10 ms·

After the election my very first thought was that this is the start of the Chinese century, since America has voted to step down. Seems to be playing out.

by api 4mo ago

collinmcnulty 4mo ago
Unfortunately there is another possibility: a return to great power competition.
- bsenftner 4mo ago
  Nah, that fantasy is over, with the new Era of Moron Power. The future of humanity of absolutely Asian. Western culture is Rome on Fire.
  - api 4mo ago
    The irony is that the people who screamed the most that Rome was on fire aggressively pushed for what you brilliantly call Moron Power. They thought we were crashing, rushed the cockpit, and pushed forward as hard as they could on the stick. Forward is up, right?
    - franktankbank 4mo ago
      I'm sorry but Rome certainly didn't have airplanes.
      - api 3mo ago
        I'm referring to this, which has aged quite poorly: https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/digital/the-flight-93-election/ https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/digital/the-flight-93-ele...
- marcyb5st 4mo ago
  I don't see that happening. The US debt will hinder any big expense that could keep it in any game long term. Take AI for instance. The US grid is struggling to keep up with demand, while Chinese one has a lot of headway [1]. Usually, this could be solved by an increase in spending lasting a few years which would make the debt tick up, but that would've been an absolutely fine use of debt since it buys some shiny new infra that will pay dividends for the next 20ish years. Now? Not possible. The US is already drowning in debt and the usual buyers are not showing up to buy it because of the Iran fiasco. With oil so expensive everyone was using their USD reserves to buy oil, not debt. Which mades interest rates go up considerably, and for a country with already ~130% of debt/gdp ratio these are terrible news. So, I don't think there will be a great power race. Europe is fucked by both high debt, and lack of innovation. Russia is struggling already to finance a war of conquest they started. China is the only one that can run if it comes down to it (unless of course the numbers coming out of China are mega bogus, but for that I don't know enough to have an opinion). [1] https://fortune.com/2025/08/14/data-centers-china-grid-us-infrastructure/ https://fortune.com/2025/08/14/data-centers-china-grid-us-in...
  - kranke155 4mo ago
    It is absolutely a Chinese century. Even the comment above isn’t wrong per se - great power competition is normal during the interregnum, ie as Arrighi described it - one hegemon is rising while another is declining. But eventually one of them does rise and the world conforms to that - ie America in post WW2.
    - bxk76 4mo ago
      Well China cant seem to make a single friend beyond North Korea and Russia. Everyone is a bit wary of them. I mean when the US replaced the Brits as Hegemon a large part of the world wasnt nervous about it.
      - wredcoll 3mo ago
        God, this is depressing. I think it's difficult, if you're a millenial/zoomer/whatever we're calling these things, to understand just how much of the world genuinely liked and respected and wanted america involved in their local affairs. America obviously wasn't perfect and many, many more people than trump were involved with squandering all of this goodwill, but we still had some left over before he showed up.
Schlagbohrer 4mo ago
No other country punches itself in the face as hard or as often as the usa does.
- brookst 4mo ago
  And if you tell us to stop, we’ll punch ourselves in the face even harder just to prove you can’t tell us what to do.
  - Integrape 4mo ago
    Never underestimate the power of American spite.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
svachalek 4mo ago
The US situation is mitigated by both Russia and China deciding to make massive, foolish maneuvers at the same time as ours. However neither can match how stupendously we are lighting our future on fire in every possible dimension.
- kingnothing 4mo ago
  What are the foolish maneuvers that China is making?
  - Hikikomori 4mo ago
    At this point they can use the Gaben strategy and easily win.
    - MarkusQ 3mo ago
      That would require making babies and not making mistakes. Humans are generally/historically better at the former, but these days both seem to be a challenge.
  - handle584 4mo ago
    Not is but the obvious one was COVID policy during 2020-2022. It triggered the closest thing to a domestic unrest you can get in China after 1989, a large exodus of middle class, and an almost 50% crash in their real estate market. The last one is very deadly and still ongoing because that is how China financed its growth for decades.
  - dirck-norman 4mo ago
    China is undergoing a 2008 style financial crisis due to real estate speculation and deflation due to very weak domestic spending. They have drowned their municipalities in debt cumulatively equivalent to the US federal and state debt as a percentage of GDP. Localities aren’t allowed to tax but are responsible for local services and industry. Local governments borrowed heavily to hit GDP growth targets and compete with each other for investment and talent. There is now a backwards migration of the working class back to rural towns from the cities because the incentives China gives is towards technologies that only benefit their already upper-middle class workers. About 500 million Chinese live in rural areas and over 20% of their workforce toils in the fields. That’s not changing anytime soon. Youth unemployment has been 15-20+ percent for some time.
ikari_pl 4mo ago
Not to the extent I'd like — it stopped working on Huawei too.
noosphr 4mo ago
For a Chinese century you'd need there to be anyone in China in a century. With the one child policy they have run out of young women and are running out of middle aged men. The Chinese, and Asian, population pyramids make Europe look young and vibrant.
saintvlad 4mo ago
[flagged]
- wredcoll 3mo ago
  sure: https://mbs.edu/news/why-diverse-teams-are-more-profitable https://mbs.edu/news/why-diverse-teams-are-more-profitable
  - throwawaypath 3mo ago
    That was debunked: https://econjwatch.org/articles/mckinsey-s-diversity-matters-delivers-wins-results-revisited https://econjwatch.org/articles/mckinsey-s-diversity-matters...
    - wredcoll 3mo ago
      Oh hey, a good faith argument. I thought about going and googling for more studies supporting my position, but I'm not sure if that actually has much of a point? Maybe I can come up with a stronger/more defensible argument: creating a just and equitable society is valuable on multiple levels including moral and economic. Societies without "lower classes" are good for a variety of reasons. Researching into why we have lower classes and, hopefully fixing that, is a good thing for a bunch of reasons. Something something how many potential new einsteins aren't pushing boundaries because they had to drop out of highschool and work 3 jobs?
  - saintvlad 3mo ago
    [flagged]
    - wredcoll 3mo ago
      > "real" diversity of thought isn't allowed under globohomo. The goal, of course, is handouts for race communists and to further solidify communist control of political What the fuck?
    - tomhow 3mo ago

