Let's talk about the elephant in the room, China.
At this point, it's already clear that China has surpassed the US in the one area that matters, economy [1]:
China has now displaced the U.S. to become the largest economy in the world. Measured by the more refined yardstick that both the IMF and CIA now judge to be the single best metric for comparing national economies, the IMF Report shows that China’s economy is one-sixth larger than America’s ($24.2 trillion versus the U.S.’s $20.8 trillion). Why can't we admit reality? What does this mean?
That's right. That's one sixth larger than US. It's not a small margin. According to every single projection, that gap between China and US is only going to widen in the future.
So why is economy usually considered the bedrock of a country's superpower status, why not military, political influence, and cultural influence? That's because the economy provides the foundation for the country's military, political, and cultural power necessary to project its influence and maintain its position of dominance in the international community. You can't have good military without a good economy, and you will have no political or cultural power without the economy. Everything else follows economy.
For example, ever since China surpassed the US economy, there have been countless areas where China has already surpassed or equaled USA, including R&D budget, emerging applications, and computing industry. This trend will continue, according to every projection.
The funny thing is, the Chinese state media has been lynching anyone who wants to talk about this. Basically, they want to make sure nobody finds out what the real economical situation in China is. In fact, they've been clinging to the developing nation status for an incredibly long while. When some of the folks from Chinese universities reported that the PPP has surpassed the USA, the state media widely criticized them. They even went as far as to say that those folks were the reason for the China-US trade war.
I think the big question is what is going to happen in the future. US is pretty much outmatched on every front. The gap is just widening as time goes on. It's already too late for US to do anything about the China situation. China has already become the de facto supreme leader of the world. People just haven't realized it yet. I think the question is, what's China going to do.
Well, according to China, they "don't want expansionism and will never be a global hegemony" and they've been lynching researchers saying otherwise. In fact, they want a world of peace and respect and just want to be left to themselves.
Not buying it. Take a look at any smaller countries that have had conflicts with China, like Taiwan or Japan. They also forced Norway to "apologize" for hosting Dalai Lama, which Norway did because they needed to trade with China. I think it's beyond a doubt that they'll start playing a hand in global politics and asserting their own culture and opinions across the west, including censorship. In fact, they're already doing this in the smaller western countries in Europe, since Europe does fuck-all as an entity, so you can just bully the smaller nations without retribution. There's a long history of pressuring, corrupting and coercing foreign governments to act in support of the Chinese state agenda in various ways, including military intimidation, cutting off trade, bribing foreign officials, grey zone activities, harassment in contravention of professional norms, hostage diplomacy, cyberwarfare and collusion with other outlaw governments. This idea that a country which enforces censorship and criminalizes protests at the threat of violence and execution and has Orwellian like surveillance program that even bans winnie the pooh because it looks too much like the president via a nation-wide great internet firewall, is going to just be nice and wants world peace and will somehow be understanding and supportive of other cultures with freedom of speech, thought, and expression.... Just not buying it. These two cultures are incompatible. They might even have the best intentions now, but a clash is inevitable, given how different the cultures are.
So, for me, I think the future vision is a world that is shapred more like what the vision of the Chinese state-led media is. I don't think there will be expansionism, but free speech will be further suppressed, and we will essentially enter into an era where the Western countries will play a subservient role, and every retribution is met with economic scorn. USA will slowly transform into a second-rate nation with second-rate people. It'll however be a slow process, and I think we will have to wait to see it happen. I believe censorship will become the norm in 100 years, maybe less, as well as state control. It'll be like George Orwell's 1984.
Having said this, I have nothing against China, Chinese culture, or the Chinese people. On the contrary, I love much of the culture, and even respect the parts that go against western values. I do, however, worry a little about what the future holds.
What do you think?
I'm not even kidding btw, this is what I think will happen. For real. It's also not something we need to wait for, not for too long anyway.
