Will America remain at the fore despite the rising star of the Chinese giant?

Americans hate second place and only accept first place, and American culture nurtures this concept.

It was smart for President Donald Trump to borrow the phrase "America First" and give it his own Trumpian nectar, which made it an important element that contributed to his election more than 5 years ago.

The failure of the United States to deal with the outbreak and spread of the “Covid-19” virus, and the subsequent economic crisis, great inflation, and the death of nearly three-quarters of a million Americans, prompted to ask an imperative question about whether America is able to lead the world in light of the rapid Chinese rise And the inevitable, on the one hand, and in light of the unprecedented polarization and societal division it faces, on the other.

But how did America get to such a degree of self-doubt in its ability to view China with concern?

There is no standard answer to this question that preoccupies the minds of political scientists and economists and confuses the vision of historians.

Many believe that removing America from the top of the world leadership pyramid is still far away, citing that the world lives in the image and way chosen by the American mind and taste through various technological applications from the iPhone and Twitter to Facebook and Google, and from Amazon to Microsoft and through YouTube and Instagram.

They also see that the American way of life is being reproduced around the world at a shuttle speed, not to mention the cinema and the English language and their magic around the world, and compare it with the language threatening its throne, which is the Chinese language

A logical beginning of understanding is to compare the two countries from several basic points, including that for every one American citizen there are 4.5 Chinese citizens, as the population of America approached 330 million (4.3% of the world's population), and China approached 1.4 billion people (18%). The size of the US economy last year amounted to $21.4 trillion, while its Chinese counterpart amounted to $14.2 trillion.

The relationship between the two countries is dense and very complex, and the intensity of relations between the two countries appears in more than 80 daily direct, non-stop flights between the main cities in the two countries, and there are 4 million American citizens of Chinese origin, and 360,000 students study in American universities, more than half of them are master’s and doctoral students. They study traditional science subjects such as biology, physics and chemistry, and they also study modern sciences such as biochemistry, organic physics, cells and cloning, in addition to technology, computer and mathematics subjects.

The volume of trade between them amounted to 559 billion dollars last year, of which 452 billion were Chinese exports, compared to 107 billion US exports.

Historically, the year 2001 marked a difference in the history of China's rise to catch up with the United States, as it witnessed China's accession to the World Trade Organization, at a time when America knew the September 11 attacks.

China's entry into the trade organization with the world and China's exploitation of the huge and skilled manpower in attracting millions of investors pushed China to launch and succeed in achieving average growth rates of 8% during the past 20 years.

On the contrary, America became embroiled in its global war against terrorism, which dragged it into two costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, from which it emerged only this year.

A joint research study issued by the prestigious Brown University indicates that the cost of wars from the September 11 attacks to the end of fiscal year 2021 has reached $6.4 trillion, not to mention the human cost and hundreds of thousands of innocent Afghan and Iraqi casualties.

China has not been involved in any military conflicts since the end of a border dispute with Vietnam in 1979, although it has been adopting an expansion strategy in the South China Sea, which has fueled disputes over the maritime borders with Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam.

The American school of thought believes that America—the idea and the story (and the story)—is inherently great.

This argument is supported by the belief of most American politicians that the world expects the United States to lead it.

But four years of Trump's rule have only heightened the fears of American schools of thought that the time of American decline is imminent.

The events of January 6, when hundreds of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol to obstruct the ratification of the results of the 2020 elections, represented a negative milestone in American history.

Republican Senator Ben Sassi described the storming of the US Capitol as "the greatest symbol of self-government in the world was plundered, while the leader of the free world was indifferent and tweeted against his deputy for carrying out his constitutional duty that he swore."

Despite this, many believe that removing America from the top of the world leadership pyramid is still far away, citing that the world lives in the image and way chosen by the American mind and taste through various technological applications from the iPhone and Twitter to Facebook and Google, and from Amazon to Microsoft and passing through YouTube and Instagram.

They also see that the American way of life is being reproduced around the world at shuttle speed, not to mention the cinema and the English language and their magic around the world, compared to the language threatening its throne, the Chinese language.

This school believes in the absence of any real danger to the American leadership, and this is supported by the American universities keeping a very long distance away from any real competition with any of their counterparts around the world, and according to the ranking of the best universities in the world conducted by the Chinese University of Shanghai, the United States’ share was 17th among the most important 20 universities around the world, in the 2020 ranking.

In 2019, China displaced the United States as the largest source of patent applications in the world for the first time since the establishment of this system more than 40 years ago.

This is a strong cause for American concern, as the great game between the two countries is related to the "battle of digital sovereignty."

The complexity of the technology industry has prompted the cooperation of the two parties in many areas, but also prompted their reliance on each other repeatedly, for example, the phrase “Designed in California, assembled in China” is written on the phones of the American company Apple, and for this reason we will not see a conflict, but a race until The nature of designers and assemblers is changing.

Despite Goldman Sachs’ assertion that the Chinese economy will replace the US as the world’s largest economy in 2027, this will not mean much unless the Chinese regime gives confidence to itself and allows its people to use what is currently forbidden there, such as the Facebook and Twitter application, or reading the New York Times and news agency. Reuters.

Without this necessary openness, China will not be able to compete with America in its leadership of the world, even if China reached number one in the economy or patents.