The prevailing consensus, in Washington and overseas, is that China is surging past the United States. “If we don’t get moving,” President Joe Biden has said, “they’re going to eat our lunch.” Countries everywhere are preparing, in the words of an Asian diplomat, for China to be “number one.”
Plenty of evidence supports this view. China’s GDP has risen 40-fold since 1978. China boasts the world’s largest financial reserves, trade surplus, economy measured by purchasing power parity, and navy measured by number of ships. While the United States reels from a shambolic exit from Afghanistan, China is moving aggressively to forge a Sinocentric Asia and replace Washington atop the global hierarchy.
