The Chinese Century

[cnleio]

The important thing is RMB to become a international currency like USD, that's why China now doing direct trade with many foreign nations.

 

[LeveragedBuyout]

Great post. @LeveragedBuyout @AMDR @Nihonjin1051 @SvenSvensonov
Everyone agrees this won't be a Chinese Century, but a US-China one. The US and China could even be allies in the future if both sides adopt pragmatist approach with each other. Thoughts ?

I agree with this, because we were allies in the past, and I've long felt that among East Asian cultures, China's culture is the most similar to our own. It is multi-ethnic, it has an appetite for risk, it sees itself as a stabilizing force in the world, and generally speaking, it has a minimal colonial past. Like us.

The only thing that's lacking is a catalyst, a unifying factor. This can come from a positive or negative source. For a negative example, before the US was created, the colonies were in heavy competition with each other, but the increasing pressure of the British Empire gradually produced a unified sense of purpose between the colonies that created a United States. In our modern era, I believe Islamic terrorism from the Arc of Instability might provide a similar negative catalyst to cooperation between the US and China.

On the positive side, I think space exploration could serve that purpose. It's a bit hard for me to conceive of a single country having the ability or desire to colonize Mars, for example, but working together, we might be able to do it--for our own sake, but also for all of our sake. Joint research efforts to break the energy weapon, or at least wrest control of it from the hands of the retrograde actors of the world, might be another example.

I do not think the US and China will ever engage in open conflict, and we are already tightly bound together. Moving beyond what some of the blind nationalists on this forum profess, a collapse of the US would be cataclysmic for China, and a collapse of China would be catastrophic for the US. I believe that the competition between our economies is beneficial and helps improve productivity, and where we don't compete, we create synergies from our complementary systems. I would like for us to be allies at some point, but one must ask: allies against what? Until we have an answer for that, I do hope we can become friendly nations. If we can be friendly with a perfidious Europe, why shouldn't we be able to be friendly with a reliable China?