Is China trying to displace US as top global power? Two analysts differ
- One cites Xi Jinping’s global ambitions and belt and road projects. The counterpoint: the goal of being world’s only superpower is a misreading of intentions
- Webinar panellists are in unison in condemning the trade war Donald Trump started with China
Two prominent China analysts debated on Tuesday whether Beijing is attempting to supplant Washington as the foremost global power.
Speaking during a South China Morning Post webinar about the state of multilateralism under US President Donald Trump, Elizabeth Economy, a senior fellow with Stanford University‘s Hoover Institution, countered an assertion by David Firestein, CEO of the George HW Bush Foundation for US-China Relations, that Beijing was primarily seeking “a place at the table that is commensurate with its heft”.
The prevailing assumption “both in the executive and legislative branches that China seeks to displace the United States and supplant the United States as the world’s only superpower … is a misreading of China’s strategic intentions”, said Firestein, who spent 18 years as a foreign service officer in the US Department of State.
“I think China wants to do a lot of things, and I think a lot of the things that China wants to do are very problematic for the United States, but I don’t think that China aspires to be the United States 2.2, the so-called world’s policeman, [with] boots on the ground in 100 countries,” he said.