China's Century, if it can keep it

My elder brother called Thanksgiving evening and at one point he asked "Is China kicking our ass?"

Short answer: yes, since around 2008. Longer answer: "It's China's century, if they can keep it. If they can get rich enough before they become old".

Item: During the Russo-Japanese war at the turn of the last century, Russia  naval forces suffered humiliating defeat at the hands of the Japanese at the Battle of Tsushima, patially due to technology. The coal fired Imperial Russian Navy suffered an 18,000 mile journey from the Baltic sea. Lack of coaling stations often meant almost piling mountains of coal piled up on decks. The modern Japanese ships were oil burners. The Japanese fleet outnumbered the Russians, but their battleships were faster and more manuevarable than the lumbering Russian dreadnoughts.

Item: At the peak of the USA Empire, 1945, US manufacturing was producing one German Luftwaffe (an entire national air force) every 18 days. 

Item: Year upon year, China graduates 3-5 times the number of science and math students than the US does. This isn't just scale, China has a higher participation rate.

Item: US astronauts were stranded on the ISS for 9 months due to lack of trust in the Boeing manufactured space capsule. Chinese astronauts were picked up after their own capsule suffered a lack of trust due to space debris. The new, stranded, astronauts received a new capsule in 8 days.

Personal Item: Construction rehabbing the bridge on my route to and from work over Hwy 53 if it matters. Destruction began in April, and only now are they close to finishing. China would have built the bridge, had it collapse, and rebuilt it in half the time.

So, yeah, China is kicking our ass. It has hegemony over all of east Asia and is pushing pushing pushing the US Navy to move back one island chain at a time. They will succeed if current shipbuilding trends continue. Taiwan? All they have to do is wait. The USA is at the end of a long supply line in defense of Taiwan. We are not so global anymore, if we ever were, despite all the bases everywhere.

The USA still has advantages, imagination, improvisation, a pretty solid high tech research environment, good education institutions and R&D labs. And toys. All of this is being laid waste by xenophobic imbeciles. Science set back 25 years while China surges ahead. Immigration, the influx of new talent and ingenuity, is another US advantage, sadly being diminihsed by short dick thinkers and that xenophobia again.

China has big problems just like us. The whole slavery thing is kind of moot. Their forced labor camps versus our treatment of immigrants and poors. But as long as they keep the money coming in, they have time before the population ages out. Ironic that China and India were the workshops of the world 500 years ago, and here they are now.

Here's a more comprehensive link to China's Century.

The thing about empires, are that empires eventually fall. Nothing lasts, but nothing ever really goes away. The imprint is there. I think that's a spooky action quantum thing maybe.

So if empires fall, maybe try being something besides an empire.  

Oh yeah I also got into the Little But Bold show. Titled Xenophile, but I'm open to better names. Catch might be a good one.