By Lynn Bou Daher | Staff Writer
With no doubt, China has been evolving exponentially fast. In the past few decades, it has become a world leader in many areas of education, research, technology, and infrastructure. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) said that China filed 68,720 patent applications last year alone, in comparison the United States filed 59,230. The progress China is accomplishing on an international level is remarkably evident year by year.
In recent years, the competition between the US and China has been on the rise, especially since the COVID-19 outbreak. Now nearing 2 full years since the start of the pandemic, Chinese people still face racism in many countries across the globe due to the impact of Western media, led by US speculation. In fact, the pandemic severely affected China’s economic situation, as a large portion of the world was avoiding Chinese products. The COVID-19 outbreak and subsequent lockdowns caused great economic losses to the world, and China was not spared from this wave, with a total loss of around 196 billion dollars. It was assumed that the losses incurred from the pandemic defeated China’s progress, however, China is showing otherwise.
Recently, the Pentagon issued a statement warning about the tremendous increase in China’s nuclear arsenal production. The number was predicted to surpass 1,000 nuclear warheads by the end of the decade- still lower than the United States’ 3,750 nuclear weapons, but this development in China’s nuclear arsenal came as a shock for the US. The Republic of China stated that they are producing these weapons for the sake of protection; that they will not use them first and will only keep them as a defense system. With this we question ourselves, are we moving forwards or backwards?
The most evolving race these days is the rush to extensively produce weapons. Nowadays, countries are focused more on competing over the production of a greater number of nuclear weapons rather than solving critical issues like climate change and de-escalating conflicts. One such example is China’s and Russia’s absence from the COP26 Climate Summit last week, which was publicly condemned by the US President Joe Biden, creating new sources of tension, as the three major countries racing to weaponization are China, Russia, and the United States. The ongoing conflicts between these three outnumber any other global conflict, as they continue to pave the way for new destructive inventions.
In recent interviews, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin stated that the U.S. should stop “perceiving China as an imaginary threat”. The controversial aspect here is whether the US is really focusing its attention on China or on itself- the spokesman pointed fingers back at the US, calling the United States the “world’s largest source of nuclear threat”. In reality, the enormous progress in China’s innovation is creating a debate as to whom among these two countries is competing with the other, or does it go both ways?