U.S.-China fight to lead planet earth will be decided “within 15 years”

xizhimen

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U.S.-China fight to lead planet earth will be decided “within 15 years”​

By Nury Vittachi
Aug 20, 2022

USA-and-China.jpg


The clock is ticking on which of the two superpowers will gain primacy over the planet – a lead which will last indefinitely, becoming unassailable, a stunning new study shows

U.S. leadership over the planet would lead to a colonial model as seen in recent centuries, with the west assertively pushing its values, says a book by a top London geopolitical expert

Chinese leadership will lead to a multipolar world, given China’s lack of interest in spreading its system of governance to other countries
, and preference for trade over militarism.

WILL CHINA OR THE UNITED STATES own the future? The balance of geopolitical power will be decided in the coming 15 years or sooner – and once it is made, it will not be reversible, says an eye-opening new study.

The clock is ticking.

The likely key factor is technological power, and how it is entwined with economic and military power, according to China and America’s Tech War from AI to 5G, a detailed examination of the east-west battle for supremacy by geopolitics specialist A. B. Abrams from the University of London.

“While it is a near certainty that China or the United States will be the dominant technological powers of the twenty-first century, Beijing and Washington have profoundly different visions for the nature of world order and the future of humanity,” Abrams says.

Two choices

What do those two contrasting visions look like?

If the US wins, humanity will see that country taking its usual assertive stance, pushing its particular vision of governance as a universal system for all people. The result will be “a continuation of a centuries-old world order dominated and shaped by Western power, with the U.S. being the successor to the empires of Britain, France, Spain, Holland and Portugal”.

If China wins, the world will return to humanity’s long-term state of affairs, with the world being a planet of multipolarity, with various regional leaders. “China had been the world’s largest economy and the leader in science and technology for most of human history until the Opium Wars entered it into its most calamitous century,” Abrams writes.

“The millennia when China was the world’s greatest power saw a laissez faire international order in which the East Asian state demonstrated little ambition for global empire or the imposition of its ideology, way of life, religion or method of governance abroad in stark contrast to the Western-led order which succeeded it.”

In other words, the West is likely to continue to use its military, economic and other strengths to “recommend” its way of governance on others, looking to create a homogenous replica of itself, while China will continue to ask only for power within its own borders, as it presently does, and looking for profitable win-win relationships outside.

“A gradual return to this kind of multipolarity is expected should China prevail in the current economic and technological competition,” the study says.

Both have strengths

Who’s winning? What are the current strengths of the two systems? While China has a population of great size, the US, as the world’s richest country, with control over the international media, has huge advantages.

“China today is unrivalled in the prevalence of technical skills in its workforce, in the concentration of manufacturing supply chains on its territory, and in the speed of its economic growth,” the book says. But while China may have more technicians, the US has a strong grip in multiple areas.

“The United States by contrast has the advantage of a much greater global influence established primarily through soft power and the export of its media and ideology, the global reach of its military and intelligence agencies, its large network of treaty alliances, and its position at the center of the global financial system.”

The Western vision that one type of democracy would take over the world was never going to happen, Abrams says. “Human nature dictates that successive generations will have a tendency to experiment with new ways of thinking and of organising themselves, meaning an eternal ‘Western liberal democracy’ for the whole world as Fukuyama and others predicted was never realistic.”

Other players sidelined

Could other players muscle into the race, displacing the leaders? Unlikely, the study says. Technology trends have created high barriers to entry. Abrams notes that veteran tech investor and leading AI authority Lee Kai-fu explained the challenge clearly:

“AI-driven automation in factories will undercut the one economic advantage developing countries historically possessed: cheap labor. Robot-operated factories will likely relocate to be closer to their customers in large markets, pulling away the ladder that developing countries like China and the ‘Asian Tigers’ of South Korea and Singapore climbed up on their way to becoming high-income, technology-driven economies. The gap between the global haves and have-nots will widen, with no known path toward closing it.”

