Introduction
China’s rise is overhyped. For better or worse, the United States will remain the global superpower for this entire century.
But how could one possibly argue that things are looking good for America? China is rapidly expanding its GDP, building both artificial islands in the South China Sea, and building 5G towers all over the world. Whose stock would you rather buy, China’s or America’s?
If the time frame is for the next 20 to 30 years, I would rather buy China’s stock precisely for those reasons. But if the time frame is for the next hundred, I would buy America’s with no second thoughts. I say this not out of patriotic fervor, but rather because there are many systemic factors that all but guarantee the US can expect to be a very powerful country in the future.
What I’m not arguing
Some replies to this post will allege that I’m coping, and that my belief in the continued relevance of America is coming from a source of naive, parochial patriotism. Let’s get this out of the way:
The Chinese Communist Party will not collapse. To say otherwise is to deny reality. At this point, they’ve been in power for seventy years — nearly every person in China alive was born during their reign. The idea of a “China without the Communist Party” is therefore exiting the realm of possibility.
China will become more powerful. Sometime around 2050, China will have every right to call itself a superpower. But that does not make it the most powerful country in the world, nor does it make it comparable to the USA.
I will not argue that the United States will somehow best China because Americans are more spirited, more determined, more attractive, or anything else like that. This is not a Hollywood movie where the hero always saves the day.
I will not consider the question of the USA’s “soft power” or “cultural influence” because while those things are nice, they don’t win wars.
What I am arguing, briefly
There are a wide variety of metrics scholars use to try to quantify national power, including CINC (composite indicator of national capability, pron. “sink”); GDP; GDP per capita; total population, etc. The most common formulations of these metrics ultimately wind up arguing the same thing: power equals numbers times competency. A country’s power is a function of the number of people in it times those people's skills.
In this case, it would appear to be Game Over for the USA. China, after all, has five times our population and thus only needs to be one-fifth as competent to match us on the world stage.
Just as a movie that makes a hundred million dollars can still flop if it doesn’t make its budget back, a country of one billion people can be a paper tiger if those people do not generate significantly more resources than they take in. We need to think in terms of net population and net economic activity, as gross figures can be misleading.
Consider two hypothetical countries with 500M people. In one country, the median resident is 25 and has a college degree. In the other, the median resident is 45 and hasn’t completed high school. Both have the same number of people, but which population is more attractive?
Consider another two hypothetical countries. In one, the government pays 100M people $10k/yr to dig holes and fill them. The other sells 500M computers for $2k/each. Both of these tasks generate $1T of economic activity, but which country is more attractive?
We will also consider natural geographic advantages. Consider two countries with similar economies and populations. One is an island in the middle of the ocean. The other is landlocked. Which one will have an easier time projecting power around the world?
These are the sorts of considerations we’ll make as we compare the US to China in the following sections.
4 - Numbers
China’s population is currently near its peak of around 1.4-1.5B. After 2030, it will begin to decline. There are several estimates for China’s population in 2100, but the consensus seems to be that China will have 1.0-1.1B people at the century’s end.1
There are also a variety of estimates for the US population in 2100. One was a high as 571M. But the consensus appears to be in the 400M-450M range, so we’ll use that.2
A declining population is also an aging population. If a country isn’t producing enough kids to replace parents, its average age will increase. Old people require more resources than young people. Throughout the century, China’s declining and aging population will mean fewer young people for militaries and workers — and the remaining young people will have to service the old.
By midcentury, China will have more people over the age of 65 than the USA has people. This makes the prospects for the continued rapid growth of the Chinese economy grim. Conventional wisdom says that countries with lower GDPs per capita grow faster since they attract foreign investment and buy already-developed technologies instead of developing brand new ones. But Japan, with a GDP per capita lower America’s, routinely reports slower economic growth because of its aging population.
Competency
Don’t be fooled by our beleaguered airports, or our government which can’t fund itself. Beneath the facade of a supposedly inept country is a world power unlike any other in history. And we got that way mostly thanks to blind, dumb luck.
Geographic advantages
If there’s one thing that will keep the US afloat this century, it’s the real estate value of the continental fortress it is built on. The advantage of being a continental superstate in North America is like starting a game of Monopoly with Park Place and Boardwalk in your portfolio3.
The US is the only country with coasts on both major oceans. China, on the other hand, has just one Pacific coast. The US boasts an impressive network of navigable waterways like the Mississippi and Missouri, making shipping cheap and land fertile. China, with the same land area as the US and a population five times as big, has just 70% of the arable land.
The US has just one populous neighbor: Mexico, which is primarily a source of cheap labor and manufacturing. Canada is, for all intents and purposes, a carbon-copy of the US with a tenth of the population. China, on the other hand, is surrounded by Japan, South Korea, and India. Relations between China and those three are not the best. In other words, China lacks the luxury of being surrounded by “friends and fish” and must use military resources to occupy disputed regions.4
North America is not only a productive chunk of land, it is also the natural center of world naval power. The US Navy has immediate access to most of the world’s shipping lanes5.
