China Is Also A Superpower

(Published in Stabroek News' Letter pages on Jan 14, 2011)

Dear Editor,

The Stabroek News editorials are among the best I read for a newspaper anywhere in the world.  Congratulations to the editor-in-chief and his team.

This letter wishes to challenge a belief expressed in your editorial titled, ‘Watching China-United States relations’ (January 12, 2011). The author made the often repeated and established notion, even among the academic community, that the United States (US) is the “only superpower” in the international system of state relations.

According to the author, this view is predicated on global military reach. I have often challenged this view and proffered the heterodox position that if we were to examine it from a military or economic point of view, it is clear that we live in a multi-polar world and moreso from the latter.

The notion that the US has the world strongest military and can subdue any other nation is not so. Despite smaller military personnel, budgets, equipment etc, other states that possess nuclear capabilities can easily balance US power.

Similarly, on the economic front, The US has no unilateral power and is dependant on many nations to feed its voracious consumer appetite and to fund it political programmes and policies.

China possesses both nuclear weapons and is the chief nation that supplies goods and loan funds to the US.  Even your editorial touched on the necessary interdependent relation between the two countries. This leads me to conclude unequivocally that in today’s world, China is a superpower whose strength is growing exponentially.

Yours faithfully,
Clinton Urling