The United States cannot match China’s industrial and economic scale alone, and treating individual national capacity as sufficient for future global competition is a strategic miscalculation, according to Rush Doshi, C.V. Starr Senior Fellow for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Speaking at the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions’ 2026 annual China Conference, Doshi argued that Washington must reimagine its traditional alliance network as an integrated platform for shared military, economic, and technological production.
The Structural Scale Disparity
China’s economic and manufacturing footprint dwarfs current American capacity across several key sectors, according to data outlined at the Stanford conference. Measured by purchasing power parity, China’s economy is roughly 30 percent larger than that of the United States. In the two decades following its accession to the World Trade Organization, China’s share of global manufacturing quintupled while the American share fell by half.
Additional industrial metrics highlight the widening gap. China possesses two to three times the industrial capacity of the United States, produces 13 times more steel, and maintains roughly 500 times the shipbuilding capacity. Furthermore, Beijing controls two-thirds of global electric vehicle production, three-quarters of battery manufacturing, and 90 percent of solar panels and refined rare earth elements. Doshi noted that China also holds leading positions in six of the ten industries projected to define the next industrial revolution.
Geopolitical Leverage and Supply Chain Vulnerability
Doshi pointed to Beijing’s weaponization of its rare earths dominance in 2025, an action that effectively forced Washington to alter parts of its domestic trade and export control policies.
“That marked the first time that an export control was used to force open market access,” Doshi said during his keynote address, describing the move as a watershed moment in modern trade history.
Building Allied Scale as a Strategic Counterweight
To offset China’s advantages, Doshi urged policymakers to reject isolationism, spheres of influence, or acquiescence to a Beijing-led international order. Instead, he advocated for the formation of “allied scale”—an integrated coalition combining the resources of the United States and its primary partners.
According to comparative projections presented at the conference, an allied coalition would outpace China in key aggregate measures. Such a partnership would represent:
- Three times China’s nominal GDP
- Twice China’s total defense spending
- One and a half times China’s share of global manufacturing output
Doshi previously served as Deputy Senior Director for China and Taiwan on the National Security Council from 2021 to 2024, where he coordinated negotiations for the AUKUS trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. His research on great power competition is also detailed in his 2021 book, The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order, published by Oxford University Press.