For decades, the story of China’s rise was framed as an economic miracle, the workshop of the world, producing cheap goods that filled American homes and fueled corporate profit.<\/p>\n
But today, the narrative has become very different.<\/p>\n
The United States now calls China its greatest threat; tariffs, sanctions and military posturing dominate the headlines.<\/p>\n
When Washington says China is dangerous, the focus is often on ideology or military power, but the deeper story is about economics and about how China’s rise has upset a system the West has relied on for centuries.<\/p>\n
That system depends on a global divide. Wealthy countries at the core extract value from cheaper labor and resources in the Global South, this unequal exchange has long powered Western prosperity.<\/p>\n
When China opened to foreign investments in the 1980s it became central to this arrangement.<\/p>\n
Apple, for example, built its empire on the backs of low wage but highly skilled Chinese workers.<\/p>\n
In 2005, Chinese factory wages averaged less than $1 an hour, today, it is over $8, which is higher than every other developing country in Asia.<\/p>\n
The result is transformative for Chinese workers, better pay, health care, housing, but disastrous for Western firms whose profits rely on keeping labor costs down.<\/p>\n
For Washington, this isn’t just a shift in numbers; it’s a shift in power. China is no longer the endless pool of cheap labor it once was, and that makes the global order as America has known it harder to sustain.<\/p>\n
Rising wages also changed the terms of trade. For decades, China had to export huge volumes of goods to afford the imports it needed. Today, that imbalance has narrowed.<\/p>\n
The United States and its allies can no longer extract the same value from Chinese labor, consequently, US hostility sharpened.<\/p>\n
The mid-2010s marked a turning point; China’s currency was no longer artificially low. Its wages were climbing, and its role as a mere supplier of cheap imports was fading.<\/p>\n
Suddenly, ‘the China threat’ became a bipartisan talking point in Washington.<\/p>\n
Wages are only part of the story, the most important part is technology where China’s progress has been staggering.<\/p>\n
China now leads the world in high speed rail, produces most of its own commercial aircraft, and dominates renewable energy technology and electric vehicles.<\/p>\n
It has advanced rapidly in artificial intelligence, semiconductors and biotechnology.<\/p>\n
These are breakthroughs usually reserved for rich nations, yet China achieved them with far less wealth per person.<\/p>\n
This matters because Western dominance has long depended on controlling\u00a0advanced technology. Developing nations had to sell their raw materials cheap then buy expensive aircraft, computers and medicines from the west.<\/p>\n
China is now breaking that monopoly offering alternatives to the global south and threatening US economic supremacy.<\/p>\n
The American response came in the form of sanctions on Chinese tech firms, bans on the export of advanced chips and restrictions on investments.<\/p>\n
But rather than crippling Beijing, the pressure has only accelerated China’s push for self reliance, with sanctions falling short, Washington’s rhetoric has grown more heated.<\/p>\n
Politicians claim China poses a military danger to the world. The numbers don’t add up.<\/p>\n
China spends one tenth per capita on defense compared to the United States. It has one overseas military base. The US has hundreds.<\/p>\n
China hasn’t fired a bullet in international war for over 40 years, while America has intervened in more than a dozen countries during the same time.<\/p>\n
So what is really at stake? Not democracy versus authoritarianism, but military dominance. It’s about sovereignty and profit.<\/p>\n
China’s rise undermines the global arrangements that keeps the west on top, and that, more than anything else, explains why Washington’s rhetoric has turned so hostile.<\/p>\n
Behind the talks of threats and security, the deeper fear in Washington is losing control of the world’s economic future.<\/p>\n
For the first time in generations, there’s a real alternative, and it’s coming from Beijing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For decades, the story of China’s rise was framed as an economic miracle, the workshop of the world,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47399,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[114,184,85,46],"class_list":["post-47398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}