Assessing China's Rise and Decline: Implications for U.S. Policy

Abstract

Following the passage of the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, and the implementation of China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping’s economic and diplomatic reforms, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began to work its way into American-led international institutions, initiating Beijing’s ascent towards becoming the second global superpower. American policymakers currently believe that China will continue to rise as an economic and geopolitical adversary, challenging the once-unipolar world order led by the United States. Conversely, this paper asserts that the CCP has entered into a state of decline by examining demographic, economic, and geopolitical statistics. Operating under the assumption that Beijing is aware of this situation, the following analysis will explore historical patterns of both China’s behavior and the tendencies of other comparable countries during periods of decline. The world can expect that China will utilize an increasingly imperialist foreign policy agenda, fascist tendencies domestically, and an impending attempt to invade Taiwan following the historic tendencies outlined in the paper. In the long term, observers will see Beijing focus on dominating East Asia through a strategy of offshore balancing to remove Western influence from its region. This analysis has considerable implications for changes to U.S. federal policy and this paper will outline recommendations for such changes.