Wei Geisheing (2013). Aerial Shanghai by Crane Operator 2.

Let’s take the standard assumption that national power consists of three main elements: Economic, military, and cultural (“soft”).

Why can we be confident that China is on its way to superpowerdom?

Economic Power

China has already overtaken the US in terms of GDP (PPP) in the mid-2010s at the latest {here’s my 2012 article on this}, and will almost certainly repeat that in nominal terms by the early 2020s.

Chinese development is extremely similar to South Korea’s but with a lag of 20 years {East Asia’s Twenty Year Rule}. Consequently, a China that converges to South Korean development levels in relative terms – something that we can expect to see by 2040 – will automatically be three times the size of the US economy just by dint of its demographic preponderance. This is furthermore assuming that there is no serious US economic crisis during this period (e.g. there are estimates that US GDP is 5-10% more than it “should be” thanks to the USD’s status as the global reserve currency – what happens if/when that ends?).

There is absolutely no reason why this process of convergence must stall at any point, since average IQ explains almost all economic success, and Chinese IQ is comparable to those of the most developed OECD nations. To be sure, as I pointed out, developed East Asian nations tend to underperform their IQ; they are only as rich as European countries about 5 IQ points below them, such as France (in contrast, the Americans over perform their average IQ, probably thanks to their smart fractions, the USD’s status, and economies of scale). Nonetheless, this does mean that the average EU level is eminently reachable. And it is even possible that China will eventually do relatively better than Japan or Korea because of the unparalleled economies of scale opened up to it by its 1.4 billion population.

As China continues to develop, its economy will likewise continue getting more and more sophisticated – as of this year, it has twice as many industrial robots as the entirety of North America, and more supercomputers than the US. {China Overtakes US in Scientific Articles, Robots, Supercomputers}

Hence the utter stupidity of comparisons to the 1980s American scare over Japan. China is not the next Japan – it is the next TEN Japans {2011 article on Top 10 Sinophobe Myths}.

Military Power

Military power is primarily a function of economic power. This is a relation that is so obvious and well-established that it barely needs further elaboration.

Chinese military spending is currently at a third of the US level, but it is soaring rapidly and – as in Russia – getting more bang for the buck due to China’s lower labor costs and large share of domestic armaments production. It is also seeing rapid technological convergence in key military technologies. Once this process is finished, it will be free to start engaging in a massive buildup, without the risk of its military falling into obsolescence. This is already happening: PLAN is slated to have more ships than the USN by 2030.

On my projections, comprehensive Chinese military power should exceed that of the US by the early 2030s, and Chinese naval power should overtake the US by the early 2040s – and this is under the assumption that China continued to spend a significantly lower percentage of its GDP than the US {Comprehensive Military Power}.

It’s also worth pointing out that as a Eurasian power connected to the rest of the World-Island through OBOR, and possessing unsinkable aircraft carriers in the form of its artificial islands in the South China Sea, China is less absolutely dependent on its Navy for its military security than the US. While China has been ballyhooed for its lack of power projection capability. As it happens, China recently announced plans to produce 1,000 Y-20 strategic heavy lift airplanes, which will eventually give it strategic airlift capacities well in excess of that of the US.

The fact that China is not (yet) throwing its weight around means absolutely nothing. “Lying low and not taking the lead” was a conscious approach formulated by Deng Xiaoping, and one that that has paid off handsomely to date. There is extremely little point to be had from forcing a confrontation when you are effortlessly and massively gaining in relative power on your potential adversaries with each passing year, at least so long as your red lines aren’t crossed (e.g. recognition of Taiwanese independence).

Cultural Power

According to the Nature Index, a proxy for high quality science production, China is now 50% – up from 25% five years ago, when the index was launched – as productive as the US, and far ahead of everyone else. Now I actually agree with China pessimists that the Chinese, or rather East Asians in general, are more conformist than Europeans, which limits creativity {Coffee Salon Demographics}. Japan’s and Korea’s underperform relative to their IQ on elite science even more than they do on GDP per capita. Nonetheless, even if China were to attain just the per capita performance of Japan and South Korea, it would still generate around 50% more elite level science than the US. By analogy with Japanese and Korean experience, I expect to happen by the 2030s.

I am more skeptical about China’s potential to be competitive in the cultural sphere. English is the world’s lingua franca, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Its literary, film, and video game output is derivative and uninspiring. They can’t even create a good state-owned propaganda channel – how many Westerners watch/read CCTV relative to RT? It is only in the past decade that Japan has started generating significant cultural power, a generation after they became rich. By extension, I suspect we may have to wait for the second half of the century for a Chinese cultural renaissance.

TLDR

Even assuming no disruptive developments in the United States, such as a catastrophic unwinding of the dollar or secessionism provoked by ideological polarization, the emergence of China as the world’s preeminent superpower by the middle of the 21st century is near inevitable. It is a mere derivative of its demographic preponderance, and the close relation between national IQ and socio-economic development (buttressed by the prior experience of South Korea).

By the 2040s, China will have by far the world’s largest economy in both PPP-adjusted and nominal terms (2-3x that of the United States), its most powerful military, and comparable naval power and elite scientific production. However, it should still lag the US in cultural productivity. China will only truly regain its mantle as the Celestial Empire in the second half of the 21st century.

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PS. As with my standard “futuristic” projections, all this assumes there are no radical discontinuities in our world – no machine superintelligence, no mass gene editing for superhuman IQ, etc. That said, is seems probably that atheist, technophile China is very well positioned to compete in these “transhumanist” scenarios, should they materialize.