World News for Students of English

07-09-2023 15:00

In China’s current economic travails, the US and other Group of Seven nations increasingly see evidence of deep-seated structural problems that ultimately will strengthen the West’s hand against a weakening geopolitical competitor.

The view emerging from officials in Washington, Rome, Tokyo, and other capitals, who spoke with reporters mostly on the condition of anonymity in recent days, is that the dominant economic narrative that has guided the flows of capital around the globe for decades is flipping fast.

If China once seemed on an inevitable path to overtaking a declining America as the world’s leading economic power, that’s no longer the case. The calculations in Washington and beyond are increasingly about how to deal with a China that, even if it is not yet in absolute decline, may well be approaching a peak in power.

Difficult words: travail (painful effort), anonymity (a situation in which someone isn’t known by or spoken of by name), narrative (a representation of a particular situation or process).

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