The general trend of American decline has not changed.

　　Since the United States established global hegemony after World War II, American power has gradually embarked on the road of "prosperity and decline". This process has twists and turns, but at present, the general trend of American decline has not changed.

　　From the late 1960s, the United States began a slow decline.

　　Since the late 1960s, American global hegemony has shown a general trend of spiral decline. Generally speaking, there are two schools of thought: absolute decline theory and relative decline theory in the policy and academic debate about American decline in the United States. Paul Kennedy, a professor at Yale University, draws inspiration from historical research: the "over-expansion" of great powers is easy to lead to decline, and the United States, like other great powers in history, faces the risk of over-expansion leading to decline. This kind of view holds that in the long run, the political and economic hegemony of the United States will "inevitably" decline, so it is called "absolute decline theory."

　　Different from the "absolute decline theory", some American scholars believe that as long as effective strategies are implemented, the hegemonic position of the United States can still be maintained, and decline is not inevitable. For example, Joseph Nye, a professor at Harvard University, claimed that the United States can continue to lead the world by means of "soft power" and "smart strength" with its unparalleled dominant position in the fields of science and technology and innovation. According to this kind of "relative decline theory" of American hegemony, the adversity experienced by the United States is temporary and staged.

　　In my opinion, in the past half century, the decline of the United States has shown a wave-like nonlinear process. After the Vietnam War, the "American Decline Theory" began to rise. During President Reagan’s period in the 1980s, the national strength of the United States was slightly stronger. When Clinton came to power in the mid-1990s, the American economy experienced an early Internet boom. In the late Obama administration and the early Trump administration, the American economy recovered after the crisis. However, on the whole, the slow downward trend of American national strength has not changed. The decline of the United States is a long process, just as Britain lost its first position in economic strength in the early 1890 s and completely gave up its global hegemony after World War II. Up to now, it has been more than a hundred years, but Britain’s influence in the world is particularly strong.

　　The United States is still in a slow decline in all aspects.

　　Generally speaking, American hegemony is mainly composed of military, economic and cultural soft power. Militarily, the defeat of Vietnam in the 1970s humiliated the US military. Since then, the wars launched or participated by the United States, including the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war, have won, but they are often not worth the loss. The military bases operated by the United States in the world to safeguard hegemony and the alliance commitments given to other countries have all caused great burdens to their own economies.

　　According to Trump’s logic of "US priority", it seems that the US government should drastically cut military spending and implement strategic contraction on a global scale. However, Trump actually adopted the opposite policy after taking office: not only did he not shrink from multiple fronts, but at the same time he increased investment and became more deeply involved in regional contradictions. At the beginning of his tenure, in order to achieve an increase of up to $54 billion in military spending during his first term to build new aircraft carriers, warships and fighter planes, he drastically cut funds for domestic livelihood projects and overseas aid. In fiscal year 2019, the national security budget of the United States, that is, military spending, totaled 716 billion US dollars.

　　Economically, the proportion of the United States economy in the world is also declining year by year, and the status of the US dollar as the world’s common currency is increasingly being questioned. Not only that, the cycle of American economic cycle is getting shorter and shorter. The first peak to the second peak took 23 years, while the second peak to the third peak only took 16 years. And the landslide tends to accelerate, while the uplift tends to slow down. At present, although Trump has repeatedly stressed that his "great achievements" have "made America great again", statistics and research by mainstream economists clearly show that the "third rise" he advocated is far from coming.

　　In terms of soft power, the national image of the United States has been hit hard by Trump. Trump is greatly overdrawing the international strategic reputation accumulated by the United States for many years and affecting the strategic expectations and interactions of allies with the United States. For example, after its "Indo-Pacific" strategy was put forward, India, Japan, Australia and other countries were short of candidates, but Sino-Indian and Sino-Japanese relations were turning around. Trump’s speech at the United Nations was questioned, as Washington post admitted, "America is no longer a lighthouse, but a bully". Joseph Nye, the "father of soft power", sharply criticized that Trump has seriously weakened the soft power of the United States and greatly reduced the attractiveness of the United States.

　　China society should curb "fear of beauty and worship of beauty"

　　In 1938, Mao Zedong wrote a masterpiece "On protracted war" in a cave dwelling in northern Shaanxi, criticizing the two fallacies of "quick victory" and "national subjugation". For example, the burning light in the night pointed out the direction for the 40 million people of China to finally defeat the Japanese imperialist aggressors. Eighty years later, today’s China is not what it used to be. In the face of Trump’s offensive, it is even more unnecessary for the descendants of the Chinese people to feel sorry for themselves and belittle themselves, let alone hope that they can beg for peace and compassion by "recognizing cowardice". Of course, we should not be arrogant. China’s development has entered a period of intensive cultivation, from the past emphasis on "quantity" growth to a high-quality development stage of "equal emphasis on quantity and quality". As long as we persist in deepening reform and opening wider to the outside world, especially in putting policies in place in some important areas, any containment by the United States will not disrupt the pace of China’s development. As long as China advances steadily according to its own pace of reform and development, and the Chinese people are more determined, more confident and United, it will surely defeat the "bullying" of the United States and realize the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. (Wang Wen, Executive Dean of Chongyang Financial Research Institute of Renmin University of China, and Wang Peng, Associate Research Fellow of Chongyang Financial Research Institute of Renmin University of China)