Squabbling Towards Autumn

 "Civilizations are born, often from the ruins of other civilizations. Like living organisms, they experience growth, maturity, old age and death."

                                                                                                              Neanderthal

America, and the West in general, are aging. We have past middle age and are moving towards the golden years. I don't mean to say that the age of the population is increasing, though that is true as well. We are not the same nation we were during WWII, where facing a threat to our nation, we mobilized the entire nation and became the biggest force in defeating Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Fast forward to 2020, facing a pandemic that caused a draconian lock down in China, the West and the U.S., in particular, felt into disarray. Not only did our central and local governments performed very poorly, the population in general have also behaved erratically. The country that fought and won WWII had grown old. Today, neither our government or our people are capable of sacrificing short term pain for longer term gains. When the enemy, in the form of a pandemic, shows up, we are incapable of compromising across the political isles to fight it. We are incapable of helping our most vulnerable citizens to halt the spread of the disease. Even something so basic such as wearing a mask in public or shutting down the state to prevent the spread, have met with resistance, sometimes with citizens armed to the teeth. Covid parties, where young people intentionally infect themselves, have endangered the attendees and their family members. In WWII, many went to war knowing that they might not come back. Today, with the basic template of recovery laid out by the Chinese, the South Koreans and others, we, as a nation, have avoided doing the hard things, the only known ways to move us out of Covid-19, things like lock down, testing and isolation and treating the sick. Instead of being asked to sacrificing their lives like our war veterans, what was asked of us today is some inconvenience and short term economic pain. What we spent our energy doing instead is finger pointing. We blamed the Chinese, even though they have told us, by their words and their actions, about Covid for a good month and a half to two months and we have taken no action. We blamed the WHO, who was doing a very difficult job and should be our resources in a time like this. We blamed Dr. Fauci, who did the best he could under restrain from an administration that advocated injecting bleach and UV lights into the body to stop the virus. We even blamed Bill Gates, who use his own organization and money to help combat the spread of diseases all over the world.  

Covid-19 is an event that will end someday. The America that have shown to be so wanting during this crisis will need to turn ourselves around to maintain our place in the world. I am pessimistic that we are up to the task. Most likely, we will fall as an empire, just like the other empires in the past. In the next few posts, I will outline the factors that lead to this decline. 

Covid 19 and its fall outs.

"And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?"

                                                                                              ---President Donald Trump


The biggest black swan for 2020 is the COVID 19, which  first hit Wuhan in China, then the rest of the world. The impact is enormous. This little germ has exposed the weakness of world governments world over and will help usher in a new world order.

At the beginning, the Chinese didn't handle this well, even by their own admission. The Hubei and Wuhan officials suppressed information and was slow to react. While this is a novel virus, if the government was more enlighten, they could have taken the action maybe two or more weeks sooner. However, once the central government started taking over, things happened very quickly. They sent in Dr. Zhong Nanshan, and learned of the true nature of the pandemic. On Jan. 10 2020, Wuhan health officials sequenced the DNA of the virus and released it to the world.  On Jan. 20, after touring Wuhan for a second time,  Dr. Zhong Nanshan came to the conclusion that the virus was more transmittable than previous thought. He announced this on via television on the same day. Government officials made a decision to completely lock down the City of Wuhan on Jan. 23. Subsequently, the lockdown would extend to the entire province of Hubei and eventually to the entire nation. They underwent massive testing. To ensure potential patients are willing to step forward and be tested, the state underwrote the cost of hospitalization and testing. They use cellphone records to do contact tracing of the sick and tested all the ones that came into contact with them. Those that were tested positive were contact traced again. The positives were divided by the severity of the symptoms. The asymptomatic and the mild cases were isolated in hotels and stadiums. The severely ill were sent to hospitals. They were able to build several hospitals in awe-inspiring short time, some in ten days time. The draconian measures succeeded in wiping out most of the cases.  In one and a half months time, new patient counts fell from thousands of daily cases to 139 new cases per day by March 4th. The country slowly reopened. Wuhan, the most severely impacted city, reopened on April 8th.

The other East Asian countries all did quite well. South Korea heeded the call from China and went into action. They used a similar playbook. Because by the time the virus hit them, it was clearer what they were dealing with, the Koreans were able able to contain this faster then the Chinese did. Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and even Vietnam were able to contain this very quickly, though Singapore had a second wave due to the influx of Indian workers and still being contained as we speak. The Japanese took longer time, but were able to contain this by mid May.

