People have been predicting China’s emergence as a superpower since the days of Napoleon, who purportedly appreciated China’s potential as a world power and cautioned against waking the sleeping dragon. China’s subordination into the Western international system in the 1839-1842 Opium War and its decline as the “sick man” of East Asia for the rest of the nineteenth and for the first half of the twentieth centuries dulled, but never extinguished, the expectation that, sooner or later, China would again dominate the world.
Several recent events have provoked the latest announcements of China’s looming ascent to superpower stature and have suggested that these long-held expectations are, at long last, coming true. In October 2003, China launched its first human into space, joining the United States and the former Soviet Union as the only countries to have done so. American media have recently taken notice of China’s efforts to expand and diversify its access to sources of oil in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and unsettlingly close to home Canada. The world’s industrial economies, including the United States, have inferred from the giant sucking sound created by lost manufacturing jobs and from the flood of Chinese exports into their markets that China is becoming the world’s manufacturing hub. Meanwhile, analysts ponder the implications for global security of China’s military modernization effort, now two decades long, and its promise to develop a “revolution in military affairs with Chinese characteristics.”
As portentous as the events may seem, there are good reasons to be skeptical that China will achieve superpower stature anytime soon. By all measures of international power, China has a long way to go to rival the power in international affairs of the United States in the manner that the Soviet Union did.
Click the Following links to read more from the article by Lyman Miller (2006) :
What is a "Superpower"?
China's Economic Power
China's Military Power
China's Political and Soft Power
Prospects
Several recent events have provoked the latest announcements of China’s looming ascent to superpower stature and have suggested that these long-held expectations are, at long last, coming true. In October 2003, China launched its first human into space, joining the United States and the former Soviet Union as the only countries to have done so. American media have recently taken notice of China’s efforts to expand and diversify its access to sources of oil in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and unsettlingly close to home Canada. The world’s industrial economies, including the United States, have inferred from the giant sucking sound created by lost manufacturing jobs and from the flood of Chinese exports into their markets that China is becoming the world’s manufacturing hub. Meanwhile, analysts ponder the implications for global security of China’s military modernization effort, now two decades long, and its promise to develop a “revolution in military affairs with Chinese characteristics.”
As portentous as the events may seem, there are good reasons to be skeptical that China will achieve superpower stature anytime soon. By all measures of international power, China has a long way to go to rival the power in international affairs of the United States in the manner that the Soviet Union did.
Click the Following links to read more from the article by Lyman Miller (2006) :
What is a "Superpower"?
China's Economic Power
China's Military Power
China's Political and Soft Power
Prospects
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