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China will reach some predetermined level of technology that The Party decides they are comfortable with, then close their borders and just get on with being th
by gaius 9y ago
China will reach some predetermined level of technology that The Party decides they are comfortable with, then close their borders and just get on with being the Middle Kingdom in splendid isolation. That is my prediction. I don't think they feel the need to project power and remake the world the way the US and previously the UK do/did. Maybe they will disengage from the world and look spacewards.
- FabHK 9y agoNot entirely implausible. That's in a sense what they did after they sent out Admiral Zheng He with a fleet of ships and thousands of men in the early 15th centuryas far as East Africa - they concluded "meh, nothing interesting there", and shut down the whole program. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He
- vorg 9y agoThe funding for Zheng He's voyages was pulled because Ming China needed the resources to defend against renewed attacks from the north, i.e. Mongolia and Siberia. Because Britain is an easily defended island and the Iberian peninsula has the Pyrenee mountains acting as a defensive wall, England and Spain didn't have this type of problem when they sent out their fleets.
- lookACamel 9y agoWhat about the Dutch?
- the_common_man 9y agoThis really is a great point. Not everyone wants to dominate mankind.
- AmIFirstToThink 9y agoWe do? What kind of racist thing is that?
- princeb 9y ago> I don't think they feel the need to project power and remake the world the way the US and previously the UK do/did they already do. China wields strong economic influence and pressure over her southeast asian partners, some of whom need to be convinced to give up significant portions of maritime control and territorial rights in an effort to redraw the american sphere of influence in the south china sea region, and further out to establish a new economic status quo in africa and S. Am, where the traditional western world's influence is more political than economic.
- ghostbrainalpha 9y agoSeems like you can either... A) Reach a predetermined level of technology you are comfortable with |OR| B) Look spacewards. Very hard to do both of those.
- gaius 9y agoI mean reach a level at which you decide you don't need the rest of the world, that you're now self-sufficient. They can then take technology in the direction that suits The Party without external influence.
- int_19h 9y agoThat seems like a recipe for long-term disaster, looking at how Japan fared with its technological isolation. It's not like the rest of the world is going to stop.
- Sacho 9y agoChina invests heavily into Africa and the whole continent will be under its sphere of influence, with all its growing-out-of-poverty economies. They're hardly the isolationists you imagine.
- peoplewindow 9y agoChina 'invests' in Africa where other nations don't because the Chinese government needs to get rid of wealth to prevent its own people catching up with western living standards too quickly. Once living standards are caught up, "things are getting better" is no longer a good justification for tolerating the abuses and corruption. In 1984 Big Brother did this same thing by having perpetual war, and Chinese military spending is in fact stupendously huge, but even so they aren't actually in a war so need other ways to burn large quantities of capital. Building unprofitable railways in the middle of Africa is a great way to keep their own people poor whilst claiming some sort of moral high ground. But if these were good investments, it wouldn't be up to the PRC to make them.
- lookACamel 9y agoI don't think there is a point where China will 'disengage', rather China will continue to do what it is doing now: monitor closely and throttle accordingly.