Читать книгу The United States vs. China - C. Fred Bergsten - Страница 14

China will celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the takeover of the country by the Communist Party in 2049. President Xi Jinping envisages China becoming a, or the, “global leader by 2050.” He aims to establish a world-class military “that can rival or exceed the United States by 2049.” These are the target dates of the “hundred-year marathon” through which Chinese leaders since Mao Zedong have allegedly sought to catch up with the United States (Pillsbury 2016). The most thorough analysis to date of China’s intentions concludes that “Beijing’s ultimate objective is to displace the United States order globally in order to emerge as the world’s dominant state by 2049” (Doshi 2021). According to reasonable economic projections, China will by then account for about one-third of the world economy, and its per capita income would be about double the global average (Yang 2020).

The annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank in one of those mid-century years could well take place at the gleaming new headquarters of the two institutions in Beijing or Shanghai. As mandated in their charters, the “principal offices” of the main international financial institutions will move from the United States to China if and when China becomes the largest shareholder in both.

China has already become the largest economy in the world on some metrics. It is clearly the largest trading nation. It is, by far, the largest holder of foreign exchange reserves and is likely to soon become the world’s largest creditor country (Dollar 2020). By mid-century, China is quite likely to be the largest economy by all measures.

If the Bretton Woods institutions continue to play by their current rules, China would then be eligible to hold the largest quotas and voting rights in both. Such a shift would dramatically symbolize the ascent of China in the world economy of the twenty-first century (see box 1.1).