The West should have done a lot better. We have better medical facilities, more doctors per million population and most of all, we knew it was coming. The Chinese warned the world at the beginning of January 2020 about Covid. The U.S. started having outbreaks by beginning of March. We had a month and a half to two months to get ready for the arrival of the pandemic. Instead of taking action, the West sat on our hands and squandered the valuable time that were given to us. Instead of attacking the disease head on, we tried to take the easy way out. On the top, we have an administration that failed to execute in the most basic ways, then when the shit hits the fan, started spending all his energy blaming the Chinese, the WHO, Bill Gates, the Democrats. The States, Democratic or Republican, did not do any better. We have senators who refuse to do basic things like wearing a mask in public. As a result, something that could be fixed by shutting down a small part of the country for two months, cost a $trillion or so, end up will drag on for year and a half or more and could cost $10 trillion or more over the next two to three years as we first fall into this deep pit and then climb out of it.  

Asides making our currency worth less, this added debt have other consequences. Raymond Dalio, in his book "The Changing World Order", have shown  that the Spanish, Dutch, British empires all collapsed due to the government abusing their reserved currency status and printed too much money. Indeed, in the next few posts, I will spell out the decline of this once great nation into the path of secondary power. 

The Hong Kong Security Law

                                                 "The times, they are a changin"   

                                                                                         --- Bob Dylan
               
Recently, China passed a security law as related to Hong Kong. Basically,  China asserts the right to prosecute under the following crimes "treason, secession, sedition, subversion against the central government, theft of state secrets, the hosting of political activities by foreign political organisations or bodies, and the establishment of ties between local and foreign political organisations."

Hong Kong has always had elements that are staunchly anti-CCP. The founder of Apple Magazine, Jimmy Lai, for example was very vocal against the Chinese government. As in the previous post of my blog here, the Chinese government tolerated this for more favorable trading and financial conditions in Hong Kong. The Chinese did not act more swiftly against the riots in Hong Kong for the same reason. They wanted to keep the special privilege for Hong Kong as long as possible.

Since they have not acted thus far against the rioters, one wonders why the timing of the move. Recently, with the new restrictions enacted to forbid TSMC selling to Huawei and the additional twenty four Chinese companies added to the entity list, it seems the U.S. China rivalry has reached a new height. Since the U.S. China relationship has already deteriorated, there would be less to lose by the Chinese enacting this law.

Reportedly, Jimmy Lai, who had been caught intimidating reporters as well as organizing illegal assemby, is looking to get out of Dodge quick, but was denied by the courts.

It seems, Hong Kong will undergo a big titanic shift.

PS, the initial response from the Trump administration is interesting. Since Trump had been talking about decoupling from China, this would be a perfect opportunity for him to declare Hong Kong as no longer a special and distinct place apart from the rest of China and cut off the trade that way. Instead, we see calls to sanction individuals who carry out this law. This is less than a slap on the wrist. This will have no impact at all to the Chinese. If this is all that will transpire, it would seem that American interest in Hong Kong trumped the ideology. This will also have implication for Taiwan.

The Hong Kong Riots, Part 2, My interpretation of the events.

 Our policies with regard to Hong Kong will remain unchanged for 50 years,

                                                                                                      --- Deng Xiaoping

Before we go into understanding the Hong Kong events, we must first understand the bigger picture. The Chinese see the role of Hong Kong as a window to trade with the world. Back when Deng had his reform, China was opening up to the world. Even as the British were handing back Hong Kong, China must ensure the British has a stake in Hong Kong to ensure that the trades to the West go smoothly. Today, Hong Kong still serve mainly these roles, though trading is no longer as important as it used to be, there are other areas that rose up and took its place. The economy of Hong Kong is in finance, trade, transportation hub, and real estate. To protect the interest of the British (and later on, the Americans), China allowed Hong Kong Tycoons and the government they control to continue to govern Hong Kong. The system was designed to serve the interest of the British and American multi-nationals. An odd by-product of this was that the judges in Hong Kong were not drawn from the native population, they were mostly imported from abroad. Most of these judges hold foreign  citizenship. The education and media is mostly controlled at the behest of the interests of the tycoon and foreign interests, though the Chinese added their own control of some part of the media. Hong Kong, thus, was founded as a joined partnership of the three interest groups; the Chinese, the tycoons, and  foreign interests, mainly American and British.

