Aakar Patel | China’s GDP will soon surpass us: Will the final bid for Beijing in the tariff war?
China’s crime is that in the next few years, perhaps 2035, it will become the world’s largest economy. If the average growth rate of the two countries in the past 15 years was then, their GDP would be greater than that of the United States.
This is unacceptable to the United States, as it has been a major global force in the last century. This power is mainly due to its economy, which is expected to go from first to second in front of us. This is China’s crime, and that’s why Donald Trump lost his temper.
The so-called “Western”, which means that Europe and its settler colonies are in North America, Australia and Israel have no memory of it being a ruler, and the rest of us are rulers. What they call the global “rule-based order” is a way that was once replaced by the UN Security Council, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank through direct colonial rules and their forms. Informal packets like the G-7 are used to further coordinate actions.
In the 18th century, the two largest economies in the world were China and India. This is a function of a world without many machines, where national productivity and output depend on population, and most people occupy it in agriculture. The more people a country has, the more its economy. The Industrial Revolution changed this situation and productivity began to separate from human body input. From the 1800s to the present, the “Western” is at the forefront of this technological change. China has caught up. China will pass soon. Citigroup published a paper in January 2023 titled “When will China’s GDP surpass the United States? What will this mean?” which concluded: “So, in a range of parameters, there may be a catching up sometime in the 2030s, possibly in the mid-decade.
“When it finally happens, it will be widely noticed in the press, and most likely in political discourse. It may be symbolic to a large extent, but there may be some geopolitical huge amounts and prestige, and countries with the largest GDP will cause the largest. At the national level, a larger economy means more resources in every effort.
This has happened a lot. The Chinese Navy has more ships than the U.S. Navy, and China builds and operates an independent space station that rivals the international space stations led by the United States and Russia. China, including Hong Kong, won more gold medals (42) at the Paris Olympics last year than the United States (40). Even before it rose as the largest economy, China unveiled the world’s largest infrastructure project in the past decade, the Belt and Road Initiative, the largest trading partner of 120 countries, while the U.S. has 70.
A series of internal reports similar to Citigroup have spanned the table of President Barack Obama, followed by Biden. Their reaction was to try and hinder China, first of all, restricting its access to US-designed, Taiwanese-made semiconductor chips. The purpose is to protect artificial intelligence in the US field and is regarded by many as a technology that transforms like electricity.
This doesn’t work as Deep Seeking, an elegant AI produced by an obscure Chinese company. For good measures, the company is seeking deep into open source, which means freedom and hinders our efforts to monopolize the technology.
Huawei was banned by the West in 2019, refusing to enter the market and hardware, but it entered the manufacturing industry, with Taiwan’s TSMC and Dutch company ASML being estimated to be behind only two leaders in the semiconductor field, in terms of making state-of-the-art chips. What is needed here is industrial design and manufacturing, two things that Chinese companies show superiority, so we wouldn’t be surprised if they catch up very quickly.
The tariff war that attempts to completely lift the West and its economy from China is the latest, perhaps the latest attempt to stop the East. If it fails, the only option is to use military power, and many people in Washington talk about that casually.
After raising tariffs to a ridiculous 245%, Chinese ships have begun to move away from U.S. ports. In less than two weeks, on May 2, the tax exemption exemption granted to Chinese parcels was less than $800. At that time, as trade stagnates, the impact of several intermediate and finished products that arrive from China will be felt through the U.S. economy. Yes, China will suffer this, but not much: Exports to the United States are 2% of its GDP. The United States will suffer more damage.
Say’s market law tells us that supply will generate its own demand. This means that an economy focused on producing commodities will eventually find some markets for sale, including internal markets, as workers who produce commodities can buy them. That is China, the world’s largest commodity producer and the only manufacturing superpower. The United States is a consumer. Its daunting task is to start producing what you want to consume now and go through economic pain and uncertainty, all because it can’t stand to regard others as first.
The author is the President of Amnesty International in India. Twitter: @aakar_patel
