“A ‘superpower’ is a country that has the capacity to project dominating power and influence anywhere in the world, and sometimes, in more than one region of the globe at a time, and so may plausibly attain the status of global hegemon,” writes Alice Lyman Miller, China scholar at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and a former CIA analyst. That requires excelling in multiple areas of power projection: economic, military and “soft” (political and cultural) (citation). (Leung, 2019)When discussing which country will be the next superpower or global leader, we need to explore those terms on an even playing field. The US sense of superpower is based on our framework, time and cultural dimensions relevant to the US.
Long-term orientation:
In order to establish a framework for comparison, we’ll want to explore one key differentiator: long-term orientation. China is fundamentally different when it comes to its perspective on time and it’s fair to say that decisions will be made based on a longer time scale. For China, this is a longer perspective orients their behaviors, in particular saving money and adapting to new circumstances. (STATE, 2019)
For a county that is over 4000 years old, it comes to no surprise. With that said, is it fair to say that their strategy is centered on a long-term view and therefore may differ from other countries such as the US. In order to understand “superpower”, perhaps it’s prudent to project our strategies into a long term orientation in order to evaluate our position in that time scale.
Below shows how China compares to the world in terms of long-term orientation.
(STATE, 2019)
Population:
It’s no secret that China’s population has a major impact on its production capabilities and its ability to mobilize those resources towards a goals. However, due to changes in the one child rule, projections show that the long-term on population shows a decline through year 2100. (Leung, 2019).
Belt and Road initiatives:
Another aspect of a long-term approach and putting that into the context of a superpower, China has taken on a very aggressive approach to longer-term revenue, ties and dependencies. Below shows a map of the connection China is making outside the region.
When discussing China and other countries, like the US, we must view China in the cultural dimension of time in order to have an appropriate comparison. Given China’s longer-view on time, we must be careful of bias such as ethnocentrism and consider that our definition of superpower is different or irrelevant to China.
Leung, M. C. (2019). Bloomberg. Retrieved from Does China Have What It Takes to Be a Superpower?: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-china-superpower/
STATE, P. (2019). Cultural Comparison of China and India. Retrieved from PSU World Campus : https://psu.instructure.com/courses/1964331/modules/items/25821723
efg5187 says
Nicholas,
I was interested in your perspective into how China is taking a long view as a superpower. From my perspective you are describing their perspective on time, and the assumption that time is not based on an individual’s lifetime, but on time based on the development of China as a whole. This makes sense as China has a low individualism score which states China population cares more about the prosperity of the whole, and in turn the prosperity of China as a country first. Your diagrams exhibit that growth almost in the way of showing how Napoleon or Alexander the great took over neighboring areas, instead its a view of China and trade over time of generations on the world stage. It is a capability to be feared and admired where a country can take that perspective and grow itself with its population, another area you visualized in your diagrams.