Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Policy Discussion Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (14005)	7/29/2022 6:10:27 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15985

I think everyone in that article is mistaken, including the author. The biggest problem people have, both in geopolitics and their personal lives, is to self project. For example slaver societies often worried that abolishing slavery will lead to themselves becoming slaves. Americans think that the rise of China will mean that China will become literally displace China. Religious empires feared that freedom of religion would bring their demise and that people would mass convert out of religion. All these expectations led to violent and extreme reactions, but history shows that none came true. At least not the way that they were envisioned. Not having a khalifet system in ME and affording people relative freedom of religion did not lead to mass conversion out Islam. When America took over from Britain, the US did not have to go to colonize Asia the way UK had done it. The collapse of the Soviet Union did not foster a ton of US client states similar to how they were under the USSR. Furthermore, the fall of one empire does not have to require the rise of another. The Roman empire was not conquered by the Persian empire - or any other empire. Nor did some other empire spontaneously emerge to take Rome's place. The Portuguese, the Spanish, the Dutch, the French, and the Brits all had their moments of glory. None died when their empire ceased to exist. And none was replaced by a bigger version of itself. And to my knowledge nobody inherited the Egyptians mantle to build even bigger pyramids. My point is that every time I hear about the rise of China (or any other country for that matter), people assume that it will just be a similar version of themselves. But that is an extremely unlikely event. Only the Romans sort of took over from the Green and followed suit. But that was an exception. China has no desire to displace the US. It is incompatible with their way of thinking and will bring about problems for China that they do not wish to deal with (nor are they prepared to deal with them). This means, among other things, that China has no interest in making RMB a reserve currency. What China does want is to be independent. This means for example that they will push for and help topple the USD as a reserve currency. But that is not the same thing as displacing it with RMB. Naively, the latter is mistaken for the former because they both involve USD not being the reserve currency. Similarly, China has no interest in spreading its system across the world the way that the US has pushed for spreading its version of democracy. Authors who write about the Chinese ascent or collapse or whatever, are engaging in fantasy work published as facts. If they are so good at it, they should put their money where their mouth is and trade structured derivatives <vbg> PS Xi is one of the worst things to have happened to China in the modern times.