Since July 1 1997, when Hong Kong reverted back to China, until recently, Hong Kong has been peaceful. Under the faucet, however, titanic plates are moving. The tycoons were all in real estate. Gradually, they also moved to control every aspect of the Hong Kong economy, from malls to ports, from power to garbage, any sizable business are all now owned by these handful of tycoons. Hong Kong does not have much land to begin with. Singapore, with even less land, was able to provide affordable housing for its population through government interference. Unfortunately, in Hong Kong, the tycoons are in control of the government. This is like the fox guarding the hen house. They, along with the smaller property owners, have derailed every attempt by the government to increase the housing stock. What was much more egregious was that the tycoons have bought up all the land that could be developed and just sit on it. Every year, a small sliver of the already precious land was sliced out for development. The result was a skyrocketing real estate market that eat up all the earning from the residents. The high cost of real estate also prevented development into other areas. It was said that many giants of China like Alibaba and Huawei could have called Hong Kong home, but high cost and lack of foresight by the tycoons meant that they instead operate just a stone throw away in Shenzhen. Wage stagnation ensued for the last few decades as Hong Kong defends its last few industries.

On the other side, in China, development have given rise to many metropolis like Shanghai and Shenzhen. To the wealthy Chinese, Hong Kong was a tourist destination, a place to launder their money out of China, and a place to invest. The tourists brought with them some remnants of their developing world issues. For example, the tainted baby formula issue with China caused many Mainland Chinese to rush to Hong Kong to buy their baby formula there, causing shortages for the native Hong Kong people. The money laundering helped the financial institutions, but few local Hong Kong natives benefit. The investment happened at the same time the tycoons were tightly controlling the supply of housing stock, driving the price higher. While this benefited the home owners, the rest of the population suffered.

I was in China in the seventies. At that time, the disparity between what a Hong Konger earned and what a typical Chinese earned was huge. Hong Kong was like this light tower in the land of darkness. In the eighties, when China opened up, even the menial laborer in Hong Kong were able to find a beautiful mainland girl as his mistress with his salary. In fact, there was a whole village full of people who were mistresses. Their Hong Kong sponsor bought them homes in the village and would come in to visit them from time to time. Since money was how Hong Kong society value people, and they have way more money then their Mainland counterparts, they look down on their Mainland cousins. As the Mainland got wealthier, Hong Kong people increasingly feel insecure about their status as superior beings due to the place of their residence. In a society like Hong Kong, status is very important. The wealthy look down on the masses. The masses look down at the menial laborers. At least in the past, they would all feel secured about being superior to the Mainland Chinese. They will fight tooth and nail to defend this sense of superiority. This is why you see people waiving British and American flags during the riot. This would also explain why there were so much anti-mainland sentiments, to the point that many were beaten for just speaking mandarin. This include many from Singapore and Taiwan. The tycoons were eager to deflect the fact that they were taking all the money out of the working class. They were also unhappy that the Mainlanders were taking part of their businesses away while sending investment to buy up all the best properties. Since the tycoon also controlled the media, they skillfully directed the anger of the population against the Mainland government and Mainland people in general. As a result, you will never hear about Hong Kongers complain that the tycoons were taking a disproportionate cut from their  salaries. All the problems in Hong Kong were caused by the Mainland Chinese.

The British and the Americans were making money hand over fist. However, America increasingly viewed China as a competitor. As the Trump administration ratchet up the trade war, Hong Kong became a negotiating chip. As many of the colored revolutions in the world have the signature of the CIA, so do the Hong Kong riots. The Ukrainians, who were controlled by the CIA, suddenly showed up on the streets of Hong Kong directing the rioters. CIA operatives were filmed on the streets of Hong Kong, showing people how to burn down the city. Money suddenly became available for protester. People were offered money just to show up in protests. They were offered more money to burn up and destroy the city. Tens of thousands of umbrellas of the same make and color suddenly showed up on the street on the same day. Some powers were doing organizing behind the scenes. The police are now also being targeted by the mob.

