America: The Real Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon – Victor Davis Hanson’s Powerful Rebuttal to Decline Despair

Victor Davis Hanson's latest essay in American Greatness flips the script on the fashionable narrative that America is a fading power, destined to be eclipsed by a rising China. Drawing on the iconic film title's metaphor of hidden strength and latent power, Hanson argues that the United States remains the true crouching tiger, seemingly complacent or sluggish at times, yet possessing unmatched underlying advantages that have repeatedly humbled overconfident rivals.

Published May 19, 2026, the piece comes amid ongoing U.S.-China tensions, recent conflicts in Iran and Ukraine, and Trump's diplomatic engagements with Xi Jinping. Hanson dismantles the pessimism peddled by both Left-leaning declinists and some isolationist voices on the Right.

Hard Metrics: America's Enduring Edges

Hanson stacks the data decisively in America's favour:

Economy and Productivity: China has four times America's population but generates only about 60% of U.S. GDP. Per capita GDP sits at roughly $95,000 in the U.S. versus $15,000 in China: one American produces more than four Chinese combined.

Energy and Food: The U.S. is the world's top oil and gas producer/exporter. China imports 11-12 million barrels of oil daily. America leads in food exports; China still imports 30-40% of its needs despite agricultural gains.

Military: U.S. defence spending is nearly triple China's. America fields 11 carrier strike groups (with a century of experience) against China's three conventionally powered ones. Nuclear forces are six times larger. Recent performance in the Iran conflict highlighted U.S. strengths and Chinese air defence shortcomings.

Innovation and Tech: American universities dominate STEM. Eight of the world's top ten companies by market cap are U.S.-based. Leadership in AI, robotics, drones, space (via NASA and private firms), fusion, and biotech is rebounding strongly. China's tech progress often relies on appropriating Western (especially American) breakthroughs via 300,000 students sent to U.S. institutions. Trump wants 600, 000 more to keep shonky colleges afloat, contrary to free enterprise.

Demographics tell a cautionary tale for Beijing: China's fertility rate has cratered to 1.0 (versus America's 1.7), driving rapid aging and shrinkage. Autocracy brings superficial efficiency but stifles the open creativity that fuels sustained breakthroughs.

Geostrategic Advantages and China's Vulnerabilities

Hanson highlights America's enviable position: buffered by oceans, with resource-rich North America and broadly aligned neighbours. China faces nuclear rivals (India, Russia, North Korea), Muslim border states amid its Uyghur policies, and a "ring of fire" in the Pacific — nations like Japan, Australia, Vietnam, the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan rearming and aligning against it.

Recent setbacks for China include lost influence in Latin America (e.g., Venezuela), aborted Panama Canal moves, disrupted Iranian oil supplies, and Belt and Road overreach costing trillions with mixed returns. Hanson notes Trump's leverage: reciprocal limits on students, property, and farmland; drone lessons from Ukraine/Iran favouring U.S. innovation over mass amphibious assaults on Taiwan.

The essay excels by placing China in context. Previous "inevitable" challengers: Nazi Germany/Japan in the 1930s-40s, the Soviet Union, 1980s Japan Inc., and the early 2000s EU, ultimately faltered. America, often starting slow and complacent, mobilises its free people, constitutional system, federalism, and markets to surge ahead. From ranking 19th in army size pre-WWII to dominating the postwar order, the pattern holds.

Hanson acknowledges flaws — insularity, naivety, sluggishness — but credits resilience: "its innately resilient free people... eventually wake up to the next rising threat — if often just in the nick of time."

In an era of breathless headlines about Chinese shipbuilding, manufacturing, or GDP parity (often using dubious metrics), Hanson urges focus on sustainable power: institutions, resources, alliances, and human capital. China's rise from poverty was remarkable, but doesn't guarantee parity or surpassing a dynamic, innovative republic.

The piece isn't triumphalist denial of U.S. problems — debt, cultural fractures, policy errors — but a grounded reminder that obituaries for American primacy have been premature for a century. As Trump navigates summits and leverage points, the hidden dragon may prove far more formidable than the crouching tiger narrative suggests.

Hanson, the farmer-historian, delivers another clear-eyed dispatch: America's strengths aren't flashy or inevitable, but they are real, deep, and historically decisive.

https://amgreatness.com/2026/05/19/america-the-real-crouching-tiger-hidden-dragon/