The US’ decapitation of Iran’s leaders highlights America’s superior military strength and runs counter to the popular view in China that the United States is in decline, according to international relations specialists.
The weekend operation, conducted with Israel, killed Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and dozens of senior commanders within the country’s armed forces, just weeks after a US Special Forces team abducted Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro.
Those two incidents – which Beijing condemned as infringements of sovereignty – showed not only that Washington’s military strength remained “superior”, but also that its “methods of warfare have further evolved”, according to Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing.
Zheng Yongnian, a political scientist and government adviser, agreed, saying that “in reality, the US retains formidable economic strength and possesses unparalleled military power globally”.
In an interview published on Monday on the website of the Institute of International Affairs, Qianhai, which he heads, Zheng said that despite voices in China suggesting America was in decline, a number of actions showed “America’s war-making capability depends solely on its will to deploy such power”.
These actions included the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, the 2011 killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and this year’s capture of Maduro and assassination of Khamenei.
“Despite numerous issues within its political and social spheres, we absolutely must not underestimate America’s capabilities,” Zheng said.
In recent years, China’s leadership and public have pointed to social problems and weakened ties with traditional allies as signs of waning American strength.
“The East is rising and the West is declining,” Chinese President Xi Jinping has said multiple times since 2021.
Trump’s 2024 re-election as US president solidified this view, with a sharp rise in discussions about American decline in Chinese media, according to Brookings Institution fellow Jonathan Czin and Allie Matthias, a senior research assistant at the institution.
“After the 2024 election, several Chinese academics described the US as regressing, or in a ‘crisis’, due to the rise of populism, the decline of American democracy, the residual effects of the 2008 global financial crisis, and racial and economic inequalities,” they said in an article on the China Leadership Monitor site on Sunday.
Those inequalities were highlighted in a series of social media posts last year about the economic insecurity faced by ordinary Americans.
Commenters labelled this as a “kill line”, or social tipping point, for the US middle class, with some official media outlets taking up the theme and saying it shattered the illusion of prosperity of the world’s largest economy.
The performance of the artificial intelligence model created by Chinese company DeepSeek was seen as further evidence of US decline, with DeepSeek able to generate results comparable to advanced US models at a fraction of the training cost.
This was widely regarded as proof that US technological containment of China had failed, giving a boost to Beijing’s confidence in its advanced technology.
In September last year, during Beijing’s grand Victory Day military parade, the People’s Liberation Army also showcased advanced weaponry, including the latest intercontinental ballistic missiles, drones and hypersonic weapons, in a move that was widely interpreted as evidence of China’s steadily growing military prowess.
These advances have prompted some Chinese media and public voices to suggest the power gap between China and the US is narrowing.
However, Zhu Feng, dean of Nanjing University’s school of international studies, said the US operations in Venezuela and Iran showed that the American armed forces had the “swiftest” application of military technology in the world.
Zhu added that the US military’s rapid actions posed a cognitive challenge for China.
“How should we calmly and accurately interpret the military actions during [US President Donald] Trump’s second term? What objectives is he truly pursuing, and what genuine capabilities and methods does this reveal about the US?”
Zheng added that Trump had been “underestimated”.
“Our understanding of ‘Trumpism’ remains profoundly superficial,” Zheng said. “In his view, the US military is merely a capability and means to achieve his objectives.”
Shi added that despite occasional disagreements between the US and its traditional European allies, its “diplomatic influence remains significant”. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
