December 25th 1991, a day that marked a beginning and an end: The end of a world with multiple world superpowers and the beginning of a world with only one. On this day the Soviet Union fell and left the United States as the sole superpower in the world. Now almost three decades later that reality may change as a new contender tries to become the new world power. This contender has the fourth largest land area and the highest population in the world. This contender is China. A Superpower is a state is dominant in international relations and China wants to become just that. In order to do this China has started to threaten U.S. dominance in three ways, economically, diplomatically, and militarily. Over the last two decades China has been expanding its capabilities in all three.

Recently China has been making massive strides in its military and is becoming increasingly willing to use its military to get what it wants. China’s progress in its military means, according to the Department of Defence,   that it "has the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States and field disruptive military technologies that could over time offset traditional U.S. military advantages.”(military power… pg 1) This is a very substantial piece of evidence considering that the U.S. said this and not China. Currently through the U.S. military is a lot stronger than its Chinese counterpart. China knows this and is working on ways to even the odds such as weapons designed to take out communication satellites. Another thing that china is currently doing to even the odds is to build aircraft carriers to provide power projection. Power projection is a very important capability for a world power to have as it allows countries to use their military as a diplomatic tool and to be able to  engage in an offensive as well as a defencive conflict. The United States is able to project its power much more effectively than China for a couple of different reasons, the first is that the U.S. not only has more aircraft carriers (11 to 2) but they also have the means to support them, and the second is that it has 100s of bases scattered throughout the world. Combined these factors mean that the United States is able to attack an enemy anywhere in the world in a matter of hours. Another factor in military power is weapons of mass destruction (W.M.D.s). Currently both countries possess nuclear weapons although the United States has more ways to deploy them.

The area that China will need to work on the most if it wants to become a world Superpower is diplomatic relations with other countries.  While the United States is currently in defensive alliances with many countries china is not. The United States also is part of an alliance called NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) which was formed during the cold war but is still in effect now. Under the terms of the treaty if one country is attacked then all the others will come to its aid. China however has no such alliance to support it. China is however working on its foreign relations especially in the middle east and africa where it is helping to build economies and companies.(Small Andrew) This shows that China is stepping out of its comfort zone and trying to gain allies. If china is able to gain enough allies it will be able to threaten U.S. influence in those regions. Another thing to note is that China and the U.S. both have seats on the U.N. security council which means that they can stop any attempt by the U.N. to compromise their policies.

The one category where China is most definitely a leader is economics. China has quickly become the world's manufacturing center with almost every massed produced product bearing a MADE IN CHINA. China also has one of the fastest growing GDPs in the world. (World Bank…) One reason why this has happened is that the largest companies in China are government owned. This means that chinese manufacturing companies get government subsidies and are able to offer reduced rates. An unfortunate side effect of this connection between the government and business is that there are massive rates of corruption in the government. In the next decade or so it is predicted that China's economy will shift from a producer economy to a consumer economy. As strong as China’s economy is there are some concerns for its future as it shifts from a producer economy to a consumer economy that the economy will not be able to adapt.

At the end of the day China still has a long way to go if it wants to become a true Superpower. True it may have a very strong economy but it is unclear whether or not that economy is ready to become the economy of a Superpower. Even if China’s Economy is up to the task its military and foreign policies are not. If china does become a Superpower it will lack a major capability that other Superpowers have had and that is to project its influence abroad. If China truly wants to become a Superpower it will have to expand its influence abroad and strengthen the ability of its military to conduct operations abroad. In the foreseeable future China will not become a Superpower but a very strong regional power  

Works Cited
Small, Andrew. “Chinese Foreign Policy Comes of Age.” new York times. N.p., 26 Mar. 2015. Web. 9 Apr. 2015. .
United States. Department of Defence. Military Power of the People’s Republic of China. Washington: GPO, 2007. Print.
world bank.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Apr. 2015. .