At the end, the tycoons and the CIA skillfully manipulated the anger in the masses to create the riots. The angst of Hong Kong masses can only be fixed if more housing were available. The Mainland Chinese could step in to force the local government into action and make more houses available, but I am doubtful that this will happen. The Chinese only care about guarding their interest and ensuring that Hong Kong fulfill at least the function that could not be replaced, money smuggling and a place to have a stock market for Mainland companies. Given how the citizens of Hong Kong behaved towards Mainland, they are not too keen to step in to help them. Hong Kong still have a useful role to play for the Chinese so for now, things will stay as status quo. The future of Hong Kong is bleak, as its many roles are now actively being replaced by other Mainland Chinese cities. The only role that seems to be irreplaceable is to launder Chinese money. It does not take a city of six million to launder money, so the average Hong Konger will continue to stagnate until it is surpassed by its neighboring towns. Like many cities such as Venice that once had their meteoric rise to the top, Hong Kong will fall back to a less remarkable city that it once was.

The Hong Kong Riots, Part 1, So many questions

"President Trump, please liberate Hong Kong"

                                                                                      --- Hong Kong protesters


I have been watching the unfolding Hong Kong riots with amusement, horror and disgust. For posterity, it all started when two young kids went to Taiwan. The boyfriend killed the girlfriend and stuff her body into the suitcase. He then flew back to Hong Kong.  Since there was not extradition treaty with Taiwan, Carrie Lam and the Hong Kong legislature introduced an extradition bill which allow extradition of people accused of crimes (as defined by both Hong Kong and Taiwan) to stand trial. Since by implication, this would also allow the same for mainland China, it sparked a new round of protest because people fear they would be extradited back to China for trial.

It is completely out of character for Hong Kong people to have such ferocity and persistence with their protests. These are well organized and funded. I know a number of people from Hong Kong, they are generally not political at all. They warship money and people with money, but generally not the type who would go out and do protests. So what changed?

If you listen to the pro democracy movement side, there does not seem to be any coherent reason for this. They say they want democracy and to be left alone. The truth is, for the most part, they have been left alone. While China get to pick who runs for the Hong Kong office, the people do get to finally decide who they chose. The judges are all British trained and many are none Chinese. The average Hong Kong person that I know have never bothered with things such as Democracy or free speech. So none of what they ask for now made any sense. This little snot nosed kid, for example, is mainly concerned that people called them cockroaches. That is wrong because of Nazis and genocide. Well, they call these kids cockroaches because they cover their faces in anonymity and scatter when confronted with a force greater then they are, just like the way cockroaches behave. Nazis and genocide is just what a bunch of bratty kids call people when they don't like them, like their American left counterparts. In actuality, they are the menacing ones. The level of lawlessness and violence perpetrated against the police, none Hong Kong Chinese and anyone who disagree with them while they are waiving American and British flags is just disgusting and very out of character with the Hong Kong that I knew.

The Chinese side claim that the tycoons have taken too much and left the youths unable to buy a place of their own. The lack of upward mobility plus the ever increasing home values entrapped the youth into a no win situation which resulted in them going off their rails. While this is true and explains to a large degree the underlying unhappiness, it still left a lot of things unexplained. For example, the pay in Hong Kong is not that bad and there is not an unemployment problem. While the salaries are no longer higher than the wealthiest part of China such as Shanghai, it is still quite high compared to the average Chinese. They could easily find a very nice place to live across the bridge at Dongguan with the earning power they have. The Chinese government have made a lot of improvement in transportation so they could do that. This happens to every U.S. city. For example, in the Bay Area where I live, places next to a company like Apple is very expensive, so people commute tens miles away to places like Blossom Hill from their work so they could enjoy the higher salary and lower cost of housing. In fact, people don't have the right to live in the city of their birth if they are not able to earn the high salaries it takes to keep a house there. The U.S. population is generally OK with that concept. After college, most would settle in a different region due to their jobs and think nothing of it. Lack of housing also does not explain the animus towards mainland Chinese. When talking to someone who speak Mandarin, they automatically get upset and start talking to them in English, even though many of these Hong Kong kids can not speak good English even if their lives depend on it.  To me, this look like the culture revolution in the old China or the race riots in the U.S. like L.A. after Rodney King or Ferguson after Michael Brown.

