Economically, China boasts twice the manufacturing capacity. Technologically, it dominates everything from electric vehicles to fourth-generation nuclear reactors. Militarily, it features the world’s largest navy, bolstered by shipbuilding capacity 200 times as large as that of the United States; vastly greater missile stocks; and the world’s most advanced hypersonic capabilities.
In the two decades after China joined the World Trade Organization, its share of global manufacturing quintupled to 30 percent while the U.S. share halved to roughly 15 percent; the United Nations has estimated that, by 2030, the imbalance will grow to 45 percent and 11 percent. China leads in many traditional industries, producing 20 times as much cement, 13 times as much steel, three times as many cars, and twice as much power as the United States. It produces almost half the world’s chemicals, half the world’s ships, more than two-thirds of electric vehicles, more than three-quarters of electric batteries, 80 percent of consumer drones, and 90 percent of solar panels and refined rare-earth.
This industrial strength can be activated for military purposes. China’s navy, already the largest in the world, will add a staggering 65 vessels in just five years, reaching a total size 50 percent larger than the U.S. Navy, roughly 435 vessels to 300. It has rapidly increased its ships’ firepower, surging from one-tenth of the United States’ vertical launch system cells a decade ago to likely exceeding U.S. capacity by 2027.
The USA in the past overestimated Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union. Now China is the first to outmatch the USA in size alone, and the USA risks to overestimate its own power and underestimate China’s.
So where from here? During the Cold War, Soviet leaders often made the point that "quantity has a quality all its own". Strategic advantages accrues to those who can operate at scale. China possesses scale, and the United States does not, at least not by itself. Its only viable path lies in coalition with others, and yet at this very moment the master of "The Art of the Deal" wants to go it alone amd presents his allies with hard choices and outright threats. Trust, built over generations, has been lost and will not easily be regained. Against the new might of a bigger China, we must hang together, or we will all hang separately.
