every empire has an expiration date, some are lucky to see its rise, some are unfortunate to see the fall. british empire was the last to reminisce for current generation, downtown abbey, james bond, all the bullshit pop culture. i bet the chinese, the turks, the russians have the same shows. pax america is awesome but has no history and culture, folks are going back to their old country to take a long vacation. it is a pot alright, but not melting.
Whether there is an empire or not is not important as long as you can procure the resources you need for growing your economy, that's all that matters. China doesn't have an empire and yet it can get resources from everywhere, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Brazil, the United States, Canada, all of Africa and even some countries in Europe. Back in the days, all of these countries and continents would've belonged to the Chinese empire. The only difference between then and now is that back in the days China would've had to use military might to physically conquer all of these countries to get exclusive access to these resources, today it make its people to physically make things fast and in massive quantity and sell them everywhere to get a huge amount of money and then use the money to buy (not exclusive but close to it) access to the resources it needs. The only only only tiny bit of edge that the US and the West still have over China is the super-advanced technology that China still cannot produce on their own using the resources that it procured when the US and the West prevent China from using forced technology transfer and theft. But that edge is ebbing and ebbing fast. Eventually China will figure it out and catch up then there would be no more United States or West unless US and the rest of the Western world come up with new technology that China cannot produce. It's a never-ending rat race to the end until the earth explodes.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/china-bid-world-domination-backfired-185313949.html China’s bid for world domination has backfired Con Coughlin Wed, August 30, 2023 at 8:53 PM GMT+2·4 min read Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, might dream of global conquest, but the sobering reality is that he finds himself running a country whose ability to influence world affairs may now be waning. It was not that long ago that Xi was telling the Chinese people that their country was entering a “new era”, one where China would take “centre stage in the world”. Addressing the massive Great Hall of the People near Tiananmen Square in 2017, he declared that “socialism with Chinese characteristics” would lead to China becoming “a great power,” and that its “flourishing” economic model offered a “new choice” for developing countries. While Beijing’s plan to achieve economic dominance has been defined by its ambitious Belt and Road initiative, its aim of replacing the US as the world’s leading superpower has also resulted in a massive military build-up. The country’s defence budget is set to increase by an eye-watering 7.2 per cent this year as Xi attempts to fulfil his ambition of turning the Chinese military into a “great wall of steel”. Between 2014 and 2018, the Chinese managed to build more warships than the total number of ships in the German, Indian, Spanish, and British navies combined. Xi’s readiness to resort to military force, meanwhile, was reflected in his recent edict to the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. The only problem with Xi’s plan is that it is taking place at a time when China’s own economic fortunes are facing unprecedented pressures. Having enjoyed 30 years of spectacular economic growth, the country now faces the very real prospect of a prolonged period of deflation. While Beijing appears to be desperate to conceal the true extent of the damage to the outside world, key indicators, such as the collapse of the housing market – which accounts for around 30 per cent of China’s economy – highlight the scale of the challenge facing Xi. Shares in the Chinese property giant Evergrande have lost more than 80 percent of their value this month. The failure of the Chinese economy to generate real growth after the pandemic saw youth unemployment reach a record high in the latest figures released, prompting the Chinese authorities to announce that they would no longer be publishing unemployment rates for the young. Far from being in a position to expand Chinese influence across the globe, therefore, Xi suddenly finds himself confronting a number of dangerous economic headwinds which, in any other country, would result in calls for an immediate change in leadership. As Mao Zedong, the communist founder of the People’s Republic of China, was fond of saying: “A single spark can start a prairie fire.” With Xi understandably distracted by domestic concerns, this is a propitious moment for Western leaders to renew their efforts to persuade Beijing to tone down its antagonistic attitude towards the West. As Xi will have noted following his participation in the recent Brics summit in South Africa, China is in danger of compounding its economic malaise by