^ China is has global nuclear reach and Chongqing is bigger in population than Texas. The US in 1910 and China today are in comparable positions. Manufacturing powerhouses, low labour costs and bigger populations than the power they were soon to replace. The US never fought the British Empire for global dominance, they were in the same team. You just never know what could happen geopolitically where China steps up and the US doesn’t. And just like that, the global balance has shifted. Remember, the US displaced Britain over 35 years, not in any one move overnight. It was a takeover by stealth almost. No Brit in 1905 was concerned about the US displacing then. Americans were uncivilised colonists… What do they know about being a global power.
The US did not overtake Britain until mid-1945. Britain overextended itself through imperialism and then got sloppy in Europe after WWI. I would argue the US is getting sloppy now with pointless foreign wars, a bad balance sheet, and negative demographic trends, but it will still take a major conflict to unseat the US as the dominant country in the world. We still have global military industrial complex with ~1,000 bases worldwide, the best secondary educational system / talent for innovation, and the strongest economy in the world. That doesn’t just fold up overnight. For anyone who has been to China, it’s striking that you still have people using the bathroom in the middle of the street in major cities. China will gain ground but it has a lot of work to do.
I disagree here. US has the biggest guns, but as you have noticed, the US is not really willing to use them on any near peer-level adversary. In other words, after WW2, the US has only engaged in combat with countries that can’t shoot back. If the country has nuclear weapons, it definitely changes the calculus. US will go bomb Afg (instead of nuke/Osama-wielding Pakistan), but if Russia invades Georgia or Ukraine, US won’t budge. Not ruling out military action, but the bar will have to be very very high.
China won’t be equal to the US, but it will definitely be an NPLA, and will be doing enough to make the US think very carefuly about military action. For example, China won’t have 10 Ford-class nuclear a/c carriers, but will likely have ways to restrict their effectiveness in asymmetric ways IMO.
Yep, a lot of it sounds like nationalistic jibberish. America will decline in influence and other countries will pick up the baton. Trying to deny this goes against documented history, the rise and fall of civilizations and is only an argument made by people who think “American exceptionalism” was a concept grounded in reality.
The extent of it’s decline and what will punctuate it is debatable and difficult to predict. The British lost their empire and influence due to a number of factors in an around the same time period - Becoming bankrupt post WW2, the completely unpredictable rise of a soft spoken lawyer in Gandhi who the colonised world rallied behind denying Britain cheap raw materials and false markets, many African states resorting to guerilla warfare for racial equality and finally the Suez Crisis.
We already have 2 or 3 factors that we can categorically state will end American hegemony. The only question is how long will the other factors take to surface.
I disagree.
The countries sitting at the top and those aspiring to get there have more or less gotten war out of their systems. This ‘war’ will be fought on the chess-board so to speak.
Now you are just being silly. There are people in mainstream politics in the States who believe in creationsim but It has no relevance to the current topic.
I don’t know if you were being sarcastic but we definitely need to give them credit for understated effectiveness. Less than 85 years ago these guys were fighting a civil war and busy kicking the White man out after having their nation ripped apart by the Japanese.
Now, they have treaties with every resource rich country in Africa allowing unlimited flow of minerals directly to Beijing (Without fighting catastropic wars), the fastest growing continent in the world (Africa) is being financed by Chinese money, they have the political clout to set up financial institutions like the AIIB that countries like Britain, Germany etc were in such a rush to sign up for they were tripping over themselves and a planned space station by 2020 amongst many others. At some point we must just stand back and raise a toast to this style of governance.
Yep, Solid point.
America is the premier military organization in the world capable of wiping out the next 5 strongest countries on a level playing field. The problem is that Military generals are not stupid, if push comes to shove they will not meet the ‘opponent’ on a playing field unfavorable to them.
Gladwell covers this concept in one of his books - Goliath lost to David because he assumed David would meet him on his terms. No better real life example than Che who took over a country, repelled an American financed invasion and became one of the faces of his century implementing this concept.
I was being tongue in cheek with the original post (even though it’s all true). The US wouldn’t necessarily start a conflict but it creates conflict every day with soft power and the threat of military power. That power is hard to displace.
And yes, people do use the bathroom in the street in China. I saw a guy take a dump on one of the main streets during the middle of the day in Shanghai and lots of people openly urinate on the sidewalk in major cities. China has made great progress but there is a long way to go. A large portion of the current Chinese population are illiterate farmers. It will take a few generations to really catch up to the developed world but they are on track and will get there eventually. In the mean time, China is overrated.
this is the failing of the political system the west believe in so strongly
Silly chinamen slinging rice.
“After one near-miss of a motorcyclist, he said, “If I hit someone, I’ll hit him again and make sure he’s dead.” Enjoying my shock, he explained that in Taiwan, if you cripple a man, you pay for the injured person’s care for a lifetime. But if you kill the person, you “only have to pay once, like a burial fee.”
Ah those lovable murderers.
As Geo pointed out above, it’s not about a physical conflict. US sees CN as the enemy, but CN does not see the US as the enemy…but even though the US is malicious, it’s all talk, they can’t actually bomb their creditors. CN just keeps moving forward benevolently with well-planned measured steps (stealth mode from the eyes of the unseeing US), while the US makes unforced errors.
There’s really no other outcome here, unless CN suddenly gets stupid, or the US suddenly gets smart.
Oh, and peeing in the street doesn’t change anything, macroeconomic trends can and will continue even if public urination increases. 
Putin has outplayed Obama by miles. You don’t need to be more powerful than the US. You just need to know when to seize the moment. Putin seized half of a European country and is about to seize Syria and all the US has done is say, “please no Vlad, don’t do it please.” If Putin can outplay the United States, the China could steamroll the US if they wanted to (geopolitically).
