The continued growth in advancement of China has been happening for decades, and while this growth occurs, it is asserted by some that the U.S. is in decline. These two global powers have dramatic effect input into the outcome of what is happening in the world in the present. What has allowed China to grow so significantly to the point of seeing the view ahead around the assumption they will grow past the United States economically? I take a simple view over internal influence within the countries to think about how this is occurring.
China’s governmental system is somewhat of a quasi-communist state, where they have a private sector, but in one perspective, these private sector entities, or businesses, or not “owned” from an equity perspective by the Chinese governing party. Institutional and retail investors can take stakes in Chinese corporations that are listed on stock exchanges. But this doesn’t necessarily neglect away the fact that the governing party of China has dramatic, if not possibly extremely significant control, over what is happening in the private sector.
I look at the overarching influence of direction in China as a top-down view, with the government being the “top.” The government likely dips themselves into the heavily influential corporations, big and small, through political connections to the Chinese governing party. There is likely significant influence under the central power of the government from individual to individual. China’s government is likely able to access information as they please through their “private” sector as well, by a means of accessing data of companies or data through their citizens technology usage. The control of the direction of their economy is happening from the government level, purposefully falling into the business level, and then down to the general population level.
The important thing here is there is ultimately a central long-term vision for China that is the determination of action of the governing party of China that they can then insinuate into their decisions of what to do with the private sector. The private sector, perhaps, does not have the significant lobbying efforts compared to the United States, so influence over the direction of the society is coming from a different, central, higher angle.
China has likely allowed themselves to catch up through the mirroring of the U.S. private sector and the success in advancements it has shown. Cyber warfare has potentially led to the copying and stealing of much of the way things are done in the U.S., through the means of many different types of corporations like technology and energy, and has allowed the Chinese governing party to catch up to the U.S. from the ways they hoped to, and they can now utilize these private tools to therefore influence their own world in the way they’d like, and build progress on top of the curved mirror they built across the Pacific Ocean.
The Chinese governing party does not need to worry significantly about short term political influence over their citizens, as they’ve dominated the governing structure of the country and the ability to be re-elected is not needed at a national level. This gives the ability to not have to succumb to the public perception of political figures, but rather have the ability to control the perception of themselves.
In essence, a formulated top-down influential structure over society allows for China to control its own destiny so far and build, whether that be artificially or organically, its own economic and societal growth.
On the opposite side of the Pacific Ocean, the United States government does not seem to necessarily hold a controlled overarching strategy for the long term that trickles down into the influence of the private sector and then its own citizens. The private sector holds significant sway over governmental actions through major lobbying efforts and influence over the politicians in government positions. I see this structure as a dual form of influence, with the private sector influencing the government and the citizens considerably, while the government also holds some influence over the private sector and citizens. The government might be viewed as somewhat of a tool of the private sector to build competitive advantages and maintain short term motivational factors as much as they can.
This system might lead to self-serving interests of a profit driven/return oriented environment, with many influencers through the private sector pushing down on the law and citizens usage. Their therefore may be some lacking an overarching strategic view of the nation, and therefore its people. One could argue there is an attempt at a rise of political influence through party control, but that may be in an intermediary step towards being in fruition.
While the government might succumb to the short term needs of the private sector, they may also move slow to react to external factors over the internal environment. With so many attempts at the internal focus of control and influence within the country, it might be easier for external factors to place themselves within a more “chaotic” environment to help their own internal factors. The speculation around the current need to ban the Tik-Tok app within the U.S. might be an example of this.
The U.S.’s external “threat” of economic prowess has exposed a level of lack of central influence and the effects it has as a rise in external influence grows. Weaknesses in governing and influences are coming to light, and you can see a more chaotic environment with little sense of direction it seems.
However, the current U.S. environment allows for the continued ability to explore entrepreneurial ventures and gives its citizens freedom of thought if they so choose to not allow external factors to influence the self. This is important to the country’s ability to maintain growth and advancement, as seen from my perspective.
How can the U.S. overcome the supposed decline currently in place?
Perhaps unification of the private sector would be a solution and applying management in an overarching game theory environment to a unification and decision-making standpoint. The private sectors consideration into external factors may lead to them playing a higher “game” – that game being the competition between nations. Therefore, private sector entities in the U.S. could be making decisions with the best outcome long term strategically for the higher entity – the country itself. Game theory could be thought of across industries from this standpoint, speeding up long term decision making into the short term to help the direction of prosperous growth within the home country.
A unification of the private sector, or at least playing game theory for what is best at multiple levels while maintaining internal competition in the long run, can help look past short-term influences over lobbying interests and short term interests of financial returns of equity to better create a form of influence that is best for the current state to evolve into – unification of many channels that are a piece of a bigger pie to help their own outcome, the outcome of their consumers/citizens, and maintain long term competitive advantage internally in the U.S. along with their own global operations.
There is a lot of opportunity growing to build change, internally and externally on both sides of the ocean, and who can grasp these opportunities best may come out the “winner” on the other side.
nu-Box 
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