GeoCombat2050

  Year after year, the US cries wolf about China’s impending military aggression. The familiar refrain from the White House, Congress, Pentagon, CIA, and retired generals comes in invariably alarming tone: China’s invasion of Taiwan is imminent; President Xi Jinping has ordered his military to be ready for invading Taiwan by a certain year; and rising tensions in the South China Sea will trigger WWIII. Year after year, the wolf fails to show up. Yet, the US Empire’s mass media keeps amplifying this false narrative, day in day out. These tired tropes never die. For good reasons. They vilify China as America’s greatest enemy. They advance the National Security Council’s bellicose agenda. They prompt Congress to boost ever greater defense budgets. They serve to rally American allies. The sweeping China military threat narrative brushes aside a major question: Why has China not gone to war yet, despite enjoying 40 years of dizzying economic boom and rapid military modernization? The U

  Not a day goes by without the US raising the specter of China as an existential threat. Joining the fray, the Pentagon issued an alarming report in 2023 over China's faster expansion of its nuclear arsenal, which, it claimed, went from 400 warheads in 2022 to 500 in May 2023 and is projected to reach 1,500 by 2035.   This is great news. China's so-called "sharp" development of nuclear weapons is overdue. A stronger nuclear stance will deter adversaries from blackmailing and launching nuclear strikes.  To America, China's "rapid" nuclear modernization threatens the nuclear balance and poses as an "existential challenge" to its security. Upon reviewing the Pentagon report, Congress members declared that the Chinese buildup is a wake-up call to speed up the overhaul of US nuclear forces. The White House urged the Chinese government to come to the negotation table in the hope of striking a deal over arms control. The numbers bely the American cla

  The US Empire has spoken: China poses an existential threat to American global hegemony and must be subjugated at all costs.  The wrath of the world overlord, which has descended on China since 2017, continues unabated. With bipartisan congressional support, the White House under Trump and Biden has waged trade wars, wielded an avalanche of sanctions, rallied its allies in Europe, Asia, and Oceania, and conducted relentless smearing campaigns worldwide, with no end in sight. Taking it up a notch, Biden has been actively preparing for war against China. He crafted the AUKUS security pact with Australia, which will receive eight nuclear powered submarines, gained access to military bases in the Philippines, and promoted military cooperation between Japan and South Korea. Rather than cower in fear, China should embrace military confrontations with the US and its allies, under the right circumstances. Undoubtedly, the costs and risks associated with the use of force are high, but the pot

Vector Vectors by Vecteezy China has the numbers on its side. The second largest economy in the world, it is poised to surpass the US economy in 2030. An industrial giant, it accounts for almost one-third of the world's manufacturing output, leading the US by over 10 percentage points. A global trade powerhouse, China is the largest partner of two-thirds of countries (128 out of 190), overtaking the long-standing US.  Yet, despite its phenomenal transformation from a peasant-based to an industrial society in merely 44 years, China has remained a geopolitical dwarf, unable to project its military power beyond its territory in East Asia, let alone in the Pacific or Southeast Asia. Its geopolitical situation looks dire especially in East Asia, where the US has put in place the containment policy with its Asian allies.  China's major geopolitical weakness is its inability to reclaim the island of Taiwan, a renegade province that lies 100 miles from the mainland. The island, now und

Imagine a world where the West and China live in harmony.  At its annual military parades, Beijing shows off its M1 Abrams tanks, M777 howitzers, and the world's most advanced fighter jets, F-35 --- all made in America. Soldiers march in lockstep, holding German HK416 assault rifles, while French H160M military helicopters sweep through the clear sky of the Chinese capital.  In low Earth orbit, the International Space Station welcomes Chinese astronauts, who conduct research with their US colleagues and maintain equipment provided by China, Japan, Canada, and other nations.  Knowing its place in the world supply chains, China, the world factory, churns out loads of consumer goods destined for Costco, Walmart, and the like while importing hi-tech products from the advanced industrialized countries.  This would be a China dreamed by Western liberals and neoconservatives: A Chinese client state subservient to the US, fully integrated into the so-called rules-based world order, entirel

The year 2030 will be a historic year. China, the second largest economy in terms of GDP,  will overtake the US, the uncontested economic juggernaut since 1890. In their heydays, either the Soviet Union, Germany, or Japan came in second, but neither one of them ever came close to dethrone the American powerhouse. That China, a once backward country with 70% of its workforce in agriculture in 1978, will succeed where other nations failed is an impressive feat.  China's ascension as an economic superpower carries great significance to the word. The center of world economy will shift from the US and Europe to China and parts of Asia. Many countries depend on importing from and exporting to China. With 30% of the world manufacturing output, China has risen as the world's factory, producing Made in China goods to meet rising global demand.  In 2030, will China replace the US as the hegemonic superpower? The answer is a resounding no. Nor will it be a hegemonic superpower in 2050, bu

What is more important for a developing country? Is it to assure that citizens can freely cast a ballot and quietly return to their shanties? Or is it to lift millions of citizens out of poverty, create a modern industrial economy, and become competitive in the world economy?  Democracy and Economic Development The US and its allies would have us believe that political freedom trumps all other considerations. Give people the right to vote and establish a democratic system, and they will be well on their way to "modernity."  That ideology has been applied worldwide, with mixed results, however. At one extreme, Iraq's democratic system, imposed by the US after the 2003 invasion and toppling of the dictator Saddam Hussein, is synonymous with failed state and instability. One saying reflects the rampant corruption in in the federal parliamentary republic: "We used to have one Saddam Hussein, now we have a thousand." Similarly, twenty years of airborne democracy and

The US is not only the dominant economic and military superpower but also the self-proclaimed beacon of freedom, denouncing human rights violations throughout the world.  Intensifying its criticisms of China's mass internment of Uighurs in Xinjiang, the US government has called it a genocide. This is another case of US moral imperialism. What has happened in Xinjiang is not genocide, and if it is, then there is not a doubt whatsoever that the US committed genocide against Native Americans.  According to the UN Genocide Convention in 1948, the definition of genocide must meet at least two criteria. The first one is physical extermination. In Xinjiang, the Chinese government incarcerated about a million Uighurs in reeducation camps. No evidence of mass killings has been unearthed. The US and its allies themselves have not produced any incriminating pictures or credible witnesses of mass killings. And, most importantly, the Chinese government does not aim at physically destroying th