ago and is 25 percent larger today: roughly $30 trillion to the United States’ $24 trillion.
China’s Advantage in Physical Economy
China’s phenomenal economic growth that includes lifting almost one billion Chinese out of poverty over the last two generations is the result of their commitment to expanding their manufacturing sector, and large investments infrastructure. Washington chose the opposite policy of deindustrialization, and transformed the U.S. into a service economy, over the same period of time.
The authors provide an astonishing comparison between the physical economy of China and the U.S.
…if one looks narrowly at goods rather than services, China’s productive capacity is three times as large as that of the United States–a decisive advantage in military and technological competition–and exceeds that of the next nine countries combined. In the last two decades after China joined the World Trade Organization, its share of global manufacturing quintupled to 30 percent while the US share halved to roughly 15 percent; the United Nations has estimated that by 2030 the imbalance will grow to 45 percent and 11 percent. China leads in many traditional industries–producing 20 times as much cement, 13 times as much steel, three times as many cars, and twice as much power as the United States…China is also a decade ahead of anyone else in commercializing fourth-generation nuclear technology with plans to build over 100 reactors in 20 years. The last great power to so thoroughly dominate global production was the United States, from the 1870s to the 1940s.
The authors calculate that the combined economies of Australia, Canada, India, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, the U.S., and the European Union are two to three times the size of China and produce almost half of all global manufactured products. They emphasize that unlocking the potential of this coalition should be the central task of American statecraft in this century.
Data source: U.S. Energy Information Administration and the International Atomic Energy Agency
Trump An Immediate Problem
The authors contend that Trump threatens the international alliances, which must be strengthened and upgraded to effectively counter China’s economic and military dominance. They write:
Trump has presented the United States’ partners with hard choices and outright threats. Many may understandably be loath to further tie themselves to Washington anytime soon… key U.S. allies are already considering declaring ‘independence’ from Washington–pursuing nuclear weapons, building new regional groupings, challenging the dollar’s role. Some, spurred by domestic reaction to U.S. pressure are contemplating moving closer to China, even at an enormous peril to their industries or security. The United States risks fracturing the free world and closing its path to scale.
Expressing the concerns of the Washington Establishment, they fear that under Trump:
If the United States fails to pursue scale with others, or retreats to the Western Hemisphere while undoing its alliances, the contest for the next century will be China’s to lose… The result will be a United States that is weaker, poorer, and less influential–and a world in which China sets the rules…Success requires going much further with greater ambition than the alliance-friendly policies of the previous Biden ministration and rejecting the outright the alienating go-it-alone ‘America First’ approach taking shape under Trump.
There is no question that President Trump has up-ended many aspects of the existing rules-based order structure. This is exemplified by pursuing peace in the three-year old Russian-Ukrainian war, freeing Russian President Putin from pariah status, and distancing the U.S. from NATO. This is of immediate concern for those advocating a U.S. led Western mobilization to scale-up economic and military capacity to prevent China from becoming the hegemon of the world.
President Trump may succeed in disrupting the accepted norms of the Western alliance, threatening the goals of the rules-based order. However, thus far he has not displayed the leadership qualities necessary to guide the world to a new paradigm of political-economic relationships among nations.
President Trump, like all of the U.S. presidents since John F Kennedy, has no knowledge of the scientific economic principles that built the U.S. into an industrial nation. He knows the word tariff but has no understanding how tariffs were actually utilized to create an indigenous manufacturing sector from thirteen agrarian based colonies.* President Trump has built hotels, gambling casinos and was known during the time I lived in New Your City, as a real estate mogul. He, like many in his cabinet and the majority of American, believes making money is synonymous with economic growth. In fact, President Trump, like his predecessors, has no concept of the importance of creating a robust manufacturing sector, or the vital necessity of replacing the dilapidated infrastructure of the U.S., to drive real economic growth.
U.S. Self-Destruction
Any politician or American, who blames China for the economic failings of the U.S., is either grossly misinformed or simply lying.