Finally, What was it about the extradition bill that started this whole thing? Most of the young people obviously have never gone to China and don't intend to go soon so they are not in any danger of being extradited. While people said that this was just an excuse for venting some long simmering anger, one still wonders, why is this a spark that triggered the multi-months long violence?

The Great Rivalry: Geopolitical Competition

All empires fall, eventually.”
“But why? It’s not for lack of power. In fact, it seems to be the opposite. Their power lulls them into comfort. They become undisciplined. Those who had to earn power are replaced by those who have known nothing else. Who have no comprehension of the need to rise above base desires.”

                                                                                                       ---Max Barry

I was in Boston recently and did the tourist thing. We did the tour with the Boston Tea Party Museum. Among the things I learned was the indifference to the American sentiments which led to the lost of America as a British Colony. The revolt was over the army that was sent over from Britain and the taxes that were levied against British merchandise. Since East India Company, whose tea was dumped into the harbor, had a monopoly over the American trade, the British could easily have asked the East India Company to include the taxes as part of the price of the Tea and no one would be the wiser. It might have delay the end of the British Empire. The East India Company itself, despite hugely profitable trades across the world, almost went bankrupt and had to be bailed out by the British government. The reason was that it had also taken on the task of empire building. In 1857, it had an army 280,000 strong. Eventually, the cost of running this empire was untenable and East India Company was taken over by the government. As with the East India Company, the British Empire, whose rise was driven internally with the Industrial revolution, Eventually fall as the cost of running the empire exceeded the benefit. The timing of their fall was due to the rise of the United States as the rising power. It was the United States, wanting to overtake the British as the superpower after World War II, that encouraged British colonies all over the world to secede from Britain, thus raising the cost of the empire until it exceeded the British's capacity to maintain it.

The end of the cold war left the United States with NATO, bases and alliances all over the world and a trading alliance with the most prosperous nations in the world. The U.S. was set up to rule the world. Unfortunately, like all empires before us, our victory over the Soviet Union had driven us to hubris and overreach. After 911,  George W. Bush started the war with Iraq to control the Middle East, and by extension, to control the world. Instead, the electoral democracy that he installed in Iraq had created the Shiite Crescent, a rising power in the Middle East that gave rise to a lot of conflicts. Compared to Iraq, China is many order of magnitude larger, stronger and smarter. Unlike us, the Chinese also have an expectation that is grounded in reality. They don't want to rule the world. For now, they wanted to control their immediate neighborhood and they wanted to trade with the rest of the world based on common interests between them and other nations. In the mean time, with the lost of the Soviet Union and with Russia a shadow of its former self, NATO is no longer a cohesive unit like during the cold war. The United States, treating the Europeans like our own fiefdom, had made demands to them that are against their own interests. We had ask that they stop the Nordstream pipeline so we can cut off the oil revenue of Russia. We had ask that they stop using Huawei for their 5G network. We discouraged them from joining the Chinese Belts and Roads initiative. At the end, the Europeans balked at all these demands and went their own way. Germany is signalling that they will allow Huawei for their 5G. Italy, financially wobbly, has announced that they will join the Belts and Roads initiative. At the end of the day, unrealistic expectations meant, at a minimum, the lost of credibility. It also increased the cost of running an empire unnecessarily.

The rise of each empire is driven by internal factors, factors like good governance, high population IQ, scale of the country and the character of the people. The empire falls if the cost of running the empire exceed the benefit. In the case of the United States, if our empire fall, it would most likely be due to our overreach. With the rise of China, our cost of maintaining world order could become prohibitive if we have the wrong expectations and wanted to exert complete control in every corner of the world. Instead, we should very carefully weigh the cost and benefit to our nation each time we contemplate taking an action. We must not let our dominance blind us to our limitations.

The Great Rivalry: The Military Race

"the United States military has had a lot of experience in the Western Pacific, taking down small islands."

                                                                                   ---Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie


From their humble beginnings, the People's Liberation Army, or PLA, has come a long ways. As late as the nineties, they were barely able to license produce second rate Soviet weapons. Today, they have caught up to the cutting edge in most areas. The remaining few weaknesses, namely aircraft turbo-fan engines, nuclear submarines, carriers, strategic bombers and transport, they are making rapid progress and may close the gap within the coming decade or so. We still have the advantage outside of China's immediate neighborhood, but as the Chinese military quickly ramp up, the sphere of Chinese military superiority will expand further afield.

