Was 2008 the year China triumphed over the West?

Although China’s economy remains smaller than the United States’s in terms of nominal GDP (albeit ahead of the US in terms of GDP on a purchasing power parity basis) has it already surpassed it in another sense? Since 2008, China’s energy and momentum has arguably led to it overtaking its rival. A hundred years from now, historians are likely to look back at the financial crash as the turning point in the balance of power between the West and China.

The sub-prime mortgage crisis of that year, followed by president Obama’s high-tax, over-regulated economic management, saw America cast into a prolonged recession and an anaemic recovery. At the same time, the US had dissipated financial and military strength as well as diplomatic credibility on president Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which, at best, only brought marginal benefits. As the West reeled, the Chinese economy bounded ahead.

While Bush’s wars brought little benefit, America has also been damaged by stark domestic divisions.