CHINA HAS CLEARLY WON THE FIRST ROUND

 

Why can't the West simply accept the fact that it is grossly outcompeted by China? The Soviet Union found itself unable to compete with a more powerful and more advanced Western world. It also made the mistake of engaging in an arms race with a richer and stronger opponent, the US, and paid a huge price for it. Now, thirty years later, surprisingly, the tables are turned. The success of China is evident, but it also contains the seeds of its own downfall, eventually.

China is using the BRICS as an economic lever to get the Global South on its side, getting their support and fortifying their own economy in turn, by increased trade with them, thus flanking both the Anglosphere and the European Union. It is a beautiful move by experts in the game of Go, where the goal is not to kill the opponent (chess), or to bluff him (poker), but to progressively capture enough physical space and resources to render him weak and impotent as times go by.

The problem of China will slowly rise from at least two sources. Those are: A) the obstruction coming from a declining and resentful West, especially its American component, its continental Europe component being probably more willing to trade with the BRICS, once the Ukrainian War will be over, and B) the economic growth of its own partners in the BRICS association, especially India, with its large territory, huge population, growing economy, and geographical links with Southeast Asia and the Middle East, and also its relative nearness to Indonesia and Japan, girding the whole Southeast rim of Eurasia. To put it in another manner, there will be political pressures coming from the Pacific ocean, beyond the first islands chain, political pressures coming from the southwest, beyond the Himalaya, and political pressures coming from the other end of Eurasia, in continental Europe, beyond the territory of a Russian Federation that is probably bound to integrate the whole of Ukraine to its population in a few months or years.

As for Taiwan, it is mainly a matter of time. China will multiply the inducements and the incitations, much preferring an intact province, with its entire population, without incurring the deaths and horrendous destructions that would ensue in the case of an outright invasion. The commonality of shared history, language, and culture should have an impact. If worst came to worst, a military invasion is always a last-ditch scenario, probably preceded by a long maritime blockade to soften up the target and make it think twice, before the real shooting start. A possible move could a swift coup de main to seize the Pescadores, right in the middle of the Taiwan Strait, sort of a Dieppe invasion (but one that succeed), before the much bigger one in Normandy.

With Taiwan solidly under Beijing's control, the maritime façade of China will likely become a fortress, protecting the mainland from the east. The Philippine and Northeast Asia would be physically separated by a strong unsinkable carrier, and a large opening to the Western Pacific will open. On the US side, the tiny island of Guam, will become an advance outpost, in front of the Hawaiian archipelago, acting as a mid-Pacific strongpoint, part of a network linked to the many bases in South Korea, Japan, the Philippines and Australia, all that military apparatus being at the end of a long logistical chain starting at the rear baseline made up of the Pacific Coast of the 48 contiguous states.

If China, with Taiwan in its pocket, decide to turn westward, to busy itself in the construction of a vast trade network over Africa, Asia and Europe, the United States will then probably have won a few decades respite.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/14/business/china-exports-manufacturing.html

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