The Chinese Economic Miracle Continues
Signs of China's rapid growth into an economic superpower are everywhere. The latest indicator comes in a report from the China National Bureau of Statistics announcing a staggering 9.9% rise in Chinese GDP in 2005. With its $2.26 trillion economy, China has leap-frogged the UK, France and Italy to become the fourth largest in the world.
As Perrspectives has written before, China's explosive economic growth, aggressive military upgrading and diplomatic muscle-flexing pose a myriad of challenges for the United States.
From a national security standpoint, the United States may have to dramatically expand and alter it force structure to contain a resurgent China. With the Pentagon Quadrennial Defense Review due to Congress next month, the implications for American strategies, tactics and force levels are profound. Not least among these will be the unwritten security guarantee for Taiwan.
The Chinese challenge to American economic leadership and standards of living is even greater. With two consecutive years of GDP growth nearing 10%, China's massive trade surplus with the United States, $120 billion in all of 2003, reached $20 billion in the month of October alone. Increasingly, China is also America's banker, financing U.S. deficits through loans and purchases of American securities. China's dynamic economic growth has also driven explosive growth in its demand for energy, forcing prices upward as the United States and China (and to a lesser degree, India) compete to line up sources of oil.
With all eyes in the U.S. trained on Iraq and the war against Al Qaeda, managing China's coming superpower status seems to have fallen off the Bush administration's radar. It can't stay that way for long.
With A Population of over 1.3 BILLION PEOPLE, Is That Surprising?
Not To Me.
Continue to Neglect the Poor ~n~Poverty and See What happens.
Bet You The Entire World Loses That Filthy Word "FREEDUMB".