Deng Xiaoping warned against China’s imperialism

While the world continues to look at the Russian invasion of Ukraine as the main focus of attention, it is still the situation in Asia that poses the highest risk for a global war.

Recent news have shown that China has become more belligerent as it has begun to be more aggressive in the South China Sea. There are even reports that the violation of Taiwanese air space by Chinese war planes has become more frequent and larger in scale.

There are major areas that geopolitical observers are paying close attention to try and predict the probability of accidental conflicts arising out of these incidents. I am especially looking at a few developments that I feel are predictors of what could happen.

The first is the future of the Chinese economy. Military power is the offshoot of economic power. This is a lesson that Russia is learning in Ukraine. On paper, Russia is overwhelmingly more powerful than Ukraine, which is not even considered a great power.  However, the weaknesses of Russia’s military have been revealed by its failure to conquer Ukraine.  Russia has become a weak economy and the result is that it has become a weak military power.

Ever since the start of the Chinese economic boom started by Deng Xiaoping, the popular belief was that there would come a time when the Chinese economy would surpass the American economy in terms of Gross Domestic Product. The conventional wisdom is that this would mean that someday Chinese military power would surpass American military strength.  However, there have been recent developments that have led people to speculate that the rise of the Chinese economy has peaked.

In 2011, the American bank Goldman Sachs projected that China’s GDP would surpass America’s GDP by 2026.  It predicted that by the midcentury, China’s GDP would be 50 percent larger than America’s. At the end of last year, the bank revised its projection and now believes China’s economy would not overtake the American economy until 2035. It also projected that China’s economy will only be 14 percent larger than the United States by mid-century.

There are now other economic research firms that are arguing that China’s economy will never surpass American economy.

A research firm Capital Economics believes that China’s economy will only reach 90 percent of American economy by 2035 and even lose ground.

A recent issue of The Economist carried a special supplement with several articles on the issue of whether China has already reached its peak. This is very important because this could mean that China will never become the superior military power in the world.

There are several indicators that seem to point to this theory of China’s economy peaking as a big possibility. The Economist points to three variables: “population growth, workers’ productivity and prices.”

China’s population is expected to drop by about 7 percent over the next two decades. This will have a negative impact on its workforce. Surprisingly, there are reports that the unemployment rate for new university graduates in China has increased. I also believe that one of the principal reasons for China’s slower growth is because Xi Jinping has cracked down on Chinese entrepreneurs like Jack Ma. The government has imposed stricter controls on private firms, which is a reversal of Deng Xiaoping’s introduction of capitalist reforms to the Chinese economy.

It seems that the safest projection is that by the midcentury, China and America will achieve a position of near-parity in both its economy and military might. The balance of power will shift to whichever of the two superpowers will have stronger allies. Russia will seize to be a dependable ally of China. Russia’s weakness has become obvious in its failure to defeat a much smaller country like Ukraine.

India has remained a traditional adversary of China due to territorial disputes.

The United States, on the other hand, has developed strong alliances in the Indo-Pacific region. Its stronger ally is Japan which is now increasing its military might.

There are reports that Japan plans to double its defense budget by 2027 and acquire long-range missiles. The principal alliance of western nations, NATO, is also planning to open an office in Japan. We can only speculate that this means greater cooperation between the military forces of Japan and western countries.

Xi Jinping and China’s leaders should remember the warning that Deng Xiaoping made in a speech before the United Nations in 1974: “If one day China should change her color and turn into a superpower, if she too should play the tyrant in the world and everywhere subject others to her bullying, aggression and exploitation, the people of the world should identify her as social-imperialism, expose it, oppose it and work together with Chinese people to overthrow it.”

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