Quote:
Originally Posted by pumpum
You say that he must look at the good instead of only looking at the bad, but the thing is the BAD so spectacularly outweighs the good so as to make it almost irrelevant.
Maybe it is you who should stop concentrating on the few grains of good and pay more attention to the tidal wave of bad.
As for China ruling the world or impacting the dominance of the USA - The truth is - who knows? we can make logical guesses but they are still just guesses, tomorrow an earthquake could swallow up either country or any other.
My own opinion is this and it is a fact - America is the most corrupt, greedy, hypocritical and murderous empire to have ever existed in human history on this planet, so whoever takes over doesnt really matter to me, they surely could not be worse.
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Big earthquakes like the one in Japan or a few years ago in Indonesia, can put a serious dent in a country's economy, with tremendous loss of life and property, but for large nations like China or India, it is easily absorbed, as the losses we have seen so far are relatively small. This does not mean that a really catastrophic earthquake could not happen, but probability of that is so small that it will be pointless to include it in our planning, just as Asteriods hitting the earth is also possible, but probability is too small to keep it in our planning for now.
As far as empires or dominant nation goes, USA being the leading one at the moment, it is not atypical. I will not try to judge its performance and compare them with former leading powers, but Soviet Union, Great Britain, France, Qing China, Romanov Russia, Ottomans, Mughals, Mongols - people who had to face these powers, they also have their stories to tell.
Essentially it is part of human nature, that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. So after Word War II, both the US and Soviet Union emerged as two great powers and both tried to contain each other, while other nations suffered because of the fight between the two titans. When Soviet Union fell apart, mainly because of faulty ideology and less efficient economy, the US became the lone super power of the world. So it committed some serious mistakes since the fall of the Soviets, but it is not unique to the US, others in the past may have done worse. We tend to think negatively about the US, because we see the actions in front of our eyes, happening everyday. Other lesser powers also commit atrocities, but usually they are reserved for their minorities within their border, where it has greater control due to the cherished concept of sovereignty. So China can try to supply Gaddafi in Libya with weapons, to save Gaddafi's murderous regime, but eventually it cannot do much in the face of NATO as well as world opposition. But China continues to run their steam roller on Uyghur and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang and the Tibetans in Tibet and in other provinces in China. Mongols in Inner Mongolia face discrimination in their own land taken over by a 90% Han Chinese, Manchu as the former ruling minority, were forced to integrate with the Han and Hui Muslims after a lot of revolts and decimation in Qing era, nowadays live peacefully among the Han population. Demographic invasion, cultural genocide and resource extraction are the modus operandi for China in these "autonomous" regions, supposedly protected and reserved for minorities who were promised autonomy when they were annexed or occupied within China. In India Kashmir Muslims are choked with a virtual military occupation of 800,000 army and security personnel, there is off and on insurgency in the North East Indian states, where people are genetically more South East Asian and are majority Christians.
The other point about empires is that when an empire becomes dominant, it increases the income of its citizenry and over time it makes people more educated and civilized. So if we consider the US before the civil rights era in the 1960's where there was segregation laws in southern states, today's USA with affirmative action and equal opportunity acts is much better. Racism by no means is gone, but compared to 40-50 years ago, things are better and improving. The British, French and other Europeans went through the same evolution as well, over centuries, while Japan went through this evolution after Meiji restoration. Over all humanity is making progress, although there is still a long way to go, to bring this progress to a majority of global population.
Now lets consider the case of China and India. Like Korea, these two countries may achieve middle or high income status in a short span of 4-5 decades, now I know many don't agree with me about this prediction, but lets say for the sake of argument, that this prediction become reality.
I happen to know Korea fairly well, and I know that Koreans as a people are absolutely not ready for international leadership, I think it takes a certain amount of time or certain number of generations for the evolution to take place, even though they already have the income and technology. So if China, in a few decades and India, much later, suddenly find themselves with tremendous world beating economy and the military power that goes with it, then it spells trouble for the world. Not only will their minority suffer more, despite having a bit more money and income, the neighboring nations will bear the brunt of these rising powers. Since there will be no US to bring them under leash, they will:
- grab disputed islands or maritime territory at their will
- take unexplored land in Antarctica mostly between themselves
- steal water from the international rivers they share with neighbors
- meddle in all resource rich regions such as Middle-east, Africa and Latin America, where there are a lot of small and weak states
Essentially, once they achieve dominance, they will start behaving like other super powers before them.
Many people in this thread has expressed that it will not happen and they have presented their arguments, while I have presented my arguments why it may happen. But if these nations eventually achieve world dominance, mainly because of their size and a homogeneous unified majority, Han Chinese ethnic group in case of China and Hindu religious group in case of India, in such a world how can the rest of us, including the US, the EU, Japan and the rest of the world and minorities in these two mega states, protect ourselves from the adverse effect of this possible domination?