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They maneuver desperately to keep geopolitical enemies at bay. Expansion seems like a solution—a way of grabbing economic resources and markets, making nationalism a crutch for a wounded regime, and beating back foreign threats. Many countries have followed this path. After a fast-rising imperial Russia fell into a deep slump at the turn of the 20th century, the tsarist government cracked down hard while also enlarging its military, seeking colonial gains in East Asia and sending around , soldiers to occupy Manchuria.
These moves backfired spectacularly: They antagonized Japan, which beat Russia in the first great-power war of the 20th century. A century later, Russia became aggressive under similar circumstances.
Even democratic France engaged in anxious aggrandizement after the end of its postwar economic expansion in the s. It tried to rebuild its old sphere of influence in Africa, deploying 14, troops to its former colonies and undertaking a dozen military interventions over the next two decades. All of these cases were complicated, yet the pattern is clear. If a rapid rise gives countries the means to act boldly, the fear of decline serves up a powerful motive for rasher, more urgent expansion.
The same thing often happens when fast-rising powers cause their own containment by a hostile coalition. But the more sobering parallel is this: War came when a cornered Germany grasped it would not zip past its rivals without a fight. For decades after unification in , Germany soared.
London, Paris, and St. By , time was running short. Germany was losing ground economically to a fast-growing Russia; London and France were pursuing economic containment by blocking its access to oil and iron ore. Most ominous, the military balance was shifting. France was enlarging its army; Russia was adding , men to its military and slashing the time it needed to mobilize for war.
Britain announced it would build two battleships for every one built by Berlin. But by and , it would be hopelessly overmatched.
It then invaded neutral Belgium—the key to its Schlieffen Plan for a two-front war—despite the likelihood of provoking Britain. Its impending decline drove the decisions that plunged the world into war. Imperial Japan followed a similar trajectory. For a half-century after the Meiji Restoration in , Japan was rising steadily.
The building of a modern economy and a fierce military allowed Tokyo to win two major wars and accumulate colonial privileges in China, Taiwan, and the Korean Peninsula. Yet Japan was not a hyper-belligerent predator: Through the s, it cooperated with the United States, Britain, and other countries to create a cooperative security framework in the Asia-Pacific.
During that decade, however, things fell apart. Growth dropped from 6. Unemployment soared, and bankrupt farmers sold their daughters. In China, meanwhile, Japanese influence was being challenged by the Soviet Union and a rising nationalist movement under then-Chinese leader Chiang Kai-Shek.
Tokyo had antagonized an overwhelming coalition of enemies. It then risked everything rather than accepting humiliation and decline. The precipitating cause, again, was a closing window of opportunity. By , the United States was building an unbeatable military. In July, then-U.
But Japan still had a temporary military edge in the Pacific Ocean, thanks to its early rearmament. So it used that advantage in a lightning attack—seizing the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, and other possessions from Singapore to Wake Island as well as bombing the U. The short-lived Sui dynasty — and the Tang spent decades, for example, trying to destroy the strong Koguryo kingdom in Korea.
Zheng He, the supposedly peaceful admiral, launched a military expedition on the island of Sumatra now part of Indonesia against a rival to the local king and Chinese vassal.
When the Japanese invaded the Korean peninsula in , the Ming dynasty — sent troops to help the Koreans expel them. As late as the s, the Qing dynasty went to war to aid its Vietnamese tributaries against the French. The Chinese would also police their system in other, coercive ways—by, for instance, denying proper trading rights to unruly foreigners. Read: Why China wants Trump to win.
There are also signs that the Chinese will restore aspects of the old imperial order as their power expands. On two occasions, Xi has summoned high-level delegations from countries participating in his infrastructure-building Belt and Road Initiative to pomp-heavy Beijing forums—tribute missions in all but name.
China blocked imports from Canada and Australia amid recent diplomatic tussles, and Beijing targeted South Korean businesses in China three years ago after Seoul agreed to deploy a U. One reason supporting the notion that China will be a benign superpower is the amorality of its current foreign policy. Unlike the U. There is some truth to this. The Chinese are equally happy to sell Huawei 5G networks to autocratic Russia and democratic Germany without a fuss.
The local governments could keep borrowing and selling. The people who lived on these small plots of land could move into the high-rise complexes that were built there. No one had an incentive for this cycle to decline. For the government, real estate offered an easy way to fend off worries of flagging growth—perhaps too easy. Housing in large Chinese cities is among the most expensive in the world when measured as a share of income.
But as property developers began to incur extraordinary levels of debt, the state recognized the need to deleverage the sector before the bubble burst to catastrophic effect.
Last year, new regulations, known as the Three Red Lines, forced developers to tighten up their financing arrangements. Another way is to see it as a side-effect of China slamming the brakes, slowing down one of the hottest generators of its growth story. Experts like Howie say there are few signs of a replacement for the property sector, the rocket-fuel that has been powering China over the past two decades. Beijing has dismayed its private-education sector by enacting strict new rules, trying to limit both the expenses incurred by students and the intense pressures felt by them in a hyper-competitive academic environment.
Shares of Didi have shed more than half their value since going public in the US in July.
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