OPINION: Rodney Hide.
In Wellington salons and certain Auckland boardrooms, the conventional wisdom is settled: China is the unstoppable rising power, the United States is in terminal decline, and New Zealand had better hedge accordingly. Smart diplomats, we are told, accommodate Beijing while quietly distancing ourselves from a fading superpower.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
As Victor Davis Hanson pointed out in his recent podcast, this narrative is historically illiterate. America has been written off repeatedly — in the 1930s, after Vietnam, during the 1970s stagflation, and again in the 1980s when Japan was supposed to eat their lunch. Each time, the United States reinvented itself and surged ahead. The same pattern is repeating now, only the gap with China is widening, not narrowing.
Military Power
China boasts the world’s largest navy by hull count, but numbers deceive. The US Navy operates 11 nuclear-powered supercarriers with global reach and battle-hardened experience. China has three carriers, none comparable in capability or power projection. America’s submarine fleet — especially its nuclear attack boats — is vastly superior in stealth, training and combat effectiveness. US air power remains unmatched: over 13,000 aircraft, including advanced fifth-generation fighters like the F-35 and F-22, against China’s roughly 3,500.
Crucially, America’s military is built for global power projection and sustained operations far from home. China’s forces remain largely a regional “green-water” navy, optimised for the near seas. Its equipment is often derivative of stolen or reverse-engineered Western technology, and its lack of recent combat experience shows. Hanson notes that in any serious confrontation, the US holds decisive qualitative and logistical edges.
Energy, Economy and Demographics
The US is the world’s undisputed energy superpower. It produces more oil and gas than any other nation and can turn the taps on or off at will. China remains dangerously dependent on imported energy. America’s economy is more innovative, dynamic and resilient. Its universities, venture capital markets, AI leadership and tech ecosystem have no peer. China’s growth model is sputtering — a collapsing property sector, hidden local government debt, and a demographic cliff caused by the one-child disaster. By 2050 it will have tens of millions fewer workers and a mountain of elderly with no one to support them.
Hanson is blunt: Trump holds the leverage, not Xi. America can afford strategic ambiguity and tough tariffs. Beijing is playing defence — brittle, paranoid and increasingly isolated. Its proxy network is fraying.
The decline narrative flatters Beijing and excuses weak-kneed diplomacy in places like Wellington. It lets officials pretend that kowtowing to the CCP is sophisticated realism rather than short-term commercial opportunism at the expense of long-term strategic sanity.
New Zealand should stop hedging against America and start betting on the proven engine of prosperity and freedom. Free markets, the rule of law, secure property rights and energy abundance have delivered the goods for two centuries. China’s state-directed model is producing ghost cities, youth unemployment and a surveillance state that even its own people increasingly resent.
The smart money has always been on the republic that keeps reinventing itself, not the dictatorship racing toward demographic and economic senescence. Hanson is right: reports of America’s decline have been greatly exaggerated — again. Beijing knows it. It is time Wellington did too.