Hahaha. Didn’t Putin at one point flat out say “the US is broke, and stretched too thin already, they can’t do anything”. Not exactly those words of course. I didn’t follow the whole thing closely, but I thought that was the basis for his confident move?
Putin seize half a European country that wanted to join him. You don’t grasp that this is all Russia’s near abroad and far more important to Russia than the US? Putin similarly manhandled Bush by pounding Georgia despite Bush’s “please no Vlad, don’t do it please.”. Putin didn’t outplay Obama, he just cares more.
Lol, this is just stupid now. I can see why you were so enamoured by Trump.
Personally speaking, I think the writing is on the wall. Since the death of Christ, wealth was heavily concentrated in the East with the last 500 years being something of an anomaly. The flow of wealth to the East and the rise of China, India and others more or less represent a slow regression to the mean.
After the dust setlles on the greatest geopolitical shake up of our era, the pecking order will probably be China, India, USA, Europe etc unless Europe manages to figure out how to get their federal structure out of second gear. Anyone betting against this is a brave man.
He he, this line makes me wonder if there is a comparable forum in Mandarin where a grumpy, conservative Chinese minority (maybe a Tibetian) is posting a link about unhinged White American male shooters or perhaps White American supremacists burning down Black churches complete with the line “Ah, those lovable murderers”.
Hey at least they are not looting stores.
regression to the mean, hmm. last time i checked, North America is the world’s breadbasket, has the largest supply of fresh water, is the major source of most base metals, is covered in trees and is the major source of oil and natural gas (both production and reserves). i think it’ll be truly difficult for China or any country for that matter to surpass North America as the world’s dominating force for several centuries.
endless fresh and therefore cheap water + endless low cost energy (hydro, nuclear, nat gas, oil) + no internal commodity supply shortages = lasting dominance. there is a reason why North America has come to dominate. it has an internal supply of virtually every little thing needed for economic development.
add to this the fact that education is fully internalized whereas most countries flock to the U.S. to educate. as powerful as a place like China might seem due to a large population and therefore major influence, the fact that they import almost everything they need to operate and they have a highly uneducation population means they may never catch up. you can’t just create self-sustaining lakes or massive waterfalls that are close to major cities like North America has. when you pay 4-5x what North American pays for all of your energy needs, it’ll be pretty difficult to catch up.
EDIT: also, when it comes to outright power, WWII was a pretty good case study in favour of the internalization of the economic inputs. germany basically lost because it didn’t have what it needed to fight. others did. end of story. if it ever came to war, or even an economic war, china will lose every time as it requires far too much from everyone else to operate its economy.
i think you have the relationship of borrower and lender all wrong. the power is with the borrower. at the end of the day, borrower can tell u to **** off. At 2% 10 year, US wont be a jerk about it. But what do you think will happen if it goes to 10%? or even 20%? At some point, they will either control expenditures and pay off debt, resutructure the damn thing in more amiable terms, or default. it always happens throughout history. i dont think war is an option juss cuz we got Mutually assured destruction. the more likely approach is we dilute ur debt by printing more.
its really funny though. we are the best fiat currency out here right now. even though we are projected to run all that deficit.
btw here’s an excerpt from ray dalio about rates.
· DALIO: Again, it’s a restrictive policy. I don’t care whether they raise 25 basis points. I don’t care whether it moves along the curve. But, just I don’t see the reason for it, frankly. You know, like 2007, I was watching this incredible bubble happen. It was a massive bubble and it was financed on a lot of debt, and it was an obvious bubble. And the Fed just gave attention to the GDP gap, and they missed the whole bubble, and we had an economic collapse. Now we have a situation in where were in the mid part of the cycle. They’re trying to identify where the inflation is. And what they’re worried about, and we have a lot of liquidity around. And so when I look at this there are little glimmers here and there – there’re always little glimmers of something – but basically I, I think that they’re worried too much about the short-term debt cycle, and not enough about the long-term debt cycle. So I don’t get it. You know, given those asymmetrical risks.
not a big fan of his theory of risk parity. but this is an excellent excerpt.
dont feed the troll
About time to fire up this super boring topic, yet again!
Let me summarize what has transpired… So the fed keeps managing the stock market, currencies and international cash flows, with the EXPECTATION of a rate hike. Expectations get the job done, so why actually raise rates? Raising takes away their power. Well, the market caught on, the fed lacks credibility now, and so nobody thought they would hike in Dec. In response, the fed aggressively inserted itself back into the discussion – they dropped the hint they would be looking closely at payrolls, and of course they have inside information and already knew what payrolls will be, and of course payrolls came out huge (shocking!). Now everyone expects a rate increase again [rolls eyes]. People fall for the same trick every time. This game keeps stocks from getting further overheated, and when the hike doesn’t happen it props them up, and of course currencies and international cash flows are managed. Massive market manipulation way beyond what the fed is supposed to be doing. Anyhow I assume Obama and Xi reached a deal when he visited, and so CN won’t interrupt their game this time, as long as they get reserve currency status that is…go back on that deal at your own peril. So the fed is free to raise I say, but hard to believe they will actually do it, they would have already if that was their intention. Nov I expect to be fairly calm. But transitioning to net short by the end of Nov, close out shorts prior to Dec16 decision. That’s a win either way, low probability SPX is > 2100 going into decision. We are basically back to dec 2014 again, yawn.
Thanks for your unwarranted “shout from the stands”, Alphie. Your knowledge of American economic policies is about as well-versed as mine is on Indian train routes. The Fed has two mandates – can you tell me what they are without googling them? (HINT: It’s not to manage the stock market, currencies or international cash flows.).
And how does raising rates take away their power?!? It’s exactly the opposite.
#PissOff
^ Okay Mr. Naive, get back to me once you lose money and I’ll explain why it happened.