Does China Believe America Is In Decline?

Lyle J. Goldstein, National Interest: Does China Think America Is in Decline?

How Beijing's top "America hands" see their biggest rival.

It has been fashionable in national security circles over the last several years for U.S. experts on Asia-Pacific security to claim that Chinese strategists perceive the U.S. to be in decline. As Daniel Blumenthal queried Ambassador John Bolton at a November 2015 forum at the American Enterprise Institute: “I don’t mean to ask such a leading question… Do you think China perceives us as… declining…?” Predictably, Bolton answered in the affirmative and went on to explain that the U.S. confronts a grave credibility problem. A similar line of thinking seems also to undergird more centrist appraisals in Washington that highlight China’s “brimming confidence” as part of the problem confronting U.S. national security policy. To be fair, there has been some evidence from Chinese sources, particularly in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, for that line of reasoning. But even during that unstable time, key Chinese sources, including analyses by military experts, did not forecast any diminution of America's military advantage.

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WNU Editor: What's my take on Chinese views of America .... it has not change much from the first time that I visited China (mid-1980s). They criticize and judged America all the time, but if given the opportunity to migrate to the U.S., most (if not all) Chinese citizens will jump at that opportunity.