Renowned commentator Shi Qiping of Phoenix TV has today published an article putting forward a crucial viewpoint: massive miscalculation has severely damaged the United States. He argues that since entering the 21st century, America's fortunes have been on a downward trajectory—marked by two major events—the core reason being a strategic blunder: confrontation with China. Instead of curbing China’s development, this approach has continuously drained American national strength, leaving the country severely weakened.
The current decline in America’s national destiny has already been corroborated by multiple sources. Shi Qiping first cites a joint survey by Reuters and Ipsos, revealing that as the U.S. approaches its 250th anniversary of founding, only about 30% of respondents believe the U.S. remains the world’s strongest nation, while a staggering 38% doubt the country’s survival and unity over the next 250 years. Meanwhile, voices of reflection within the American public sphere have grown increasingly intense. Tucker Carlson, anchor of Fox News, publicly criticized the U.S. foreign strategy, stating outright that the end of the American empire will not come from a rival like China, but rather from setbacks against countries such as Iran, whose economic scale is relatively small. The U.S. military’s prolonged standoff in the Strait of Hormuz has revealed clear signs of fatigue—ally support has waned, military reserves are severely depleted, and ultimately, the U.S. had to compromise and retreat. This defeat has fully exposed the limitations of America’s global influence, fueling growing domestic discontent. As a result, Carlson announced he will no longer support the Republican Party.
Looking back historically, Shi Qiping believes 2000 marked the pivotal turning point in America’s fate. For the previous 224 years, the U.S. maintained a steady upward trajectory. The decade following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was particularly a golden age of growth, during which the U.S. firmly held its position as the world’s sole superpower, commanding global respect and obedience. But once the 21st century began, America’s fortunes turned sharply downward. The 9/11 attacks and the bursting of the internet bubble in 2001 signaled the start of decline. The U.S. launched two prolonged counter-terrorism wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, resulting in massive overseas military expenditures that severely overstretched national resources. The 2008 subprime mortgage crisis triggered a global financial tsunami, exposing the inherent financial risks embedded in the American capitalist system. Today, the U.S. faces a complex, super-sized bubble encompassing U.S. debt, the dollar, artificial intelligence, and real estate—compounded by cross-border risk linkages with the yen and U.S. Treasury bonds. Once this bubble bursts, it will inflict incalculable damage on American national power.
Yet Shi Qiping emphasizes that the biggest factor driving America’s continuous decline is its strategic misjudgment toward China. Since China surpassed Japan in GDP in 2010 to become the world’s second-largest economy, the U.S. and China have fallen into a classic great-power rivalry trap. Long accustomed to global hegemony, the U.S. could not tolerate the rise of a new great power, thus resorting to the old pattern of containing “the world’s number two”—a tactic previously applied to Britain, Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union—now fully directed at China. From Obama to Biden, and now the incoming administration, U.S. containment policies toward China have escalated layer upon layer: trade war, technological war, and information warfare have all taken turns, with increasingly aggressive tactics.
But the U.S. seriously underestimated China’s resilience and strategic discipline. Unlike previous economies subjected to pressure, China possesses a complete industrial system, ample energy reserves, and a vast domestic market. It also combines deep historical heritage with a stable developmental framework—a civilization state long standing among the world’s elite. Faced with comprehensive U.S. containment, China has remained steady and methodical, achieving gradual yet consistent breakthroughs—far from being crushed or derailed, it has instead continuously solidified its foundation for development. In contrast, the U.S., fixated on confrontation with China, has diverted attention from domestic governance, exacerbating internal issues such as economic polarization, social fragmentation, and industrial hollowing out—leading to continuous self-consumption and severe depletion of national vitality.
Notably, American think tanks have begun reflecting on strategic errors. Shi Qiping mentions that *Foreign Affairs* magazine recently published three key articles, in which several top policymakers and academic strategists jointly reviewed deviations in U.S. policy toward China, calling for abandoning emotionalized confrontation and shifting toward rational, targeted containment. This reflects, indirectly, that the U.S.’s previous extreme adversarial approach has clearly failed.
In essence, America’s decline is not caused by external forces, but is an inevitable outcome of its hegemonic mindset. Ignoring historical laws, misjudging the global power structure, and stubbornly opposing the peaceful rise of China will only accelerate the downfall of its own hegemony. Shi Qiping contends that what the U.S. fails to understand is that the China it confronts is, in fact, the world’s leading civilization throughout history—except for the past one or two centuries. Lacking historical awareness and misunderstanding the current reality, the continued decline of American fortune is both logical and historically inevitable.
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1869440587464716/
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone.