Recently the International Monetary Fund confirmed what the average Chinese has long anticipated: China will soon have the world's largest economy, surpassing the United States. There may be quibbles about measuring sticks and low per capita GDP, so timing is imprecise. But the trend is clear. In terms of gross domestic product, China will become number one in this decade or the next and the United States will become number two. Yet rankings do not automatically confer power and influence. More important is how a major country chooses to use its power, for good or ill.
That China will have the world's largest economy is a remarkable achievement. In 1949, when the Chinese Communist Party came to power, China was a very poor country, the result of more than a century of decline. Thirty years later, it was still a poor country, wracked by continual political turmoil. But China's leaders then abandoned central planning and autarky in favor of export-led growth fueled by external investment and local initiative. They stuck to that strategy while adapting skillfully to changing circumstances. They improved the living standards of hundreds of millions and transformed the face of the country
This milestone is as important psychologically as it is economically. Chinese take pride in their civilization.They believe that their country, in its weakened state, was victimized for more than a century by the countries of the West plus Japan. To restore China to its past glory and position as one of the world's great powers would right those wrongs. That this growing power is coming at the expense of the United States, with which China at best has had a difficult relationship for much of the last 60 years, is particularly sweet.
Some Chinese believe that passing this milestone will have automatic consequences for international politics, giving China more international influence. In their view, other countries should then confer more deference on China and accommodate to it on issues that China regards as important, rather than China continuing to accommodate them. At some point, Beijing will likely insist that the head of the International Monetary Fund or World Bank be a Chinese.
Discussions of China's having the largest GDP come with a subtext - that rapid rise of a new power can destabilize the international system and even lead to conflict. Economic power can be translated into military power and political influence.
But as history shows, the path may not have a single destination. According to the conventional narrative, Germany challenged Great Britain's dominant position in the international system and World War I was the result. Yet this narrative is at odds with the economic rankings at that time, according to estimates of the late Angus Maddison, a prominent economic historian.
In 1913, the year before the outbreak of World War I, the United States had the world's largest GDP, with just more than $500 billion in 1990 prices. Next, four countries were bunched together, each with $225 to $240 billion. Germany and Great Britain were in this group but so were Russia and, surprisingly, China. France was at $144 billion and Japan only had a GDP of $71 billion.
China's second-tier economy is not surprising. In 1913, as today, it had the world's largest population. More people can produce more stuff. But China then was also politically weak: divided internally and vulnerable to external imperialism.
While, of course, the world today is very different from what it was a century ago, the 1913 configuration is instructive.
First of all, the 1913 rankings demonstrate that a large economy itself does not automatically translate into global political influence. In 1913 the United States may have had the world's largest economy, but was virtually irrelevant in Europe's gathering storm. Great Britain, on the other hand, "punched above its weight" to preserve stability in the international system.