Economic challenges

But while the US has many visible advantages, there are also growing challenges, the study says.

“As annual interest payments on debt are set to surpass the entire Pentagon budget before 2030, the state of its economy could force very deep cuts to government spending and otherwise seriously impede America’s ability to compete in the tech war. Beyond these economic issues, the US tech sector’s extreme reliance on foreign talent remains another serious issue which would require unprecedented reform of the education system and education culture to resolve.”

Divisive media

The Western media is creating a widening divide which could see Asian talent in the west being driven back to the east.

“As China is vilified in Western press there are growing signs that East Asian talent in particular, increasingly alienated by discrimination, government suspicions and rising hate crimes, will look abroad,” Abrams says.

“China has the important advantages of a larger, faster growing and significantly healthier economy and industrial base.”

Better for tech

One of the most fascinating observations in the book is that China’s much maligned political system is actually a better one for technological development.

Graph showing R&D spending in USD for US, China, EU, S.Korea, Japan, Germany and France

This Reuters diagram (above) shows long term investment from China. Below is a McKinsey chart.

Graphs showing China's RDP spending v US and other countries

China’s political system has also increasingly been seen even by Western analysts as better suited to supporting a world leading tech sector. A notable example was government funding of R&D in key areas which had been a consistent part of Chinese economic planning since the 1950s, and which in sharp contrast to the US grew steadily as a percentage of GDP keeping up with the country’s rapid economic growth. This ensured funding in strategic areas where the private sector may otherwise not have been willing to work.”

This same point was strongly made by writers in the MIT Technology Review: “Governments [as opposed to business people] are more likely to fund long-term, risky bets like clean energy, sustainable materials, or smart manufacturing—the kinds of technologies the world really needs right now . . . it’s become increasingly clear in the West that while the venture capital model is good at building things people want, it’s less good at producing things society needs in order to solve hard, long-term problems like pandemics and climate change.”

Ultimate winner

But will east or west ultimately rule the world? It’s too early to say. In terms of terms of global influence, military reach, grip on the media, and control of international finance, the US is well ahead.

Yet several observers say that China has some surprising leads already. Abrams points to a December 2021 report from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, which said that only a “national response analogous to the mobilisation that created the technologies that won World War II” had a chance of preventing total Chinese dominance of “the technologies of the future.”

That study concluded that in some areas China “has already become No. 1. In others, on current trajectories, it will overtake the US within the next decade.”

What’s for sure is that drama lies ahead.

The tech battle is heading into areas filled with potential “game-changers”, including AI, biotechnology, genetic engineering, quantum computing and neuroscience experimentation, where humans could have implants changing the way we think. Whatever happens, humanity is in for major changes in the way we live, operate and communicate. Abrams warns that “the tech war will likely end in a very different world to that which existed when it began”.

 

Nykyus

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Because of the Uighur issue, I am forced to be on the side of the US and NATO and think about the collapse and military defeat of China.
The thousand-year harmony in Asia was broken as a result of the intervention of European countries and the United States in the natural process of subordinating China to the heirs of the northern nomadic states. The Opium Wars were a blow to the Manchu dynasty. The Xinghai Revolution was provoked by a coalition of European states. The occupation of China by Japan was prevented by the intervention of the US and the USSR.
 

Old Codger

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Probably less, and the USA will win it or more correctly, China will LOSE IT!

The answer of why probably goes all the way back to the ONE CHILD POLICY.

They currently have about 120 males chasing 100 females and the losers of that race are not at all happy. With rapidly falling population and shrinking work force they will next have to contend with an almost NON existant generation of new people. Even the new parents can see little relief from supporting the 4 grand-parents.

The USA population is rising as China's is falling. And countless 'refugees' are risking their lives trying to get IN to America and nobody wants to get IN to China, only OUT of China.

OC
 

Baryshx

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Probably less, and the USA will win it or more correctly, China will LOSE IT!

The answer of why probably goes all the way back to the ONE CHILD POLICY.

