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China Is a Declining Power—and That’s the Problem

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reality facts are simple

China grew 9.5% this year and will overtake america soon
America is declining due to massive demographic changes. Soon brown/black people will outnumber whites and a civil war will likely assume. Under Black/brown/liberal control America will become a lazy hedonistic weak society that becomes parallel with that of Brazil or Mexico.

So future is
Superpower China with hard working sacrificing smart high IQ people
Hispanic Black America run by lazy hedonistic selfish liberals

not much competition to be honest.

You forgot 2 most important buzz words, 5G and Bat soup. :hitwall::hitwall::hitwall:
 
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Why do great powers fight great wars? The conventional answer is a story of rising challengers and declining hegemons. An ascendant power, which chafes at the rules of the existing order, gains ground on an established power—the country that made those rules. Tensions multiply; tests of strength ensue. The outcome is a spiral of fear and hostility leading, almost inevitably, to conflict. “The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta, made war inevitable,” the ancient historian Thucydides wrote—a truism now invoked, ad nauseum, in explaining the U.S.-China rivalry.
The idea of a Thucydides Trap, popularized by Harvard political scientist Graham Allison, holds that the danger of war will skyrocket as a surging China overtakes a sagging America. Even Chinese President Xi Jinping has endorsed the concept arguing Washington must make room for Beijing. As tensions between the United States and China escalate, the belief that the fundamental cause of friction is a looming “power transition”—the replacement of one hegemon by another—has become canonical.

The only problem with this familiar formula is that it’s wrong.


The Thucydides Trap doesn’t really explain what caused the Peloponnesian War. It doesn’t capture the dynamics that have often driven revisionist powers—whether that is Germany in 1914 or Japan in 1941—to start some of history’s most devastating conflicts. And it doesn’t explain why war is a very real possibility in U.S.-China relations today because it fundamentally misdiagnoses where China now finds itself on its arc of development—the point at which its relative power is peaking and will soon start to fade.

There’s indeed a deadly trap that could ensnare the United States and China. But it’s not the product of a power transition the Thucydidean cliché says it is. It’s best thought of instead as a “peaking power trap.” And if history is any guide, it’s China’s—not the United States’—impending decline that could cause it to snap shut.


There is an entire swath of literature, known as “power transition theory,” which holds that great-power war typically occurs at the intersection of one hegemon’s rise and another’s decline. This is the body of work underpinning the Thucydides Trap, and there is, admittedly, an elemental truth to the idea. The rise of new powers is invariably destabilizing. In the runup to the Peloponnesian War in the 5th century B.C., Athens would not have seemed so menacing to Sparta had it not built a vast empire and become a naval superpower. Washington and Beijing would not be locked in rivalry if China was still poor and weak. Rising powers do expand their influence in ways that threaten reigning powers.
But the calculus that produces war—particularly the calculus that pushes revisionist powers, countries seeking to shake up the existing system, to lash out violently—is more complex. A country whose relative wealth and power are growing will surely become more assertive and ambitious. All things equal, it will seek greater global influence and prestige. But if its position is steadily improving, it should postpone a deadly showdown with the reigning hegemon until it has become even stronger. Such a country should follow the dictum former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping laid down for a rising China after the Cold War: It should hide its capabilities and bide its time.


Now imagine a different scenario. A dissatisfied state has been building its power and expanding its geopolitical horizons. But then the country peaks, perhaps because its economy slows, perhaps because its own assertiveness provokes a coalition of determined rivals, or perhaps because both of these things happen at once. The future starts to look quite forbidding; a sense of imminent danger starts to replace a feeling of limitless possibility. In these circumstances, a revisionist power may act boldly, even aggressively, to grab what it can before it is too late. The most dangerous trajectory in world politics is a long rise followed by the prospect of a sharp decline.

As we show in our forthcoming book, Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China, this scenario is more common than you might think. Historian Donald Kagan showed, for instance, that Athens started acting more belligerently in the years before the Peloponnesian War because it feared adverse shifts in the balance of naval power—in other words, because it was on the verge of losing influence vis-à-vis Sparta. We see the same thing in more recent cases as well.