As the population in Africa grows throughout this century6, I expect there to be more lines connecting South Asia to countries such as Kenya, Somalia, and Tanzania. China will have an easier time projecting power to these routes, but the US will have a much easier time projecting power onto the routes that connect Brazil and Nigeria.
As long as “he who commands the sea has command of everything,” the US can expect to be a very powerful country.
An empire on which the sun never sets
America also has valuable real estate outside its conventional borders.
The US has the largest network of military bases outside its borders in world history7. It can deploy troops and sortie planes to any corner of the globe in a manner of hours8. No other country in history has had this level of reach.
Perhaps the most valuable asset in America’s portfolio of foreign real estate is Okinawa Island, strategically located near Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and China. The island belongs to and is administered by Japan, but is effectively a colony of the United States. The myriad military bases on the island are American communities, with schools named after Bob Hope and Amelia Earhart. 25,000 US personnel are stationed on the island’s bases. This is a little slice of America in Asia, giving the US an ability to project power far from home.
Okinawa isn’t the only US military colony of its size. Similarly, Germany is littered with US bases, harboring 35,000 troops.
Assuming Wikipedia is up-to-date, China has just one notable overseas military base: a naval station in the African country of Djibouti, home to between one and two thousand troops.
Could China convince countries in, say, Africa, to lease territories large enough to build their own superbases? It’s possible but unlikely. The treaties will use politically correct phrases like “defense pact” or “treaty of mutual cooperation,” but the reality behind these words is that Okinawa, Japan, and Ramstein, Germany are war concessions granted to the United States after World War II.
Unless China defeats anyone in a world war anytime soon, I do not think it will acquire overseas bases the size of America’s because sovereign states like being sovereign. China has roughly a thousand troops in Djibouti, a country whose military has 20,000 soldiers. It’s one thing to allow a foreign state to deploy a thousand troops on your soil. Allowing a foreign state with a much larger population, economy, and industrial base to deploy ten thousand troops is a decision I can’t imagine any country would make willingly.
Power
I have attached two expertly-made, immaculately-researched graphs that show the trends for this century. China is in red, and America is in navy blue.
China’s population is currently topping out at 1.5B, and will slowly start to decline to 1B by the end of this century.
The US population will slowly increase from today’s 300M to somewhere around 450M by the end of this century.
China beings the century as a poor country, and ends the century in the same league as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.
The US will still enjoy an advantage in GDP per capita over China in 2100. This gap will be smaller, though.
However, if we add in the advantages conferred to the US from its network of military bases and natural geographic advantages, America’s ability to project becomes much greater.
The Chinese Midcentury
China has economic and demographic winds at its back, and it will become an extremely powerful country somewhere around 2040-2060. But this power comes with an expiration date: sometime around 2070, the Chinese population pyramid’s center of mass will begin shifting from middle age, when workers are most productive, to old age.
If I had to guess how this “Chinese Midcentury” will manifest, it will likely be what China is doing today, only bigger and louder: building military infrastructure on uninhabited islands claimed by Vietnam and the Philippines. If I owned any stock in “China will invade Taiwan,” I would sell it at its current price. To successfully invade Taiwan, China would need to build many more amphibious assault ships than it has active or planned9. Taiwanese geography would require China to land invasion forces at high tide at a limited number of “choke point” beaches10. With enough ships, technology, and training it is possible China would be able to invade and occupy Taiwan; however, the spread is tilted more towards a Chinese Bay of Pigs than a Chinese Desert Storm.
Like Napoleon, China will eventually be put down by winter, albeit a demographic winter rather than a seasonal one. In the second half of this century, China’s aging population will require a bigger share of its workers and factories to be devoted to servicing it. China will either have to grow its economy at a rapid clip to be able to maintain its power or pull back.
The Next Hundred Years
Many pop historians will assert that the “average span of an empire” is about 250 years11, and that — wow, wouldn’t you know it! — 1776 plus 250 is 2026. This talk has become especially loud after the US’s haphazard withdrawal from Afghanistan.
But the trends of the past do not always continue into the future. For a thousand years, European history was an unending stream of emperor-conquerers rising up and being put down by a coalition to restore the balance of power. Today, there is little chance that a war will break out among the major European powers since they’re members of a big, happy free trade zone.
Since our discussion is primarily about the US and China, I think this Richard Nixon quote from just before he left the White House for the last time is relevant:
This house, for example -- I was thinking of it as we walked down this hall, and I was comparing it to some of the great houses of the world that I have been in. This isn't the biggest house. Many, and most, in even smaller countries, are much bigger. This isn't the finest house. Many in Europe, particularly, and in China, Asia, have paintings of great, great value, things that we just don't have here and, probably, will never have until we are 1,000 years old or older.
America is unique among major nation-states in that its nation and state are tightly coupled. For most Americans, the first chapter of American history begins with the establishment of our constitutional system in 1776-1788 with Jamestown, Plymouth, and Roanoke as just a brief prologue. Thus, it’s easy to believe that the government’s failures reflect badly on the fundamentals of the country. In the same way that we lack the old paintings and statues that dot the great houses of Europe and Asia, we also lack an understanding that history has ups and downs — no uninterrupted and incredibly lucky winning streak like ours lasts forever. There is no equivalent to the Sack of Rome or the Norman Conquest in American history. Afghanistan is only the second decisive defeat for the US in a war, the other being Vietnam.
