@Amanda Matthews

China has partners in Pakistan, Russia, Afghanistan, and Iran, and many African nations as well as Australia and New Zealand. They are partners with Saudi Arabia, Canada and Mexico.

So many articles these days are written with a tone that suggests that the US must do something to stop China. We must send every battle fleet to Asia to defend US interests. We must build more nuclear weapons pointed at China. They stole something that belongs to us. And, now they are printing their own money to use for oil purchases. That's an act of war. The Chinese are coming for our wimmens when they are done drinking our milkshakes.

This dying empire is determined to crush China and Russia so the US can remain the sole superpower in the world. Right now, US propaganda is being stuffed into Americans in order to build red hot hatred and fear. I do what I can to neutralize it.

#1 #1 #1

and South Africa. They have every intention of becoming one of the world’s economic powerhouses knocking the West off its perch. It’s investing to have access to technology for its own enrichmentt. China and those other nations in their emerging economic association have no intention of sharing the catbird seat with the Western nations that have kept a stranglehold on international trade and finance for so long.

@CB

As to the rise of China, It was pretty clear that the US didn't want to partner with China, they wanted to profit from China. Two trade boycotts come to mind. We wouldn't license China to use the global GPS system in their own technology development, so they had to figure out how to create their own from scratch and design satellites for coordinates. This left them with a natural cryptography and a somewhat advanced geolocation system.

But, the US didn't learn from this. They denied China the use of Intel chips for their university research labs. So, again China had to create their own high-speed chips from scratch. They did such a good job of it that China now has the fastest supercomputers in the world. It number-crunches at quantum levels 24 hours a day, which has allowed China to leap ahead in a wide array of technologies. It will win the AI race, as a result. And their quantum computers will design even faster super-computeers. Essentially, there's no catching up. China is already engaged in physical teleportation, for godsake. They'll be able to deliver their plastic trinkets much faster

Nice piece on falling Empires, also. A good read for everyone. One of the author's points I think is a bit off. It will not take a long time for empires to fall in today's world. The last great empire fell in a matter of days. Yet Russia recovered much improved in just a decade. In spite of the hardships, the people remained united. For the US with its reserve currency, it will be a matter of hours — 72 at the most will take us beyond the point of no return. I don't think it will disrupt the world. They've been preparing for a long time. US Dollars will still work at home and can be used to repay debt negotiated in Dollars. Some foreign trade might be done with US Dollars, but for trade deficits, the US will have to use a different currency. Printing Dollars out of thin air to pay for them won't work anymore. The US should strive to emulate the steadiness and containment that Russia exhibited when their empire failed. China, too, has been though a number of dynasty changes in the past 5,000 years. They may have some advice.

#1
an inordinately large portion of the world's smorgasbord. The US and EU have been pigging out for well over half a millennium at the expense of other nations on the globe we all share.

America has had a long history of biased import/export controls that have worked to unfairly enrich the country. At the turn of this century, the US was given an opportunity for Chinese partnership and investment to balance the accruing trade deficit. These overtures were not only turned down but protectionist hurdles were put in place to prevent it from occurring. It was tantamount to a slap-in-the-face - the Chinese were basically told to mind their place in the world.

The Chinese finally realized the US is not interested in any win-win trading situation with foreign nations they cannot militarily and financially control. So the Chinese are now by-passing the US and constructing a multi-polar (edited) world based on win-win trade and they are winning big time.

US hubris as the world's financial and military hegemon is coming back to haunt them. Their response to losing world financial control is to increase their military might. But this response will weigh like a huge albatross around their neck and only serve to quicken the demise of the empire as has been proved in ages past.

Fortunately there are two powerful nations that are poised to minimize the destruction when the behemoth finally falters and goes tits up - China and Russia along with the help of the unaligned nations.

10 Lessons For Modern Society From The Fall Of Ancient Rome

Every empire falls. There’s no way to stop it. The only we thing can control is how it happens—whether it’ll be a quiet, dignified passing of a torch or the flaming destruction of a nation torn down by barbarians.

That’s more or less what happened to Rome, and the aftermath was pure chaos. The fall of their empire sent the European world spiraling into a dark age that took centuries to escape.

If we take them time to learn from their history, we’ll see some eerie parallels with our own. And if history really does repeat itself, we’ll get a pretty good idea of what’s to come next.
...
It took 1,000 years, though, for Rome to die. It wasn’t over the second they stopped being the world’s biggest superpower. They lingered on for centuries. Their quality of life slowly changed, and most of their people were probably unaware that they were living through the fall of an empire.

Odds are, the same thing will happen to us. We won’t go out in a big explosion. We’ll just slowly start fighting wars we can’t win and struggling with an economy we can’t handle. And slowly, we’ll become nothing more than a chapter in a history book.