There’s only one way China could surpass America
The nation’s superpower aspirations require adopting U.S. culture and capitalism.
John Tamny is president of the Parkview Institute and editor of RealClearMarkets.
The warning from Sen. James E. Risch (R-Idaho) was blunt: “China’s control of TikTok poses one of the greatest threats to Americans’ health, privacy, and safety. Our kids and grandkids are particularly vulnerable to falling under the manipulation of the Chinese Communist Party.”
The fight over the social media platform, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, blew up in 2024 when Congress passed a law to ban or force the sale of TikTok. In a rare show of bipartisanship, Democrats and Republicans expressed deep concerns over risks of the Chinese government gaining access to the data — and minds — of Americans. The fear is that the Chinese Communist Party will turn TikTok’s 170 million users in the United States against their own country economically, politically or culturally. But this paranoia ignores a crucial reality: China can only ascend beyond the U.S. by becoming much more like it.
British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge knew this well from watching the Soviet Union. In the 1930s, the Manchester Guardian correspondent was initially a believer in the Soviet Union’s collectivist experiment as an antidote to the capitalism he disdained, but eventually Muggeridge happened on the more sickening truth that the Soviets were plying foreign reporters and dignitaries with food while starving their own people.
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So, while a chastened Muggeridge still felt the Soviets would win their Cold War with the U.S., he felt just as strongly — based on the desperation of Soviet citizens — that victory would be a function of the Soviets adopting American ideals, not the other way around. As Muggeridge observed about the possibility of a Soviet victory over the U.S.: “You may find some solace in the fact that once they’ve done with you, they will have everywhere implanted ‘the American way of life.’”
Muggeridge’s belief that American-style freedom would prevail begs reflection amid U.S. admonitions about China, TikTok and future relations between the two global powers. More than the worriers stateside want to admit, the only serious threats to “the American way of life” are internal, not external, and certainly not from China.
Why should we not fret about this apparent risk? Just look at the Chinese Communist Party’s inability to turn its own people against America. As any visitor to China’s cities sees with powerful regularity, the people there are having a love affair with all things American.
McDonald’s is arguably the most potent global symbol of U.S. capitalism, and there are 6,820 restaurants selling Big Macs in mainland China. The chain has plans for 10,000 locations in China by 2028. And it’s not just McDonald’s. There were 7,596 Starbucks locations in China at the end of 2024.
One-fifth of Apple’s revenue comes from China, where Tesla sold around a third of its vehicles this year. In 2018, the second largest market for the global film industry, in which Hollywood is a key player, is China. For instance, “Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning,” grossed more in China than any other country outside the U.S. In time, and considering China’s population of 1.4 billion people, the American way might be more numerically prevalent in China than in the U.S.
TikTok in many ways symbolizes China’s evolution into a crucial center of technological advancement. The video-sharing platform’s rise mirrors so many Chinese technological success stories. Investments that made these leaps possible had American origins. As Sebastian Mallaby wrote in “The Power Law,” his 2022 book on the history of venture capital, “China’s technology boom was forged to a remarkable extent by American investors.”
Muggeridge would understand. If China turns against the American-style norms that made it prosperous, it will no longer loom as the threat that many perceive it to be.
The overblown China panic serves as a reminder of why the U.S. must maintain the market-friendly norms that have long made it the envy of the world. America’s policymakers should not abandon the nation’s economic history by resorting to tariffs, government stakes in private businesses (U.S. Steel and Intel) and export controls (Nvidia) due to national security alarmism. These policies will not fuel prosperity nor will they be emulated by any country with designs on global economic dominance.