The rise of China in the wake of the slow relative decline of the United States has been the overarching narrative of global studies since the beginning of this century. Is this narrative correct? China's growth is slowing as it reaches middle income status and the United States is still overwhelmingly more wealthy and powerful than China. If China will someday “overtake” the United States, it will not happen for decades or centuries, depending on what is meant by overtaking. But even this more guarded account of US decline is colored by an outdated, state-centric view of human society. The twenty-first century world-system is centered on the United States but not contained within it; individuals all over the world participate in hierarchies of distinction that are fundamentally American in ideology and orientation. Whether or not they agree with US policy, support the US president, or are even able to enter the United States, success-oriented individuals choose to live in an American world – or accept global social exclusion. This is just as true in China as anywhere else, and perhaps even more true for Chinese individuals than for anyone else.

From the dawn of history until the long sixteenth century, China was the economic, political, and cultural center of East Asia. It was arguably the most important economic center in the world. East Asia was distinctive in having one center. Other regions of the world had centers that were vigorously contested or that shifted over time. For example, for most of its history the Indian subcontinent has had no one dominant center; power and influence shifted from state to state with no one state being consistently accepted as the central state of the region. Similarly the Valley of Mexico seems to have come to be dominated by the Aztecs only shortly before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors. Tracking the center of Western civilization is even more difficult. Traditional histories of the Western world begin in Egypt and Mesopotamia, after which the center of what is teleologically known as the “West” shifts ever westward, first to Greece, then to Rome, then to France, England, and ultimately the United States.