This week, two experts debated whether China is the new America or the United States is the new China in Foreign Policy. While the authors compare the two powers in different ways, both believe China is rising and the US is falling.

Harold James, a professor at Princeton University, says leadership in the international order is critical during economic downturns. The US was the emerging superpower at the time of the Great Depression and China faces a similar situation today.

“If China is the America of this century, can it do a better job than the United States did in the 1930s? The way in which the emerging superpower takes to this role will determine in large part how the world will emerge from the downturn and the shape of the new global economic order that will follow…

“The world may be asked to transition from an American to a Chinese model of capitalism, and as in the 1930s, that won’t be an easy switch for any of us.”

Jonathan Holslag, a research fellow at the Brussels Institute of Contemporary Chinese Studies, argues that Washington is implementing financial and economic policies more closely associated with Beijing. The weakened American economy is also compelling the US to adopt more pragmatic foreign policies.

“After two decades of US and European principles dominating international policy through a web of multilateral organizations, the West no longer has the leverage to enforce its conditions.

“The West’s retreat will open up space for a new concert of powers – Brazil, Russia, India, and China – tied together by a fixation with national economic growth. Instead of entrusting the United States with the arduous task of safeguarding global stability, the so-called BRIC countries will assume a more prominent role in policing their own backyards.”

Image from Foreign Policy.