Comprehensive National Power

Comprehensive National Power (CNP) (Chinese: 综合国力; pinyin: zōnghé guólì) is a putative measure, important in the contemporary political thought of the People's Republic of China, of the general power of a nation-state. Unlike most Western concepts of political power, Chinese political thinkers believe that CNP can be calculated numerically by combining various quantitative indices to create a single number held to measure the power of a nation-state. These indices take into account both military factors (known as hard power) and economic and cultural factors (known as soft power). CNP is notable for being an original Chinese political concept with no roots in either contemporary Western political theory, Marxism-Leninism, or pre-20th century Chinese thinking.

There is a general consensus that the United States is the nation with the highest CNP and that mainland China's CNP ranks far behind not only the United States but other developed nations such as Germany, the United Kingdom, and France. Although some Western assessments of China suggest that China will be able to match or overtake the United States in the 21st century, the most recent Chinese projections of CNP suggest that this outcome is unlikely.^{[citation needed]}.

According to 'Reports on International Politics and Security' published in January 2006 in the Yellow Book of International Politics by Social Sciences Center, a government-sponsored Chinese think-tank, the list of top 10 countries with the highest CNP score were as follows:^{[citation needed]}

Country	Score
United States	90.62
United Kingdom	65.04
Russia	63.03
France	62.00
Germany	61.93
China	59.10
Japan	57.84
Canada	57.09
South Korea	53.20
India	50.43

Another list, which was published in 2007, gave a much higher grade to Japan, placing it in the second place. China's rank did not change, but it notably surpassed Russia, who had fallen to the 7th place. In total 15 countries were ranked, in which new countries such as Australia, Brazil and South Africa were ranked near the bottom of the rung. United States still maintained its top spot.^[1] 1 USA 2 Japan 3 Germany 4 France 5 China 6 Russia 7 United Kingdom 8 India 9 Canada 10 Italy 11 Brazil 12 Australia 13 South Korea 14 Mexico 15 South Africa

Within Chinese political thought, the main goal of the Chinese state is to maximize China's CNP. The inclusion of economic factors and soft power measures within most CNP indices is intended to prevent China from making the mistake of the Soviet Union in overinvesting in the military at the expense of the civilian economy.

A fairly simplistic and effective index was developed by Chin-Lung Chang. It uses critial mass, economic capacity, military capacity, and energy consumption. Due to its indicators, it is often repeatable and easy to define, making it comparable to the Human Development Index in understanding and reablity.^[2]

See also

• Chinese strategic thought

External links

• http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/china/doctrine/pills2/index.html - China Debates the Future Security Environment (This is published by the US DOD and as such it can be incorporated into Wikipedia)

References