Opinion | As history makes clear, a powerful China is not expansionist
China was an unmatched power in the Song and Ming dynasties, with greater concentrated authority. But it consolidated, rather than colonised
But history gives us little reason to treat that as inevitable. At moments of peak strength, China has not consistently converted power into the kind of overseas colonialism, expansionism or conquest that marked the ascent of Western great powers.
There are three often-cited reasons to suggest China’s rise might lead to expansionism.
This historical pre-eminence is underscored by modern scholars. Nobel laureate Joel Mokyr and his co-authors Avner Greif and Guido Tabellini stress in Two Paths to Prosperity that 11th century China possessed levels of administrative capacity and commercialisation unmatched in Europe.
As they write, the Song dynasty governed “a large and powerful empire that consisted of about 20 million households, a capital city of 750,000 inhabitants, and an army estimated to exceed a million soldiers, and had a tax revenue approaching a tenth of total output and four or five times that collected by the Roman Empire at its peak”. Despite these massive resources, the Song did not seek to colonise distant lands.