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US-China relations
OpinionComment
Zhou Bo
Zhou Bo

Opinion | As the US focuses on ‘extreme competition’ with China, conflict is just a step away

  • Competition will most certainly intensify as the US sees a last chance to bring down a rising China
  • Despite American assurances that it is not seeking conflict, when competition becomes extreme, a clash seems all but inevitable

Reading Time:4 minutes
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Illustration: Craig Stephens
Zhou Bo
The dust from the Afghan war has yet to settle but the fallout is clear. With the ending of the US global crusade on terrorism, the prelude to President Joe Biden’s “extreme competition” with China has begun. The question is: how long will it last?
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If the 20-year war in Afghanistan is a “forever war” for the United States, then its competition with China could be described as “forever competition”, because it will surely last longer. Gone are the days when China could “hide its strength and bide its time”.

The second-largest economy in the world is simply too big to hide. And it is impossible for Beijing to bide its time when Washington takes it as its primary strategic competitor.

But in the economic field, the die is cast. At the end of last year, China’s economy was 70 per cent of America’s. It is widely assumed that, by around 2030, China will overtake the US to become the world’s largest economy in terms of gross domestic product.

According to Yale professor Paul Kennedy, this will be a situation that has not existed since the 1880s, when America’s economy overtook Britain’s. For the entire 20th century, the American economy was about two to four times larger than that of any other great power.

02:47

US ‘not seeking a new cold war’, Biden says in first UN address

US ‘not seeking a new cold war’, Biden says in first UN address

When China emerges as the world’s largest economy, as former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd pointed out, it will be the first time since George III (1738-1820) that the world will have a non-English-speaking, non-democratic, non-Western state as its largest economy.

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