By Qamar Bashir
For the past 30 years, the United States has unintentionally paved the path for China’s meteoric rise. While America slept, content in its global dominance, China was meticulously building—quietly, efficiently, and comprehensively. And now, in 2025, the tables are turning. The U.S. is waking up to the realization that it has become alarmingly dependent on its once-silent economic rival.
China’s strategy was never haphazard. It was deliberate and state-driven. It began by creating massive industrial infrastructure at home, offering subsidies to companies, absorbing their liabilities, and providing utilities at heavily reduced costs. This resulted in the emergence of highly cost-effective yet qualitative manufacturing clusters, backed by a skilled and disciplined workforce trained through a state-supported education system. In contrast, U.S. industries were burdened with high labor costs, stringent environmental regulations, and legal hurdles. Setting up industrial infrastructure in America was a slow, expensive, and risky endeavor. Faced with this disparity, American corporations found shifting production to China not just appealing, but imperative for survival.
China’s strategy went beyond just making goods. It invited American companies to “design in the U.S., manufacture in China.” The U.S. retained the illusion of control while surrendering its industrial edge. Over time, China began replacing foreign designs with its own. It sent millions of students to top U.S. universities, many in STEM fields, and used that knowledge to build its domestic R&D base. China’s R&D spending now exceeds $460 billion annually—second only to the U.S., but growing rapidly and backed by centralized national direction.
One of the most egregious strategic errors was in the mineral and rare-earth sector. Instead of setting up refining units within U.S. borders, American firms began shipping raw materials to China for processing, lured by low costs. Today, China controls over 60% of the world’s rare earth refining capacity and 80% of global graphite processing—both critical for high-tech industries like electric vehicles, defense, and semiconductors.
China also capitalized on its dominance in global shipping. As the U.S. shipbuilding industry shrank—now accounting for less than 1% of global output—China surged ahead. Over 43% of the world’s commercial vessels are now built in Chinese shipyards. As a result, the entire global supply chain, including America’s, relies on Chinese-built vessels operating in Chinese-managed logistics routes.
As of 2024, China leads the world in AI research publications, quantum computing patents, 5G infrastructure, and has even launched its own satellite navigation system, BeiDou, which rivals America’s GPS. In semiconductors, China now dominates several parts of the value chain—from mining critical minerals to chip assembly—while the U.S. struggles to regain ground after decades of neglect.
On the energy front, China saw the future. Knowing that high-tech industries—from AI to quantum computing—require colossal amounts of power, it rapidly expanded its energy infrastructure. Between 2000 and 2023, China added over 1,200 GW of power capacity. It now has the largest solar, wind, and hydroelectric capacity in the world, along with growing nuclear and coal infrastructure. The U.S., meanwhile, has suffered from energy bottlenecks and aging grids, with nearly 70% of transmission lines more than 25 years old.
Then came China’s most brilliant geopolitical stroke—the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Launched in 2013, BRI is a multitrillion-dollar infrastructure, trade, and development strategy connecting Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America. China built highways, ports, railroads, and energy grids in 153 countries, creating a global trade and political network. The result? China no longer relied solely on exports to the U.S. Today, American demand accounts for just 12% of China’s exports—down from over 20% two decades ago.
The Trump administration attempted to reverse this trend by imposing tariffs on Chinese goods, hoping to hurt China economically and financially. But it underestimated China’s resilience. Instead of collapsing, China retaliated with its own tariffs and expanded trade with other partners, particularly in the Global South.
Worse still, as China invested its trade surpluses into infrastructure and defense, the U.S. was caught off guard. China now boasts the world’s largest navy, cutting-edge hypersonic missiles, space-based sensors, and cyberwarfare capabilities. Its military is indigenous, highly disciplined, and rapidly modernizing.
Even the once-unquestioned dominance of the U.S. dollar is under threat. BRICS nations, along with others like Brazil, Russia, India, and Saudi Arabia are exploring non-dollar trade settlements. If this trend continues, and the dollar loses its reserve currency status, America’s economic supremacy could be fatally undermined.
What hurts more is the realization that the U.S. lacks any meaningful leverage left both economic and military. China has become self-reliant in industrial inputs, diversified its markets through BRI, and built independent platforms in AI, defense, and digital currency.
The strength of America once lay not just in wealth, but in strategic foresight. That foresight is what’s missing now. Internal political divisions, power struggles between Congress, the Senate, and the White House, the bureaucracy, civil society and Judiciary, and a weakening consensus on national direction are all stalling progress.
Yet, all is not lost.
The United States still has world-class universities, unmatched innovative talent, abundant natural resources, and deep global alliances. What it needs is a paradigm shift—not just in economics, but in strategic, technological, and geopolitical thinking. It must rebuild its industrial base, repatriate key supply chains, invest in new power infrastructure, create its own version of BRI, and, above all, unite its political machinery toward a common national goal.
History has shown that America has the capacity to reinvent itself. From the post-WWII recovery to the space race, the U.S. has overcome structural crises before. The question is: does it still have the grit to do so now?
Time is ticking. The first step must be bold, focused, and unrelenting—because China is already racing ahead, and the window of strategic opportunity is narrowing with each passing year.
By Qamar Bashir
Press Secretary to the President (Rtd)
Former Press Minister at the Embassy of Pakistan to France
Former MD, SRBC
Macomb, Michigan, USA
