What Stops China From Ruling the World?

In this conversation with the Review of Democracy, Ho-fung Hung shares his eye-opening analysis of the internal contradictions and external limitations plaguing China’s export-led development model and offers novel insights into the difficulties its political leadership is encountering in challenging US hegemony and extending its global sphere of influence. While acknowledging China’s impressive achievements, Hung emphasizes China’s technological dependency and chronic industrial overcapacity, the impact of the rise of protectionism, the hegemony of the US dollar, and China’s lack of confidence in its military capabilities. At the same time, he forecasts the intensification of US-Chinese rivalry in connection with the gradual decoupling of the US and Chinese economies.

Ho-fung Hung is Henry M. and Elizabeth P. Wiesenfeld Professor in Political Economy at the Sociology Department of the Johns Hopkins University. His scholarly interests include global political economy, protest, nation-state formation, social theory, and East Asian Development. He is the author of the award-winning Protest with Chinese Characteristics (2011, Columbia UP), The China Boom: Why China Will not Rule the World (2016, Columbia UP) and the Clash of Empires: From “Chimerica” to the “New Cold War” (2022, Cambridge UP).