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After the election my very first thought was that this is the start of the Chinese century, since America has voted to step down. Seems to be playing out.
by api 3mo ago
After the election my very first thought was that this is the start of the Chinese century, since America has voted to step down.
Seems to be playing out.
- collinmcnulty 3mo agoUnfortunately there is another possibility: a return to great power competition.
- bsenftner 3mo agoNah, that fantasy is over, with the new Era of Moron Power. The future of humanity of absolutely Asian. Western culture is Rome on Fire.
- api 3mo agoThe irony is that the people who screamed the most that Rome was on fire aggressively pushed for what you brilliantly call Moron Power. They thought we were crashing, rushed the cockpit, and pushed forward as hard as they could on the stick. Forward is up, right?
- franktankbank 3mo agoI'm sorry but Rome certainly didn't have airplanes.
- api 3mo agoI'm referring to this, which has aged quite poorly: https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/digital/the-flight-93-election/ https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/digital/the-flight-93-ele...
- marcyb5st 3mo agoI don't see that happening. The US debt will hinder any big expense that could keep it in any game long term. Take AI for instance. The US grid is struggling to keep up with demand, while Chinese one has a lot of headway [1]. Usually, this could be solved by an increase in spending lasting a few years which would make the debt tick up, but that would've been an absolutely fine use of debt since it buys some shiny new infra that will pay dividends for the next 20ish years. Now? Not possible. The US is already drowning in debt and the usual buyers are not showing up to buy it because of the Iran fiasco. With oil so expensive everyone was using their USD reserves to buy oil, not debt. Which mades interest rates go up considerably, and for a country with already ~130% of debt/gdp ratio these are terrible news. So, I don't think there will be a great power race. Europe is fucked by both high debt, and lack of innovation. Russia is struggling already to finance a war of conquest they started. China is the only one that can run if it comes down to it (unless of course the numbers coming out of China are mega bogus, but for that I don't know enough to have an opinion). [1] https://fortune.com/2025/08/14/data-centers-china-grid-us-infrastructure/ https://fortune.com/2025/08/14/data-centers-china-grid-us-in...
- kranke155 3mo agoIt is absolutely a Chinese century. Even the comment above isn’t wrong per se - great power competition is normal during the interregnum, ie as Arrighi described it - one hegemon is rising while another is declining. But eventually one of them does rise and the world conforms to that - ie America in post WW2.
- bxk76 3mo agoWell China cant seem to make a single friend beyond North Korea and Russia. Everyone is a bit wary of them. I mean when the US replaced the Brits as Hegemon a large part of the world wasnt nervous about it.
- wredcoll 3mo agoGod, this is depressing. I think it's difficult, if you're a millenial/zoomer/whatever we're calling these things, to understand just how much of the world genuinely liked and respected and wanted america involved in their local affairs. America obviously wasn't perfect and many, many more people than trump were involved with squandering all of this goodwill, but we still had some left over before he showed up.
- bxk76 3mo agoIts not a static system. Things will swing back and forth like a pendulum. And through those oscillation we move forward. Diff today is everyone is getting their heads filled 24x7 with a whole lot of info their grandparents never had to digest about how the system moves.
- inigyou 3mo agoThe US can just hyperinflate to pay its debts.
- marcyb5st 3mo agoAnd kill the savings of what remains of the middle class. Probably they will do it though, as it is a slow thing and is not felt by the average Joe like a tax hike or loss of benefits. So the policians won't trigger an outrage by doing so.
- Schlagbohrer 3mo agoNo other country punches itself in the face as hard or as often as the usa does.
- svachalek 3mo agoThe US situation is mitigated by both Russia and China deciding to make massive, foolish maneuvers at the same time as ours. However neither can match how stupendously we are lighting our future on fire in every possible dimension.
- kingnothing 3mo agoWhat are the foolish maneuvers that China is making?
- Hikikomori 3mo agoAt this point they can use the Gaben strategy and easily win.
- MarkusQ 3mo agoThat would require making babies and not making mistakes. Humans are generally/historically better at the former, but these days both seem to be a challenge.
- handle584 3mo agoNot is but the obvious one was COVID policy during 2020-2022. It triggered the closest thing to a domestic unrest you can get in China after 1989, a large exodus of middle class, and an almost 50% crash in their real estate market. The last one is very deadly and still ongoing because that is how China financed its growth for decades.
- dirck-norman 3mo agoChina is undergoing a 2008 style financial crisis due to real estate speculation and deflation due to very weak domestic spending. They have drowned their municipalities in debt cumulatively equivalent to the US federal and state debt as a percentage of GDP. Localities aren’t allowed to tax but are responsible for local services and industry. Local governments borrowed heavily to hit GDP growth targets and compete with each other for investment and talent. There is now a backwards migration of the working class back to rural towns from the cities because the incentives China gives is towards technologies that only benefit their already upper-middle class workers. About 500 million Chinese live in rural areas and over 20% of their workforce toils in the fields. That’s not changing anytime soon. Youth unemployment has been 15-20+ percent for some time.
- ikari_pl 3mo agoNot to the extent I'd like — it stopped working on Huawei too.
- noosphr 3mo agoFor a Chinese century you'd need there to be anyone in China in a century. With the one child policy they have run out of young women and are running out of middle aged men. The Chinese, and Asian, population pyramids make Europe look young and vibrant.
- saintvlad 3mo ago[flagged]
- wredcoll 3mo agosure: https://mbs.edu/news/why-diverse-teams-are-more-profitable https://mbs.edu/news/why-diverse-teams-are-more-profitable
- throwawaypath 3mo agoThat was debunked: https://econjwatch.org/articles/mckinsey-s-diversity-matters-delivers-wins-results-revisited https://econjwatch.org/articles/mckinsey-s-diversity-matters...
- wredcoll 3mo agoOh hey, a good faith argument. I thought about going and googling for more studies supporting my position, but I'm not sure if that actually has much of a point? Maybe I can come up with a stronger/more defensible argument: creating a just and equitable society is valuable on multiple levels including moral and economic. Societies without "lower classes" are good for a variety of reasons. Researching into why we have lower classes and, hopefully fixing that, is a good thing for a bunch of reasons. Something something how many potential new einsteins aren't pushing boundaries because they had to drop out of highschool and work 3 jobs?
- saintvlad 3mo ago[flagged]