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> China promotes itself as a new, gentler kind of power, but it’s worth remembering that dredging deepwater ports and laying down railroad ties to secure new tr
by forapurpose 9y ago
> China promotes itself as a new, gentler kind of power, but it’s worth remembering that dredging deepwater ports and laying down railroad ties to secure new trade routes — and then having to defend them from angry locals — was precisely how Britain started down the slippery slope to empire.
China should be deterred by the prospect of following the footsteps of the most powerful empire in history?
- puranjay 9y agoTo add: an empire they also hated for what it did to China. One of my oldest friends went to China to study medicine. He's now a doctor in Shanghai. I visited him a while back and spent a lot of time with his Chinese colleagues. The overwhelming sense I got was that China believes it is their destiny to be the supreme power in the world, that western dominance is an aberration of history, and that it is China's right to that status.
- ionised 9y agoHow original of them.
- forapurpose 9y agoI agree with what you seem to imply: The attitudes of nationalism - and the evils it leads to - are well known, but hardly talked about these days. How could we have forgotten?
- puranjay 9y agoPoverty and humiliation are powerful catalysts. If you want to place blame, place it on the bankers who tanked the economy in 2008. We've never really recovered. When you attack people's livelihoods, they get desperate. And in desperation, they choose despots who promise them their livelihoods, and more.