The once-paramount industrial and construction proficiency of the United States has been eclipsed by China in many ways over the past several decades.

According to the US Center for Strategic and International Studies, China now builds more than half of the world’s oceangoing, commercial shipping, while the US share has shrunk to a tiny fraction of this amount.

China now leads the world by a wide margin in the manufacture of almost everything from children’s strollers to the most advanced electric vehicles. It is likewise the world leader in the production of all forms of renewal energy technology and equipment, and it is briskly moving toward matching — or bettering — the US across a range of high-tech areas like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and advanced microchips.

Additionally, when it comes to fundamental infrastructure, 5G networks and modern electricity grid expansion, China is far ahead. And it is making steady progress with the production of its own airliners to challenge Boeing and Airbus.

Serious consideration and development of high-speed rail were underway by 2010 in the US and about a decade earlier in China. China now has by far the world’s longest, fully operational network, exceeding 40,000 kilometers, and rising. The first comparable US high-speed rail line, connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco in California, is stalled at about 300 km of idle countryside line, still awaiting another 500 km track-laying to completion, 10 years after the groundbreaking ceremony.

China also remains on track to become, over the next several decades, the world’s leading global manufacturing center, able to rely on a colossal, carbon-neutral national power grid dominantly based on renewable energy.

However, the US remains the world leader in one area of manufacturing — the production of armaments of every possible kind for local and global consumption.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), during the period 2020-24, the US increased its share of total global arms exports to 43 percent. The value of American foreign military sales increased almost 50 percent from 2021 through 2024, according to a US government report, reinforcing its unenviable reputation as the primary “arms merchant of the world”.

US-supported wars have intensified terribly over the past several years. Unsurprisingly, the US armaments industry is booming. But the best may be yet to come if Washington’s latest round of flagrant intimidation of supposed, close US allies has the desired effect. All this fresh strong-arming is aimed at triggering vastly increased allied defense outlays

The SIPRI report added that European arms imports overall grew 155 percent as states responded to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and uncertainty over the future of US foreign policy. Meanwhile, Russian arms exports fell 64 percent, also as a consequence of the war in Ukraine.

US-supported wars have intensified terribly over the past several years. Unsurprisingly, the US armaments industry is booming. But the best may be yet to come if Washington’s latest round of flagrant intimidation of supposed, close US allies has the desired effect. All this fresh strong-arming is aimed at triggering vastly increased allied defense outlays.

Consider some of the evidence.

The US-based media Politico reported in January that “Incoming US President Donald Trump wants NATO members to spend a whopping 5 percent of GDP on defense — more than double the alliance’s current spending target.”

One influential American view, quoted by the Rand Corp, is that Taiwan’s defense spending, at 2.45 percent of GDP, is far too low and that it should be “more like 10 percent, or at least something in that ballpark”.

Meanwhile, Trump’s overbearing Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, sternly argued at the recent Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore that Australia needed to ramp up its defense spending to 3.5 percent of GDP (from 2 percent). Prime Minister Anthony Albanese unsmilingly responded that Australia will determine its own defense policy.

Hegseth also argued the need for even greater arm-twisting of allies to support his anticipated, possible hot-war showdown with China over the Taiwan question. He promised “uncomfortable and tough conversations” to ensure that allies shared the security burden.

But when the White House talks up the need for still more defense spending by Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, the European Union, and the United Kingdom, along with Australia and Canada and well beyond, the drover’s dog, as they say in Australia, can see Washington is principally talking up major increases in American weaponry sales to boost the massively indebted, unstable US economy.

The US also wants to lock in apparent allies through these linkages no matter where America’s increasingly reckless penchant for warfare may lead. For example, into a highly inflamed new war in the Middle East.

Kyle Anzalone reported, on the Antiwar Website, that Israeli officials confirmed, as Israel launched its latest unhinged, exceptionally savage attack on Iran, that America helped pave the way for this assault by “ creating the illusion the US was still seeking a diplomatic settlement with Iran”. Washington was said to have also provided Israel with “exquisite intel for the assault”. The Guardian soon after told us that “Trump scrambled to claim credit for Israel’s Iran attack (that) he publicly opposed”, emphasizing how the US president revealed he was fully aware of Israel’s attack plans, while his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, claimed it was a “unilateral action.” Today’s manic White House plainly has a problem maintaining unified mendacity.

Thus, when you square the ledger, it is clear to the rest of the world (beyond the increasingly debased Global West) that the US is presently revealing — and confirming week after week — a remarkable combination of superpower insolence, casual treachery and globally dangerous desperation. Naturally, the White House believes this more-war project is beneficial for the US economy and American hegemony. So, it doesn’t care about the rest of the world.

The author is an adjunct professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of Hong Kong.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.