"Why China Won’t Rule" by Robert Skidelsky | Project Syndicate

"Why China Won’t Rule" by Robert Skidelsky | Project Syndicate:

The most often used excuse by PRC for the mess in PRC now is "China is too big with 1.3 billion people."

If PRC has difficulty in ruling 1.3 billion people, it definitely doesn't have the skill, the know how, the resources, and the will to run a  7 billion strong earth.  I think US may have to run it for a long while.

This is an interesting article that laid out a few difficulties PRC will have to overcome before becoming a "super power".  However, I have questions about some of its assumptions."

The article assume that to be a world superpower, the country must "challenge the Communist Party’s political monopoly, guaranteed by the 1978 constitution".  But this is a nice and convenient to have condition.  If there is enough military power behind it, with good enough political skill, and economic resources, I do not see why an authoritarian dictatorship cannot be a super power, albeit that it is very difficult and troublesome proposal.

It is much easier to run the world if the people of the world are willing to be run by a country.  However, it is not impossible even with majority of the world's people are against you.   The Roman Empire, the Qin Dynasty, and many ancient empires showed that it is difficult, but not impossible.  The difficulties led to the ultimate demise of these empires, not because they were dictatorships, be because they did exercise the same intelligence and skill in dealing with a huge empire.

There is not doubt that PRC will someday have super power class economy and military power.  Dictatorial political practices will make it difficult, but not impossible to do so.  Pre-WWII Germany and Japanese almost did it.