Reuters reports that China has overtaken Japan to become the world’s second-largest economy. The World Bank and Goldman Sachs predict that China will overtake the United States as the world’s largest economy in a short 15 years, by 2025.
While every country’s economy has been dealt a blow by the current economic crisis, China appears to be making the most of it – and that may be even worse for the United States than you already think. We should be worried about more than just the forbidden land war in Asia or Chinese bankers withholding easy credit.
China is looking to beat us with charisma.
I have recently published an essay in World Affairs detailing China’s aggressive public information campaign.
Here are two quick shocking facts:
- Beijing’s leaders have pledged $6.8 billion to build a network of overseas media bureaus to brush up China’s image and project its views globally – dwarfing the $750 million the U.S. government spends on comparable efforts.
- China already runs 282 Confucius Institutes around the world (including 60 in the U.S.), each with a launch budget of a million dollars.
According to the U.S. State Department, we simply do not have the money to compete with this cultural offensive.
It is true that United States is facing a myriad of difficulties right now. The Secretary of Defense is calling for cuts in his own budget. Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the serious efforts by the Chinese to win the world over – by any and every means possible.