ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the conventional wisdom that China will challenge the US for global dominance. It explores that the US remains far ahead of China in terms of the key sinews of power – wealth, innovation and military capabilities – and that this power gap looks set to persist for many decades to come. The chapter explains how advances in technology over the past few decades have increased the costs of military conquest, decreased the costs of commerce and made the US and China more interdependent and thus less likely to go to war than past great powers. It also discusses the two main challenges for US–China relations: maintaining crisis stability and global governance. The conventional wisdom claims that China is rising relative to the US and cites three main pieces of evidence: China's rising gross domestic product (GDP), research and development (R&D) and military capabilities.
