… Dangerous as Its Rise
"For years, Washington's strategic debate on China has swung between two contrasting fears: an unstoppable colossus destined to rewrite the global order, and the hope that its economic headwinds will simply stall its momentum. But as analysts begin to introduce the possibility of a sudden and severe structural fracture within Beijing, this binary view misses a far more dangerous reality. Western policymakers are not facing a single trajectory. Instead, they must prepare for a dual threat, the danger of a sudden, desperate collapse on one end, and the consolidation of an illiberal hegemony on the other.
When looking at the world, Western democracies tend to project the stability and equilibrium of their own liberal systems onto others, assuming that foreign powers operate under similar rules. We often forget that China is an autocracy, and autocracies are unstable by definition and prone to sudden surprises. Western leaders know this history very well, yet they repeatedly choose to forget it. China's system is not a model for anyone.
The myth of China's organic economic miracle crumbles when looking at the recent timeline. Back in the 1990s, China was not an economic superpower. Its dramatic rise only took off after its entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. That milestone proves that China's explosive growth was not born from purely organic domestic conditions, but rather from external opportunities gifted when liberal democracies allowed its integration into global trade. Consequently, China's economic might is relatively recent, and it is now severely threatened by the crushing costs of its multipolar ambitions. It is deeply regrettable that instead of using this new wealth to lift up its own people, Beijing chose to scatter money globally driven purely by geopolitical vanity. Today, that economic pressure is real and measurable. According to World Bank and IMF data, China's growth has slowed structurally, crushed by a lingering property crisis, staggering local government debt, and a youth unemployment rate where nearly one in five young workers cannot find stable jobs…"
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