INTERNATIONAL SECURITY How powerful is China? Comparing economic, military and soft power
It’s one of the big questions of our time: just how powerful is China? Although 40 years of economic reform and growth may have set the country on a course towards achieving superpower status, the answer, writes Nicholas Dynon, is complicated.
Nicholas Dynon is Chief Editor of Defsec Media’s defence, security and safety publications. He has previously served diplomatic postings in Beijing and Shanghai, and his in-progress doctoral research explores China’s soft power.
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China’s rise to great power status is a subject that has gripped governments, foreign policy wonks and defence analysts. The rising power’s unprecedentedly rapid economic growth, its increasing international assertiveness, and the apparent challenge its state-led success poses to liberal democracies make it a compelling case study in the measurement of ‘national power’. It doesn’t take an economist to comprehend how much of an economic superpower China has become, but where exactly does the Middle Kingdom sit as a military power? And what about its ‘soft power’? Does the one-party state’s level of international influence affect its overall power standing? Does Beijing’s domestic grip and ability to ‘get things done’ internally make it more powerful internationally or less so? Measuring the power of countries Indexes of national power are used to measure the power of nation-states, and to understand historical trends, such as the nature of power transitions (the rise and fall of great powers), the international system and the nature and constituents of power itself. Some indexes, such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP), are simple enough and focused on just one aspect of a nation’s power. Others, such as the ‘Audit of Geopolitical Capability’ combine economic, military and other power attributes and are derived from complex formulas. While there is
much scholarly and policy interest in how composite power indexes are put together, these attempts at measuring the relative power of states are the subject of much criticism. Critics highlight, for example, that aggregated power measurements are unable to account for the limited ‘fungibility’ of power. Military power, for example, may give a country little leverage in relation to particular economic issues, nor may it afford the diplomatic clout needed for coalition building. Another major criticism is that these measures fail to provide insight into the ability of nation-states to convert their power capabilities into effective actions. Writing for RAND, Treverton and Jones comment that states “need to convert material resources, or economic prowess, into more usable instruments, such as combat proficiency,” and even then, outcomes are dependent “on power for what, and against whom”. ‘Hard’ dimensions of national power 1. Economic Power Whichever economic power index one uses, China ranks either in top place or second behind the US, and it’s arrived there quickly. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) October 2019 World Economic Outlook, China is ranked 2 nd behind the US in terms of nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Line of Defence
