Trading places?
- By Yan Xuetong
0 Comment(s)
Print
E-mail China.org.cn, July 23, 2013
When China adopted its reform and opening up policy in 1978, it set the principle of economic construction as its central task. Adherence to this principle has resulted in the unbalanced development of China's comprehensive strength. Due to the gap in strength between China's economic and non-economic factors and those of the U.S., it is unlikely that China can catch up with the U.S. in the next decade.
Though the U.S. is now cutting its defense budget, it will still have at least 200 overseas military bases in 2023, while China currently has no overseas military bases. Even if China makes this a policy priority, it could only build 20 naval supply depots, at most, in the next 10 years.
The U.S. is the world's No.1 cultural superpower, with the most advanced university education system, movie industry and social science theory innovation capacity. Despite the fact that the U.S. is currently developing more slowly than China in these fields, it is still unlikely that China will catch up with the U.S. in the next decade.
Publications are also an area where China lags behind the U.S. China's development in social science is relatively slower than its development in natural science. In 2012, there are six Chinese magazines which were included in the Sciences Classification Index (SCI) and Social Sciences Classification Index (SSCI) system. Five of these magazines fell into the natural science category and just one into the social science category.
International relations publications are another case in point. In 2012, only one of China's numerous international relations journals - the Chinese Journal of International Politics - was included in SSCI. In this category, the U.S. has more than 10 publications in SSCI. The SSCI system reviews the world's professional academic journals every two years, which means that even if one of China's international relations journals was included in every SSCI review up to 2023, China would still only have five or six journals in SSCI, less than half the U.S. figure.
The difference between the decline of the Soviet Union and that of the U.S. is that the U.S. is experiencing a relative decline, whereas the Soviet Union suffered an absolute decline. American strength factors are still progressing, not regressing, albeit more slowly than before. This means that the comprehensive strength of the U.S. in 2023 will be greater than it is now. This is also the reason why China was able to surpass Russia from 1992 to 2002 and why it will not be able to overtake the U.S. by 2023.
The author is director of the Institute of International Studies, Tsinghua University.
This article was translated by Li Huiru. Its original unabridged version was published in Chinese.
Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.
Go to Forum >>0 Comment(s)