For centuries, great powers have been looking over their shoulders, certain that somebody is gaining on them. In the late 1800s, Imperial Germany’s ascent unnerved Great Britain, the technology leader at the time. Today, alarm bells are ringing in Washington, D.C., where China’s rapid recovery from the coronavirus pandemic has cemented the notion that it will inevitably replace the United States as the world’s leading economic superpower. Some now speak of a Beijing consensus rather than a Washington consensus.
Both the Anglo-German and China-U.S. rivalries emerged during periods of rapid globalization and technological progress, as many have observed. Both pit a rising autocracy against an established democracy — so, not surprisingly, much of the discussion of China’s surge has focused on the relative merits of a state-led economy and a free market. However, arguments that China’s state-led economic policies are superior to the United States’ laissez-faire capitalism, or vice versa, tend to ignore context altogether. The countries’ economic models did not emerge in vacuums but rather evolved in societies with distinct cultural and psychological traits.