Over the past 150 years, peaking powers—great powers that had been growing dramatically faster than the world average and then suffered a severe, prolonged slowdown—usually don’t fade away quietly. Rather, they become brash and aggressive. They suppress dissent at home and try to regain economic momentum by creating exclusive spheres of influence abroad. They pour money into their militaries and use force to expand their influence. This behavior commonly provokes great-power tensions. In some cases, it touches disastrous wars.

Read more at -

About the usual from the FP magazine tools.
Just grey theories, mixed with unrelated history, lacking real evidence which can equally be applied to other major powers as well.
 
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agreed, but China is also the least globally integrated power in terms of institutes, narrative, and acceptability across the globe. Its strength has been economy, and is way behind USSR or Japan or even Nazi Germany in global alliance .. There has never been a superpower in history without global /regional alliance and ability to project power .. China has to prove the history wrong

There's no such thing as a mutual alliance in this nuclear age,US will do moot if China firebombed the hell out of New Delhi,no country will. There's only the Monroe doctrine which was used by the US to impress their footprint when their primacy was unchallenged, it's just a visage of its former self now.

China is the least globally integrated power?A nation which is more often than not the largest trading partner of any nation? the very nation that formed Asian development bank which is the only real alternative to WB?the primary proponent RCEP?the leader of SCO? the defecto partner of Africa ? Close to 50 African presidents and heads of government attended the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) every 2 year ,presenting themselves in Beijing.
You think the global alliance is derived from tweaked twitter trends? or Atlantic council affiliated media's talking point?

China is rallying the whole of global south, they aren't really trying to convert Anglo-Saxon into appreciating China. China and Africa alone makes near 3 billion(almost half of humanity) and than there's south American states,Asean nations,Oceana,South Asia (bar India)all of them fed up with AngloSaxon and West . Before the rising tsunami consisting of China and developing global south , the measly anglos are just drops of water in a lake,and NATO is like a crumbling moat before impending flooding.
 
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There's no such thing as a mutual alliance in this nuclear age,US will do moot if China firebombed the hell out of New Delhi,no country will. There's only the Monroe doctrine which was used by the US to impress their footprint when their primacy was unchallenged, it's just a visage of its former self now.

China is the least globally integrated power?A nation which is more often than not the largest trading partner of any nation? the very nation that form Asian development bank which is the only real alternative to WB?the primary proponent RCEP?the leader of SCO? the defecto partner of Africa ? Close to 50 African presidents and heads of government attended the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) every 2 year ,presenting themselves in Beijing.
You think the global alliance is derived from tweaked twitter trends? or Atlantic council affiliated media's talking point?

China is rallying the whole of global south, they aren't really trying to convert Anglo-Saxon into appreciating China. China and Africa alone makes near 3 billion(almost half of humanity) and than there's south American states,Asean nations,Oceana,South Asia (bar India)all of them fed up with AngloSaxon and West . Before the rising tsunami consisting of China and developing global south , the measly anglos are just drops of water in a lake,and NATO is like a crumbling moat before impending flooding.
India is the only rising power in the known universe.

yes . you are right. China can't be compared to any earthly thing since they achieved the galactic super power status ..
 
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yes . you are right. China can't be compared to any earthly thing since they achieved the galactic super power status ..

No comparison. India was an inter-galactic power, even 10,000 years ago, when a Ram Temple was built on Mars. The said temple would now be rehabilitated by Modi Jee, once he is free from other "earthly" worries. :lol: :lol:
 
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The inferior muricans have started inhaling massive amounts of Copium, it seems.

afkgaming%2Fimport%2Fmedia%2Fimages%2F64144-5f5d9b481fe5863c196d3441322ab983.jpeg
 
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No comparison. India was an inter-galactic power, even 10,000 years ago, when a Ram Temple was built on Mars. The said temple would now be rehabilitated by Modi Jee, once he is free from other "earthly" worries. :lol: :lol:
don't poke your nose in a discussion between two super galactic civilization! you insignificant creature
 
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don't poke your nose in a discussion between two super galactic civilization! you insignificant creature

We are bound to poke our nose, when a thrid grade, third class and third rate state, like India, which is unfortunately our neighbor, tries to go beyond it's stature (read auqaat). :lol: :lol:
 
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