[In the 19th century] Britain was the workshop of the world, dominating science, manufacturing and trade.
To many Victorians, unquestioning of the ideology that underpinned much imperialism, British supremacy was a simple matter of racial supremacy – Europeans, and the English in particular, were fated to be the masters.
The truth is that we are masters of the world no more.
The global power shift from the West to the East is no longer just a matter of debate confined to learned journals and newspaper columns – it is a reality that is beginning to have a huge impact on our daily lives.
What would those Victorian masters of old have made of the fact that Chinese security men were on the streets of London this week, ordering our own police about and fighting running battles with British protesters while bewildered athletes carried the Olympic torch on its relay through the capital?
It was a brazen display of how confident China has become of its new place in the world, just as the British Government’s failure to take a firm stand on Chinese abuses of human rights shows how craven we have become.
The dire warnings from the International Monetary Fund this week that the West now faces the largest financial shock since the Great Depression, while the Asian economies are still powering ahead, simply underlines our vulnerability in this new world order.
The desperately weakened American dollar appears to be on the verge of losing its global dominance, in the same way as sterling lost it a lifetime ago.
To compare current China with the British Empire of the 19th century is flawed.
China is a growing economic power, (currently a distant third) but must rely on the good will and willingness of other countries to ensure its continued growth. This economic growth is largely at the expense of its people, who while gaining ground, still carry the burden of an under-valued currency. Should the Chinese float their currency to its natural and market-driven level, their people would be better off, but their international trade balance would suffer. In addition, China’s economy relies on piracy – intellectual and actual – as a large portion of their economy stimulus.
Britain, on the other hand, had the world’s most robust economy (not third like the Chinese) and had the military might to ensure the continued delivery of raw materials and finished goods.
China’s military, while getting better, is still a decade or so behind the West technologically and has only very limited means of projecting conventional power.
I suggest that the British police allowed the Chinese ‘security’ forces too much leeway out of deference to the Olympic hosts as much as anything else.
A sensationlist article but worth reading. Yes the power is shifting East. But this should not surprise any Christian for Empires rise and fall. Certainly the next two centuries will see the rise of Asia and the decline, in part, of the West.
It might actually do us good though. Rid the arrogance of the secular elite and turn minds to conisder where true security and wealth should be stored. It may also help some of the worlds poorest people and level out the riches. So be it. What will be – will be.
I worry not for Jesus Christ is where we locate confidence and he is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.
China’s success depends on child, prison and pseudo-slave lablor. They are a non-Christian nation exploiting their own citizens and polluting the environment, while we look the other way. It is only a matter of time that either their labor costs will go up or there will be open revolt. They are contemptible, and we give them honor. Disgusting.
Much of this is inaccurate because hyperbolic, although if I were English, I am not sure what I would be seeing.
A more accurate picture of China is to be found in Jim Fallows report in The Atlantic (if I recall correctly) of about four months ago. He remarks corrrectly on how little money China is actually making because they are largely middlemen, and he characterizes the Chinese attitude towards production as “happy with crappy,” and our own experience with Chinese products concurs. And this is in conjunction with an economy that is overheating in a way that may have put it beyond control.
My son is now in China for the third time and he is spending the year there at Qing Hua. He has reported that the destruction of the old society has created a new society that is faceless and nameless, and that this anomie is creating massive social problems. Moreover, the economic explosion is not benefiting rural areas, and the result has been bitter and violent social unrest in the countryside. We see none of this because the state controls information rigidly.
In short, China is going to “hit the wall’ fairly soon as its social and environmental problems produce a world that the state cannot control and which cannot be maintained in balance. The Tibetan unrest is a tip of the iceberg as China meets, for the first time, the world outside the Middle Kingdom on the outside’s terms. And its potential for damage to the US, in the event of a meltdown, is enormous since it owns so much US paper.
Will there be a melt down? In my judgment, it is inevitable, for the entrepreneurial class that has been created is utterly and entirely at odds with the goals of the government, nor will the government give up its control without the bloodiest kind of battle. Dissent and independence are stirring everywhere, and the government cannot tolerate active and public dissent. Larry