Brent Scowcroft Center Nonresident Senior Fellow Matthew Kroenig writes for the Wall Street Journal on how a move toward democracy by Beijing would challenge US standing as the world’s dominant power:
China’s enormous population and rapid economic growth mean that Beijing could one day dislodge Washington from its standing as the world’s dominant power. The Economist predicts that China could overtake the United States as the world’s largest economy in 2021, and military might tends to follow economic heft. Beijing’s military buildup is already constraining America in the Asia-Pacific region and decades from now could usurp global supremacy from Washington.
Or will it?
The place to look for an answer is not in the economic or military realm, but in China’s domestic political institutions. The fact is that democracies perform better in long-run geopolitical competitions.