They currently have about 120 males chasing 100 females and the losers of that race are not at all happy. With rapidly falling population and shrinking work force they will next have to contend with an almost NON existant generation of new people. Even the new parents can see little relief from supporting the 4 grand-parents.

The USA population is rising as China's is falling. And countless 'refugees' are risking their lives trying to get IN to America and nobody wants to get IN to China, only OUT of China.

OC
Will the decline in China's fertility rate affect its huge population? There is the same decline in the U.S. birth rate.
 

Mehmed Ali

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Another thing is , for what exactly China stand for? What is Chinese idea, ideology? What's in China in particular that people really can go for ? Old China is something else as it was great culture and civilization and many things were worthwhile to follow but what about this China? Dystopian state capitalism ( nothing new and proven as the bane of people) , complete lack of any tolerance and humanism etc. This country only stands for banal materialism and cynicism of its ruling elite. They remind me of Russians a bit , if they chose to do things differently then it could have been great thing alas they chose to do things according to their banal instincts.
Another problematic thing for China is that Chinese workers are not that skilled, not cheap anymore and not very productive.
 

Mehmed Ali

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Will the decline in China's fertility rate affect its huge population? There is the same decline in the U.S. birth rate.
I think that Chinese decline is huge , much more then other places. Another thing is like Russia, Chinese decline of population is not just modern phenomenon, I think it has lot to do with all civil wars , famines ww2 etc. For example Russian decline started irreversibly in early 60s. %80 of man born in ussr 1923 was dead by 1945. China has similar if not worse patern.
It is Communism thing , the experimentalists who act like they are God.
 

Baryshx

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I think that Chinese decline is huge , much more then other places. Another thing is like Russia, Chinese decline of population is not just modern phenomenon, I think it has lot to do with all civil wars , famines ww2 etc. For example Russian decline started irreversibly in early 60s. %80 of man born in ussr 1923 was dead by 1945. China has similar if not worse patern.
It is Communism thing , the experimentalists who act like they are God.
I would like to read what you think about the US, Japan, Korea and the UK, the centers of capitalism, because they are declining at the same rates.

This is a normal phenomenon in the course of the world. It is not specific to China and Russia, the same thing is happening in Turkiye, Greece, Italy, Spain...
 

Mehmed Ali

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I would like to read what you think about the US, Japan, Korea and the UK, the centers of capitalism, because they are declining at the same rates.

This is a normal phenomenon in the course of the world. It is not specific to China and Russia, the same thing is happening in Turkiye, Greece, Italy, Spain...
I don't look much into those particular countries but some of them " replace " population in different way , Korea and Japan no. But problem is more acute for Russia and China . Russia is huge country and when they loose , I don't know maybe 1 million in 2 3 years, that's very huge problem. In Russia basically only muslim segment of population grow so by these rate it is inevitable that Muslims will in not so distant future become backbone of that society . For China, as it is also big and populous country, when population crashes it will be difficult to manage. It is not like Switzerland, small , compact , good infrastructure etc to manage somehow. In China it will be disaster, also in China there are still considerable segment of population who live in not so great conditions. Miss treatment of Uygurs which causes miss trust of others western and northern people is truly irrational, that factor can help China but I guess, as it is case with Russians, banal hate etc is priority.
For Turkey, only what I can think of is that Turkey do the similar things like during the Ottoman time. Brotherhood and alliance with the relatively small nations who have always looked to Turkey like big brother like Caucasus and Balkan.
With bit of luck, intelligence and patience the old glory can be rightfully aquired again. With those factors , Turkey can control the ambitions of the Eastern tribal societies
 

Old Codger

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Yes, birth rates are falling in many countries, but with the USA the inflow of desperates trying to get away from leftist/socialist/communist countries is still expanding the overall population.
And so it is in the UK and Canada and Australia etc.

As above, very few people are trying to OUT of them and IN to China, Russia, and so on.

OC
 

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