Global Power Shift

Even though it was just over  three months ago that I predicted that China would soon overtake the United States as the largest and most powerful economy in the world (see http://jamaicatory.blogspot.com/2014/07/brics-challenging-status-quo.html) to  be frank I was  still shocked to see an IMF report last week declaring that the People’s Republic of China was now the world’s number economic power ending  142 years of US economic dominance

According the latest statistics the Chinese economy is worth $17.61 trillion compared with $17.4 trillion for the U.S. taking a lead in industries such as manufacturing, finances, services, trade etc, which of course means that the margin is not a very large one right now, but given that the US has allowed anyone to overtake them says much about the state of the American economy.

          

Let’s face it, the writing has been on the wall for years and anyone who thinks differently is only fooling themselves, the fall of America and the subsequent rise of China is due to actions on the part of each nation and their governments. The simple fact of the matter is while the Chinese economy continued to strengthen, the US has been in decline this is due to several factors including the decline in US manufacturing with the outsourcing so many jobs that were once in the US, the raising of the debt ceiling (who can forget the shutdown of Congress late last year), the massive debt that they now owe to China in particular and the rise in unemployment just to name a few. China on the other hand has been strengthening it’s economy by large scale manufacturing funded by cheap labour, having tight controls on its currency which keeps it artificially lower than market value, extensive exports which leads to massive trade surpluses with every country that it has trading relations it and also taking the initiative to forge new links into previously untapped markets making China a success story overnight.

It goes without saying that this latest revelation by the IMF may of course have serious implications for the structure of global politics, if the US is no longer the global economic superpower as it once was how will this affect it’s global standing? As former president Ronald Reagan once state weakness at home leads to weakness abroad. The implications that this could have for America’s position in the world could be detrimental, if it is they cannot even command control of the global economy anymore, how can America’s allies truly trust that it can live up to its other obligations?.

Of course I could be very much pre-mature in my judgment here (although I highly doubt it), when the United States first became the world’s top economy in 1872, The British Empire still held sway over much of the world where it was said that the Sun never sets in the Empire and  Britannia still ruled the waves, it took nearly 75 years after this for the world to start truly seeing the decline in British political and military power regardless of the fact the US economy was still outperforming that the UK itself, perhaps  the same situation might play out again or perhaps this time the decline will take place even faster. After all let’s face it while the Chinese economy is growing at an exponential rate, it is also said that this growth is unsustainable given how it rose in the first place, let’s also consider that Chinese have truly been interested in pursuing global hegemony but focused primarily on it’s own economic interest (a key ingredient of it’s economic success) which of means that regardless of now having the world’s strongest economy, the Chinese may have no intention of taking on a global leadership world unlike US which has a  foreign policy of American exceptionalism seeing itself as leader of the free world and the like.

Regardless of the efforts of liberals to defend the presidency of Barack Obama it is quite clear from the figures here and all is not so white in the White House, in fact it was reported that the White House was completely caught off guard by the news, it was as if they didn't  know what hit them, yet liberals still continue to harp on their story that President Obama’s economic policy is better than Reagan, really? How they can come to such a ghastly conclusion only heaven knows, but one thing is clear however, if I did know before what a set of blind idiots liberal advocates and Obama apologist are then last week certainly cleared up any misconceptions I had in that regard.

With USA and the rest of the world focusing on either happenings in Middle East with regards to ISIS or on the Ebola crisis on Africa, economic concerns certainly seems to take a backseat concern however the implications of this are not to be taken lightly as many pundits are now beginning to class the 21^st century as the Chinese (just as how the 19^th century had belonged to the British and the 20^th to the Americans), it remains to be see how the US will now respond to this extremely real threat to it's "global superiority" or is it a case that the days of US hegemony are numbered and it's time to make way for the rise of a new superpower.