The decision by President Nixon, in August 1971, to remove the dollar from its established mooring to gold, ended the fixed exchange rate system created at Bretton Woods. This ushered in an orgy of monetary speculation over the succeeding years, creating a monetary bubble divorced from the physical economy. This ill-fated decision was the beginning of the transformation of the Western financial system into a gigantic gambling casino.
In less than a decade later, the U.S. launched the contraction of its all-important manufacturing sector. Beginning in 1979, about the time China commenced its “opening-up” strategy, the U.S. financial-political establishment adopted the insane concept of transforming America’s industrial economy into a “post-industrial society.” Opposite to China, the U.S. intentionally reduced its manufacturing-industrial component. The U.S. became a consumer society with the service sector becoming the primary employer, living off of commodities produced by cheap labor from poorer nations; otherwise known as globalization. Although some services are necessary for the functioning of society, services do not produce physical wealth. Hence, the very notion of “service industries” is a misnomer.
Examine the decline of the last forty-five years of employment in the U.S. manufacturing sector. The facts speak for themselves.
Manufacturing jobs peaked in June 1979, at 19.6 million out of 90.1 million total non-farm jobs-(22%). Two generations later, in June 2019, manufacturing employment dropped to 12.8 million out of a total 150.7 million non-farm employment (8.5%). A decline of 6.7 million jobs or 35 percent from forty years earlier. A direct result of the post-industrial utopian fantasy. From 1979 to 2019, not only did the level of manufacturing jobs decrease by over one third, but of great consequence for the economy, the percentage of manufacturing jobs to total non-farm employment decreased by over 60 percent. In analyzing the physical economy, this means that a shrinking number of manufacturing operatives were supporting an increasing number of total employed workers and within an expanding population. A recipe for disaster, which continues today. After the huge decline during the Covid-19 period, manufacturing employment recovered to only 12.9 million in December 2024, barely above the 2019 level and still 35 percent below manufacturing employment in 1979.
From 1979-2019, employment in all categories of the service sector increased. This includes employment in trade, transportation, information, utilities, professional business, and financial services.
If one adds up the federal debt, consumer debt, school debt, state debt, mortgage debt-all public and private debt-the total approaches $100 trillion in U.S. indebtedness. Presently the U.S. economy is built on a house of cards. A whopping 70% of the U.S. GDP consists of consumer spending. Without credit cards the U.S. economy would cease to exist.
This essay is a call to arms to mobilize the rules-based order to maintain their supremacy. However, to challenge China on the global stage in the years ahead requires reversing decades of self-destruction by the U.S. Do the so called wise men of the Anglo-American Establishment have the intelligence and resolve to reach back into America’s history to discover the scientific-economic principles that actually built the United States into an industrial power.** However, should the goal merely be to neutralize China, or should the U.S. endeavor to achieve a more noble mission? To wit: collaborate with China to finally end poverty and hunger in every nation on this planet, thus ensuring durable peace and security throughout the world. Through cooperation, the two economic superpowers could change the future of our civilization for generations to come. This would require an end to the rules-based order and the creation of a new financial architecture committed to global growth of the physical economy. Now is the time to begin preparing for this new paradigm.
*Nancy Spannaus, Hamilton versus Wall Street: The Core Principles of the American System of Economics
** Anton Chaitkin, Who We Are: America’s Fight for Universal Progress, from Franklin to Kennedy: Volume I -1750s to 1850s
Read below my earlier post:
U.S. Establishment Admits Truth Of China’s Economic Superiority, But They Don’t Understand It
China & BRICS Choose Progress Over West’s Deindustrialization
Will Trump Bash China & BRICS in Africa or Promote Joint Economic Growth?
Lawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in economic development policies for Africa for 35 years. He is a teacher, writer, public speaker, consultant on Africa, and an analyst of global strategic relations. Mr. Freeman strongly believes that economic development is an essential human right. He is the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com, also publishes on: lawrencefreeman.substack.com, “Freeman’s Africa and the World, and on X @lkfreemansafrica