this video was brought to you by ground news super Bell competition is all the rage at the moment U.S foreign policy is myopically focused on containing China and foreign policy journals are filled with sensationalist pieces predicting either China's imminent rise or its imminent demise so in this video we thought we'd try to do our best to give the outlines of this argument by looking at three reasons why China will overtake the US in the years to come now before we get into it and before you leave an angry comment about how biased this video is
and how pro-china we are we should probably say that we aren't arguing this ourselves we're just presenting some of the more popular arguments we actually did a companion video to this arguing the inverse over on the tldr US channel so you can go and watch that at the end of this video if you want some balance also these three reasons are aren't intended as an exhaustive list there are obviously more than three possible arguments here these are just the three that we thought were most significant also obviously which side of the argument you fall down
on will depend on how you define a superpower something we're not actually going to try and Tackle or Define in this video finally we should say that we don't really want to be doing this kind of video ideally the rise of China would be positive some it means a better economy and a higher standard of well-being for most Chinese people it shouldn't be a zero-sum adversarial Us Versus Them challenge to the US unfortunately though that's the way it's Being Framed in many parts of both Washington and Beijing with that being said let's get into it
[Music] foreign the three reasons that we think that China will overtake the US are America's broken political system China's upper hand in the green transition and China's revamped diplomacy let's start with America's broken political system in our companion video to this one which we release over on the tldrus channel we argue that the CCP doesn't look quite as omniscient as they once did that's because China has struggled to deflate their property bubble flip-flopped on zero covid and scared off Foreign businesses with sudden and Savage Regulatory crackdowns and to make matters worse for China America's political
system actually looks pretty healthy Trump and his election deniers who presented arguably the biggest threat to America's political stability fed pretty poorly in the midterms Democrats and Republicans have finally found something they can agree on in Ukraine and last year Biden overcame congress's legislative deadlock to pass the inflation reduction act which will arguably do more for the climate than any other individual piece of legislation however it's important to not overstate all of this even if it's healthier than it was America's political system is still pretty broken for instance Trump has been replaced by Rhonda santis
who's still an election skeptic and who has a habit of promoting and supporting other election deniers his politics are also pretty divisive in and of themselves mostly focused on opposing what he describes as the woke left and calling for massive tax cuts similarly the bipartisan Unity on Ukraine is already fraying the freedom caucus of the House Republicans who demonstrated their power by forcing house Speaker Kevin McCarthy to agree to a whole load of Demands before they voted him in on the 15th have insisted that not another Penny will go to Ukraine even the inflation reduction
act which was massively watered down compared original buildback better Act was held up by one particularly stubborn senator in Joe manchin and it had to be disingenuously titled to even get through Congress similarly even if the Chinese Communist party don't look as omniscient as they once did they're still probably better policy makers than Congress sure they've struggled to deliberately bring down real estate prices but at least they're trying to deflate their property bubble politicians in democracies including in the U.S are happy to continue inflating their property Bubbles as long as it benefits their homeowning voters
even if it's clearly not a good idea and sure xero covert has been a bit of a disaster but it's not like the US's response to covid which killed over a million Americans and somehow became a partisan issue was all that much better and sure the regulatory crackdowns have been sudden and unpredictable but in many cases they've been ahead of the curve take their Crackdown on big tech companies last year at time the West chided it as naive and anti-business but Western politicians have become increasingly anxious about the influence of big Tech over the last
year or so and now there are growing calls for more muscular regulation so maybe the CCP aren't struggling as much as many people think maybe they're doing about as well as America is anyway on to the second reason that China might become dominant in the future the green transition historically access to energy sources has been a necessary condition for superpower status in the 19th century when coal was the dominant energy source the Europeans were super powers in part because they had lots of readily available coal when oil became the dominant energy source in the 20th
century America's status as the world's largest oil producer helped it achieve and maintain its superpower status in fact America's oil continues to be a great source of Revenue and confers great geopolitical security because America doesn't have to to rely on another country for its energy Imports so in much the same way that the US benefited from the transition from coal to oil China is well placed to benefit from the transition from oil to Renewables shifting away from hydrocarbons will require building tons of green infrastructure and this is good news for China because China is the
world's manufacturing superpower and it dominates lots of these Supply chains and industries according to the latest iea report China accounts for the production of 90 of all rare Earth elements which are used in high-end technology eighty percent of polysilicon which is used in solar panel and about 60 percent of all lithium copper nickel and Cobalt all of which are used in battery production China also dominates in bulk materials producing more than half of the world's aluminum iron cement and steel and that's honestly why China produces at least a majority of literally every major component in
solar panels wind turbines and batteries and it's worth dwelling on this astonishing fact for a second a single country produces half of every component required for the green transition that means that China is on track to dominate The Green energy era more than any previous energy superpower for context America the world's largest oil producer accounts for less than 20 percent of all oil produced globally now America has realized this and is doing things to rearrange the green energy order the inflation reduction act for example introduces enormous subsidies for various green Industries which Biden hopes will
encourage companies to shift their manufacturing to the US however America is still years behind China on this issue and as impressive as the inflation reduction Act is it's a rare piece of legislation from Congress usually Paralyzed by partisan infighting finally the third reason for China's potential dominance is their revamped diplomacy when we covered this topic back in 2021 we argued that China's aggressive wolf Warrior diplomacy was one of the reasons that China would never overtake the us while it might have played well domestically China's wolf Warrior diplomacy made China deeply unpopular abroad however since we
made that video she has apparently changed tact well-known wolf Warriors have been demoted and China has toned down the rhetoric across the board and this approach already seems to be paying dividends just look at who's visited Beijing recently as well as The Usual Suspects like former Russian president Dimitri mevidev and the Pakistani prime minister German Chancellor Olaf Schultz and European Council president Charles Michelle have visited the capital last year and XI and French president Emmanuel macron had a chitchat on the sidelines of the G20 so it's clear that the Western world is at least more
receptive to this approach on the other and while China is strengthening their diplomatic position the permanent risk of an isolationist Republican in the white house has made even America's traditional allies wary of relying too heavily on the U.S while NATO has been rejuvenated by the war in Ukraine it's also inspired Europe to reduce their strategic Reliance on America Europe have also pushed back on America's us or them China policy in part because they can't really afford to as a result the EU has so far resisted joining in with America's export controls on China and the
EU still insists that there's some space for cooperation other countries like India have also tried to avoid getting caught in the geopolitical crossfire maintaining a steadfastly neutral stance between the U.S and China despite the facts that well India doesn't get on all that well with China now it's important not to overstate all of this China and XI are still deeply unpopular in the West and America does still possess unparalleled soft power but America's soft power does seem to be dwindling and China's more moderate diplomacy is already paying dividends so maybe they really are a challenger
to America's long political dominance and if that does happen it will require a fundamental re-understanding of the global political world order and if that kind of topic sounds interesting to you then you might want to check out ground news they're a website an app which allow you to track Global News and importantly actually compare hell breaking news stories are being covered in different areas of the world that's because they allow you to view global news stories from a diverse array of viewpoints so that you can find out how International stories are being covered by news
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