GeoCombat2050

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

  Welcome to the age of the Liberal dictatorship. Liberalism stands for freedom and tolerance, whereas dictatorship cannot stand dissent. They do not and cannot go hand in hand, so we are led to believe. As the words "Liberal" and "dictatorship" are antonyms, putting them together amounts to an oxymoron. And yet, since February 2022, we have been witnessing the rise of the Liberal dictatorship, consisting of the US and its allies banding together to violently squash any attempts to challenge their vision of the world and upend the liberal world order.  When Putin ordered his troops to invade Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the US and 36 other industrial democracies unleashed an unprecedented package of economic sanctions against Russia.  In a span of ten days, among other things, they froze Russian's central bank reserves, expelled its banks from the global financial system, shut it off from the debt market, and cut off high-tech exports. In one stroke, the Libera

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

Pablo Picasso and Christopher Columbus -- two household names in all four corners of the world. One is a twentieth-century Spanish artist whose painting, La Guernica, stands as a universal condemnation of war atrocities. The other an Italian explorer, credited for discovering the New World in 1492. Discussing these two men here seems to do justice to neither one of them. What would Picasso, widely admired for his artistic talents, have anything to do with Columbus, a controversial figure lauded or despised for his actions? Despite their differences, these two European men share something in common: Their hubris, that is, their conviction that what they did represented humanity, and their neglect of people that do not belong to the same race. Prominently featured in Picasso's painting La Guernica is the killing of innocent women and children in wars. Despair, suffering, and death fill the gray, black, and white canvas, which shows a screaming woman in front of a house on fire, anoth

Athenian democracy f rom the 5th to the 4th century BCE h as been regarded as the model of modern democratic systems. Equal political rights, freedom of speech, participation in politics and governance all came from ancient Greece. Rather than doomed to oblivion, its three branches of government - the Citizens' Assembly, the Senate, the  Executive Committee, and the courts  have become the norms all over the world. When visiting Greece in 2016, President Obama lauded Greece "for the most precious of gifts: the truth, the understanding that as individuals of free will, we have the right and the capacity to govern ourselves."  Even non-democratic regimes have a semblance of separation of power and citizens' representation and "guarantees" political rights and freedom of speech.   But  Athenian democracy is far from perfect. Although its flaws are well-known, modern democratic leaders tend to deemphasize them while glorifying its political achievements. The tru

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