After the election my very first thought was that this is the start of the Chinese century, since America has voted to step down. Seems to be playing out.

by api 4mo ago

After the election my very first thought was that this is the start of the Chinese century, since America has voted to step down. Seems to be playing out.

collinmcnulty 4mo ago

Unfortunately there is another possibility: a return to great power competition.

bsenftner 4mo ago
Nah, that fantasy is over, with the new Era of Moron Power. The future of humanity of absolutely Asian. Western culture is Rome on Fire.
- api 4mo ago
  The irony is that the people who screamed the most that Rome was on fire aggressively pushed for what you brilliantly call Moron Power. They thought we were crashing, rushed the cockpit, and pushed forward as hard as they could on the stick. Forward is up, right?
  - franktankbank 4mo ago
    I'm sorry but Rome certainly didn't have airplanes.
    - api 3mo ago
      I'm referring to this, which has aged quite poorly: https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/digital/the-flight-93-election/ https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/digital/the-flight-93-ele...
marcyb5st 4mo ago
I don't see that happening. The US debt will hinder any big expense that could keep it in any game long term. Take AI for instance. The US grid is struggling to keep up with demand, while Chinese one has a lot of headway [1]. Usually, this could be solved by an increase in spending lasting a few years which would make the debt tick up, but that would've been an absolutely fine use of debt since it buys some shiny new infra that will pay dividends for the next 20ish years. Now? Not possible. The US is already drowning in debt and the usual buyers are not showing up to buy it because of the Iran fiasco. With oil so expensive everyone was using their USD reserves to buy oil, not debt. Which mades interest rates go up considerably, and for a country with already ~130% of debt/gdp ratio these are terrible news. So, I don't think there will be a great power race. Europe is fucked by both high debt, and lack of innovation. Russia is struggling already to finance a war of conquest they started. China is the only one that can run if it comes down to it (unless of course the numbers coming out of China are mega bogus, but for that I don't know enough to have an opinion). [1] https://fortune.com/2025/08/14/data-centers-china-grid-us-infrastructure/ https://fortune.com/2025/08/14/data-centers-china-grid-us-in...
- kranke155 4mo ago
  It is absolutely a Chinese century. Even the comment above isn’t wrong per se - great power competition is normal during the interregnum, ie as Arrighi described it - one hegemon is rising while another is declining. But eventually one of them does rise and the world conforms to that - ie America in post WW2.
  - bxk76 4mo ago
    Well China cant seem to make a single friend beyond North Korea and Russia. Everyone is a bit wary of them. I mean when the US replaced the Brits as Hegemon a large part of the world wasnt nervous about it.
    - wredcoll 3mo ago
      God, this is depressing. I think it's difficult, if you're a millenial/zoomer/whatever we're calling these things, to understand just how much of the world genuinely liked and respected and wanted america involved in their local affairs. America obviously wasn't perfect and many, many more people than trump were involved with squandering all of this goodwill, but we still had some left over before he showed up.