But countries do not become doomed when they lose the occasional war. As Scottish economist Adam Smith said after the British defeat at Saratoga: “There is a great deal of ruin in a nation.”
If Twitter had existed on Evacuation Day in 1783, I suspect that the journalists and commentators of the time would have said, “It’s curtains for Britain! How can a country that can’t keep control of an agrarian colony possibly be a world power?”
But Britain would carry on and reach the height of its power more than a hundred years later.
There are countries that are vast and rich (Australia). There are countries that are vast and populous (China and Brazil). There are countries that are populous and rich (Japan). But there is no country in the world like the US: rich, vast, and populous. I believe that it is more likely that we are at the start of a Thousand-Year American Empire than at the tail end of the American Century.
Conclusion
All things do end, eventually.
One day, the baton will pass from the United States to someone else. The only question is, who will it be? Who will succeed America as the hegemon of the world?
I have a good guess at the answer, and it may surprise you. Find out next week!
Further Reading
This article is a synthesis of three books. Each one is different, but they all have the same thesis: America can expect to remain a powerful country, mostly because it got lucky in its choice of territory. If you liked what you read here, I recommend them for your reading pleasure.
The Next Hundred Years by George Friedman. It’s an imperfect-but- fun book I read as a kid. I plan to write a short bonus post about it.
The Accidental Superpower by Peter Zeihan. Like The Next Hundred Years, it gives a good rundown of the territorial advantages enjoyed by the US, then goes on to make some predictions. Some are quite crazy, but not inconceivable — bad news in store for Canada!
Unrivaled by Michael Beckley is the most “boring” and “academic” of these three, but it’s still a good read because it discusses the concepts of net population and net resources at length. Beckley also discusses how the US has advantages in education and institutional strength that you may not hear about in the press.
Final thought: It’s worth pointing out that just because the US is the most powerful country in the world of 2121 does not mean it’s the most powerful institution in the world. In 1500, the most powerful institution in the world was the Catholic Church. Today, the Vatican is still the most powerful spiritual body in the world, but the nation-state has since replaced organized religion as the primary method of societal organization. Perhaps in the future, corporations, social networks, or decentralized blockchain programs could replace the nation-state.
Special thank you to @__spicywhite for editing.
These graphs are screenshots of populationpyramid.net — numbers from UN projections.
I lied — the most valuable spaces in Monopoly are the orange spaces. Since players can get sent to “Jail” at any point during the game, you are disproportionately likely to land on them as they are six spaces away. I used “Boardwalk” since most people think it’s the most valuable space to get my point across.
Photographs of Chinese forces occupying disputed territory on its border can be found in this BBC article
The UN projects a population boom in Africa this century. Steve Sailer has plotted these projections and called it “The World’s Most Important Graph.”
The word “probably” is doing a lot of work in this article — but even if the number of bases is lower, the US enjoys technologies that Rome and Britain didn’t.
The 82nd Airborne’s slogan is able to be deployed "anywhere in the world within 18 hours"
Wikipedia article on China's 075-type assault ship. The best estimate I can find for how many troops it carries is this article from Reuters, which suggests 900 troops per ship. China has several more 071-type ships in service that can transport a similar amount of troops. However, the Taiwanese army has more than 100k soldiers.
Unrivaled chapter on Taiwan.
See this article, one of many you can find online.
The big question is whether American governance will continue to decline and screw it up.
America has already fallen and the Chinese Communist Party has already won. You just don't know it yet.
What is the United States? I guess you could argue that it consists of military bases and the like. But if you ask the ask the average American, the United States is its people: guys living in the suburbs, inner cities and rural areas. If you want to see who is "winning", then gauge the welfare of all those people with those of China. If you do that, then you'll find that the Chinese Communitst Party won long ago.
Now I'd much rather be an American citizen than a Chinese citizen for the very fact that I love my freedom: I'd rather be free and go to a cruddy job making cruddy money living a cruddy existence, then have a good job making good money with a fantastic life but without the right to go where I please and own the means to my own safety. (2nd Amendment, anyone?)
That said, I can't help but compare and contrast the lives of those living in Beijing, Datong, Shanghai with that of Southern California and believe that the quality of life is better in SoCal. In fact, I would argue that the quality of life is extremely better in all those Chinese cities (well, Datong would be considered a town by the Chinese, but a city by Americans) than it is in Southern California, unless you're part of the ultra rich. If you compare those places with south Texas (probably the worst ghetto area I've been in), it's no contest.
One of the crown jewels of the United States are its suburbs. The house of the average American homeowner would get the envy of many in CDMX and China. But, then, you got to consider the crime, the long drives to anywhere (part of the reason why we have so much obesity, lack of public transport of good city planning), and you have to wonder if the suburbs are all that grand in the first place. Add in the high costs of owning a suburban nowadays and, again, you have an argument that your underlying premise is off: the United States has already lost.
This isn't to say the American people can't regain their greatness.