China's bid for world dominance is unfolding through economic competition—and the outcome is far from certain
George Magnus argues that the defining contest of our era is not a military one. The struggle between the United States and China for global supremacy is being waged through industrial policy, trade, supply chains, financial architecture, and the commanding heights of twenty-first-century technology—not armies or territorial ambitions.
China's manufacturing and technological dynamism is formidable. But Magnus finds a parallel in Japan of the 1980s: Japan's widely-respected industrial prowess could not prevent the debt, financial, demographic, and structural reckoning of the lost decades. China faces similar constraints: a world-class manufacturing sector floating above a debt-laden wider economy larger than any other, a population ageing faster than any on earth, and a mercantilist trade strategy generating growing resistance across the globe.
Is China peaking? Magnus shows that it might be—and that the question will define the years to come.