Schlagbohrer 4mo ago

No other country punches itself in the face as hard or as often as the usa does.

brookst 4mo ago
And if you tell us to stop, we’ll punch ourselves in the face even harder just to prove you can’t tell us what to do.
- Integrape 4mo ago
  Never underestimate the power of American spite.
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]

svachalek 4mo ago

The US situation is mitigated by both Russia and China deciding to make massive, foolish maneuvers at the same time as ours. However neither can match how stupendously we are lighting our future on fire in every possible dimension.

kingnothing 4mo ago
What are the foolish maneuvers that China is making?
- Hikikomori 4mo ago
  At this point they can use the Gaben strategy and easily win.
  - MarkusQ 3mo ago
    That would require making babies and not making mistakes. Humans are generally/historically better at the former, but these days both seem to be a challenge.
- handle584 4mo ago
  Not is but the obvious one was COVID policy during 2020-2022. It triggered the closest thing to a domestic unrest you can get in China after 1989, a large exodus of middle class, and an almost 50% crash in their real estate market. The last one is very deadly and still ongoing because that is how China financed its growth for decades.
- dirck-norman 4mo ago
  China is undergoing a 2008 style financial crisis due to real estate speculation and deflation due to very weak domestic spending. They have drowned their municipalities in debt cumulatively equivalent to the US federal and state debt as a percentage of GDP. Localities aren’t allowed to tax but are responsible for local services and industry. Local governments borrowed heavily to hit GDP growth targets and compete with each other for investment and talent. There is now a backwards migration of the working class back to rural towns from the cities because the incentives China gives is towards technologies that only benefit their already upper-middle class workers. About 500 million Chinese live in rural areas and over 20% of their workforce toils in the fields. That’s not changing anytime soon. Youth unemployment has been 15-20+ percent for some time.

ikari_pl 4mo ago

Not to the extent I'd like — it stopped working on Huawei too.

noosphr 4mo ago

For a Chinese century you'd need there to be anyone in China in a century. With the one child policy they have run out of young women and are running out of middle aged men. The Chinese, and Asian, population pyramids make Europe look young and vibrant.

saintvlad 4mo ago

[flagged]

wredcoll 3mo ago
sure: https://mbs.edu/news/why-diverse-teams-are-more-profitable https://mbs.edu/news/why-diverse-teams-are-more-profitable
- throwawaypath 3mo ago
  That was debunked: https://econjwatch.org/articles/mckinsey-s-diversity-matters-delivers-wins-results-revisited https://econjwatch.org/articles/mckinsey-s-diversity-matters...
  - wredcoll 3mo ago
    Oh hey, a good faith argument. I thought about going and googling for more studies supporting my position, but I'm not sure if that actually has much of a point? Maybe I can come up with a stronger/more defensible argument: creating a just and equitable society is valuable on multiple levels including moral and economic. Societies without "lower classes" are good for a variety of reasons. Researching into why we have lower classes and, hopefully fixing that, is a good thing for a bunch of reasons. Something something how many potential new einsteins aren't pushing boundaries because they had to drop out of highschool and work 3 jobs?
- saintvlad 3mo ago
  [flagged]
  - wredcoll 3mo ago
    > "real" diversity of thought isn't allowed under globohomo. The goal, of course, is handouts for race communists and to further solidify communist control of political What the fuck?
  - tomhow 3mo ago