My Take | State capacity will decide who is the winner in Chinese-American rivalry
A degraded government in Washington today is a far cry from its once-feared global leadership
Minxin Pei is one of America’s leading sinologists. His commentaries appear everywhere, including in this newspaper. In 2019, he was named the inaugural Library of Congress Chair on US-China Relations.
He was also, until recently, the academic version of Gordon Chang, the incorrigible prognosticator who has been predicting the coming collapse of China ever since Chang published his book of the same title in 2001. And people wonder why American policymakers keep getting China wrong.
Why? Pei identifies several key factors, both foreign and domestic, but the key one is rivalry with the United States. “The greatest threat to the party’s long-term survival lies in the unfolding cold war with the US.” On that, more later.
The Chinese Communist Party may not escape the sorry global modern history of one-party rule, which Pei claims lasted an average of fewer than eight decades.
I think most political scientists would agree such averaging is pretty meaningless unless it is statistically compared with countries with a two-party system (the US), three parties (Canada) and many parties (Italy), and their respective internal stability or instability entailed.