This article is a Twitter posting by Arnaud Bertrand from February 3rd, reprinted here with his permission:

by Arnaud Bertrand
@RnaudBertrand

This is an interesting study by Europe’s Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) that demonstrates that much like “the US is the world’s sole military superpower” (spending more on its military than the ten next highest spending countries combined), China is now “the world’s sole manufacturing superpower” (producing more than the nine next largest manufacturers combined).

The most interesting part of the study is the sheer speed at which it happened. As the authors put it: “China’s industrialisation is unprecedented. The last time the ‘king of the manufacturing hill’ got knocked off the throne was when the US surpassed the UK just before WW1. It took the US the better part of a century to rise to the top; the China-US switch took about 15 or 20 years. China’s industrialisation, in short, defies comparison.”

We often hear “US bombs, China builds” (or the “Belt and Road Initiative” vs the “Bomb and Ruin Initiative”), this shows it’s factually speaking their main respective characteristic: one is the world’s unequivocally largest machine of death and destruction, the other the world’s largest producer of everything we need in our daily lives. But as Biden put it in a 2022 speech we’re “in the battle between democracy and autocracy” and “the world is clearly choosing the side of peace”. And by “democracy” and “the side of peace”, believe it or not, he meant America. That’s the study: https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/china-worlds-sole-manufacturing-superpower-line-sketch-rise…