This short essay examines the shifting balance of global power between the United States and China in the twenty-first century. Drawing on Martin Jacques's When China Rules the World and David Lampton's The Three Faces of Chinese Power, the paper argues that China's economic expansion will eventually translate into broader political and cultural dominance. It contends that China's influence on world affairs is effectively unstoppable given the mechanisms of global free trade, and that the most viable Western response is a dual strategy of cooperation and the formation of meaningful international alliances to regulate trade and interstate commerce.
The United States and China appear to be two nations moving in opposite directions. The retraction of the American economy and the ripple effect it has had on the global economy have coincided with a continued expansion of Chinese occupation of global economic interests. This projects a not-too-distant future in which these nations undergo something of a changing of the guard. Jacques (2009) reinforces this claim, suggesting that "although China's first steps toward global preeminence are economic, eventually its political and cultural influence will be even greater — and that, overall, 'China's impact on the world will be at least as great as that of the United States over the last century, probably far greater.'" (p. 363) This indicates that the economic trends differentiating the two nations today will predicate a yet more sweeping cultural occurrence.
"China's unstoppable rise and Western strategic options"
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