aligning itself with states like Russia and South Africa, whose own economic fortunes are in terminal decline. In such circumstances, this week’s visit to China by James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary, could prove useful in helping to encourage Beijing to adopt a more positive attitude in its dealings with the West. Cleverly has attracted a fair amount of criticism from both the Left and Right after becoming the first senior British minister to visit Beijing in five years: the Left accuses him of ignoring China’s appalling human rights record, while Right-wing critics insist that Britain should have nothing to do with China’s Communist rulers so long as they continue to suppress democracy in Hong Kong, intimidate Taiwan and maintain their brutal repression of the minority Uyghurs. Yet, at a time when Xi must be seriously questioning the merits of maintaining Beijing’s support for Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, Cleverly’s visit presents an opportunity to establish a more constructive dialogue with Beijing. While China’s Communist leaders are not suddenly going to become cheerleaders for the West’s liberal values, they will also be acutely aware that many of the economic difficulties they face have been compounded by the West’s growing reluctance to do business with a country that has been actively hostile to its interests. If Xi is to stand any chance of reviving China’s economic fortunes, he will only do so by rebuilding trust with the West, not by indulging his fantasy of creating an alternative international rules-based system through organisations like Brics. It is certainly in China’s interests, as Cleverly explained during his visit, for Beijing to work with Western leaders “where it is in our mutual interest to do so” if it is to avoid economic collapse. For even Xi, now that his vision for world domination lies in ruins, must realise the truth. China needs the West far more than the West needs China.
Im wondering, do they have the same level of corruption involved in military projects as in RE, where's people, literally, fall through floors into apartmens below. Could it be that the majority of those ships, tanks and etc, are, but a paper planes, like the Russian tech.
Cleverly’s humiliating China visit was the perfect symbol of isolated, ill-led ‘global Britain’ Simon Tisdall China’s emergence as a global leader is hugely challenging for all the western powers. But successive Tory governments have fumbled Britain’s response, blowing hot and cold, constantly sending mixed signals. Post-imperial Tories simply can’t agree what they want from a relationship in which they are not the dominant partner. Cleverly’s visit was less a fundamental relationship reset, more a change of battery in the remote. No surprise, then, when it fails to alter the bigger picture, or halt China’s most egregious abuses. This is hardly all his fault. The UK once had a reputation for skilled diplomacy: pragmatic, hard-headed, informed, clever, devious. But as its economic power and geopolitical leverage have diminished, along with the quality of decision-making, so too has traditional foreign policy realism. Now is the age of British foreign policy unrealism. Between fantasising post-Brexit Tories and the world as it truly is a huge, growing gap yawns. The foreign affairs committee can demand as loudly as it likes that the UK treat Taiwan as an independent state. Yet calls for Britain to build Asia-Pacific alliances with India, Japan and others seem weirdly far-fetched. The reality is that if China decides to seize Taiwan by force, there will be precious little that faraway Britain, with its under-resourced armed forces, can or – crucially – will do about it, with or without allies. Not so, isolated, failing, ill-led “global Britain” which, vainly going it alone, up against a superpower, courts oblivion and oddball irrelevance. So there was Cleverly, all on his tod, under fire from hawks at home, lacking a joined-up strategy, spouting platitudes about dialogue, trying desperately to persuade the smirking Chinese to take him (and us) seriously. So sad. This politically illiterate, unilateralist international posturing is unreal. It’s un-realist. It’s humiliating for Britain, and it’s bound to fail.
%% LOL= good rebuke. God bless US +capital markets+ Columbus day. Bad bearings have caused a few US trainwrecks\ Looks like bad eggs = the chicoms + evil empireBrics are big accidents s waiting to happen.====================================================
They don't need to hold hands and sing Chumbaya around a campfire, but when their main trading partner becomes China, they will just take a position of neutrality when they invade Taiwan. We are going to need to get Japanese men on some Testosterone therapy to find their inner Samurai again and let them re-build their military .
Let´s get the Chinese Comunist Yuan become an "anchor currency". Oh no, better - Putin war lord´s Ruble! Nah, even better: Brazilian Real´s super inflationary currency. Njet, better Indian Rupee currently trading at what? 75 against USD? Laughable! Absolutely laughable what the BRICS clowns PRETEND TO DO!