They say that “nothing succeeds like success”. And by this yardstick, who’d argue that China has proven this beyond any shadow of a doubt in the last half century? From being the poster child for poverty in the sixties, it’s poised to overtake the US as the largest economy!! And is also capable of space exploration; delivering atomic missiles across continents; creating its own new “silk routes” to Europe, Africa, and the rest of the world, to deliver its services and manufactured goods!! While stiffing the West’s insistence on democratic governance as the quid pro quo for being accepted in the “comity of nations”. Imagine that!!
After WWII, the US figured that with the sun having set on the British Empire, as the inheritor, the threat was the USSR and their “ungodly” communism! Even though Communist China had challenged them during the 1950 Korean War, they single-mindedly worked to bring down the USSR – by 1989.
Meanwhile, during the 60s and 70s, Mao had exhausted China after his communist party takeover, followed by his cultural revolution and “great leap forward” – which ended as a “great fall backwards!” His successors, led by Deng Xiaoping, reversed course from the blind ideological communist dogma, and accepted Deng’s aphorism: “It doesn’t matter whether the cat is black or white, once it catches the mice”!! And so, the “capitalist” cat was accepted to catch the development mice!!
You gotta do what you gotta do to deliver what you’re looking for – in this case, a modern economy and higher standards of living! Your Eyewitness had always wondered why the Russians (and Burnham) had never heeded Marx’s point that you gotta produce first BEFORE you start distributing – and Capitalism’s the most efficient method to increase production!! And so, the logic of Western capitalism – led by the US after they recognised China in 1972 – kicked in.
That logic insisted that you produce goods where it was cheapest. The US business class accepted the new, pragmatic China as an inexhaustible reservoir of cheap labour, where their profits would skyrocket!! China became America’s – and then Europe’s – factory; churning out trillions of dollars of manufactured goods to stock the shelves of the West’s insatiable consumers. Owning the new world’s currency, all America had to do was print greenbacks that flowed to China as debt – whether as T-Bills or whatever. Soon China had over US$1 trillion and Euro 1trillion in debt – which it uses to finance its new Silk Road – the Belt and Road Initiative!!
So now China’s poised to challenge the US for global hegemony – forget Thucydides going on about Sparta and Athens, our folk wisdom advises that “two man crab cyan live in the same hole”! The latter, however, for whatever reason – historical inertia? – has now evidently decided to take out Russia.
For a mano-a-mano with China??
…Xi
In all power contests and contestations – whether personal or international – leadership is as critical as the resources of power in the hands of the contestants!! So, what’s the state of the leadership of the US versus that of China?? In the former (red, white and blue) corner, we have Joe Biden with elections due in Nov 2024, and in the (red) corner we have Xi Jinping, arguably the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong in the 1970s!!
He’s been at the helm since 2012 and – after abolishing the two-term limit in 2018 – is poised to be elected for life at the next Congress of the Communist Party this Sunday!! Right now, he’s General Secretary of the Party; President, Head of State, and Commander of the armed forces. For good measure, he’s also referred to as “Supreme Leader”!!
The “Thought of Xi Jinping” was inserted in the constitution, and will soon be taught in all schools.
…PPP
In democracies, the goal of political parties is to garner as many votes as they can. Incumbents always have an advantage, because they can initiate policies (honeytraps?) to attract such votes.
All is fair in love and politics!!
