Senior fellow Arvind Subramanian's piece on China's future as a world superpower was featured in the Business Standard.
From the Article
Can a country that is also not amongst the richest in the world and not at the economic and technological frontier be a superpower? That is one of the most common questions raised against the central assertion in my recent book that China’s economic dominance is more imminent, broader in scope and greater in magnitude than is currently imagined.
My projections suggest that by 2030, China will not be poor; indeed, its per capita GDP (in PPP terms) will be more than half that of the United States, and certainly greater than the average per capita GDP in the world.
China’s economic dominance will still be unique, because historically, the dominant powers (the United Kingdom and United States) have been rich, indeed amongst the richest relative to their competitors, when they have been dominant. In China’s case that will not be so. But neither will it be a case of a poor country wielding power. China will be a middle-income or upper-middle-income country. So, perhaps China’s future economic dominance should more aptly be described as that of a “precocious” rather than “premature” superpower as Martin Wolf of the Financial Times has described China.
But is precocious superpowerdom even possible? History is clearly on the side of those who believe that dominance requires a high standard of living. Why might this be the case?
First, a poor country might be inwardly focused because the tasks of maintaining internal stability and achieving a higher standard of living are the government’s major if not exclusive preoccupation. In this case, projecting power internationally will have to be subordinated to addressing more pressing domestic challenges. Internal fragility sits uneasily, or is just downright incompatible, with external dominance.
Second, a poor country might not be able to raise the resources — at least on a sustained basis —for the projection of power internationally. The classic example is military resources. These will have to be financed. But the poorer a country, the more difficult it might be to tax the people to raise resources. For example, tax revenues generally rise with the level of development. Russia sustained military dominance for some time beyond its underlying economic potential, but eventually economics caught up with geopolitics. North Korea is a more extreme example of external power being incommensurate with internal stability and wealth. North Korea can be a nuisance, a country that can cause trouble, but hardly one that can exercise international dominance.