Our military is the greatest on earth. In the open seas, our navy has no rivals. What is more, we have military bases all over the world. In East Asia, our bases are dotting across the peripheries of China. Due to their past weakness in their naval force, most of the South China Sea islands have been claimed by surrounding countries such as Vietnam. To stake their claim to the South China Sea, the Chinese have built a few artificial islands out of reefs that were originally semi-submerged. Lt. General McKenzie is correct in stating that we would be successful in attacking these islands. In the age of GPS guided missiles and hypersonic missiles, Fixed and relatively small targets such as the radar installations in these islands will succumb to a determined attack by a peer enemy.

However, in spite of the bluster by the U.S. military, our situation in East Asia and the South China Sea is much more precarious than it would appear. As a precondition, I restrict our future conflict to the peripheries of continental China and the South China Sea, as the Chinese will not challenge us in the open seas for a long time to come. To defend against attacks from the sea, the Chinese have built a thick, layered, sophisticated and interlocking missile defense system all along the border. They have area denial weapons like DF series missiles. They are building strategic bombers like the B2. With today's technology, a determined attack with high end missiles will hit the target, no matter the defense system, so a fight between the U.S. and China means the two countries will trade blows with their missiles and bombers until one is knocked out of the fight. On the U.S. side, the missiles can come from either ships, bombers, and bases along the islands of the Pacific, South Korea, Japan and the Philippines. Here I am excluding intercontinental missiles from the U.S. mainland since this could very quickly lead to nuclear exchanges that nobody wanted. It is unlikely to come from ships since U.S. war ships within 1000 km of the Chinese shores will not survive a Chinese attack. Bombers need runway from our bases to take off and land, runways that are limited in number and easily disabled. Like the artificial islands built by the Chinese, the U.S. military bases in the Pacific Islands all the way up to Okinawa represent weak, isolated and small targets. Even the bases in South Korea and Japan are rather limited. On the Chinese side, they have the power of the entire continent size country with a dense, layered and sophisticated defense that is interlocking. A huge number of bases and dual use runways must be destroyed before the fighting capability is significantly degraded. They also have the ability to back up the front line with an excellent transportation system. The huge asymmetry between the American bases in Asia and China means that if blows are traded between the two sides, the U.S. bases, like the man made islands of China, could quickly be knocked out. Each island in the island chain is separated by vast ocean. So losing one island will weaken the neighboring islands and hasten their fall. What is more, once the Chinese occupy the islands after the bases are knocked out, to re-take the islands will require ships that could be hit from Continental China. The asymmetry between Korean and Japanese military bases and China is not much better. The Japanese lacks offensive capability if the U.S. forces are out of action. The Koreans could be invaded on land by China. Once these bases are knocked out, help will have to come from Hawaii. The bases in the Philippines is further from the Chinese mainland, so only limited types of missiles from China could hit it. As the Chinese develop their strategic bomber and their navy, with a large number of destroyers and maybe four to six carrier groups, even our bases in the Philippines will become vulnerable. What is more, once we lost the bases, we will be forced to fight with a very long supply line.

Once our bases are knocked out and the Chinese occupies the first island chain and secure the South China Sea, they will be in a position to threaten Japan. Both Japan and the Philippines will fall completely under the Chinese sphere of influence. With the Chinese firmly in control of the South China Sea, they will be able to extend stronger influence in the Indian Ocean. The Chinese have the enviable geographical advantage of being able to control both the Indian Ocean and the West Pacific from mainland . This may well end the U.S.'s ability to hold sway the future of the Middle East, since without access to the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, our war ships will have difficulty reaching the Middle East.

Most Chinese military experts believe that they are without peer inside the first island chain, that includes the South China Sea. As the naval forces advances, their advantages will extend to the second island chain which includes Guam. Today, if we pick a fight in the South China Sea, we might stand a fair chance of knocking out their artificial islands, but a counter attack from China may mean we will lose most if not all of our bases in the East China Sea. Ten years out, with four carrier groups, they will have overwhelming superiority in the South China Sea and East Asia.

That our military can cross the globe and exert so much control on the rest of the world is predicated on a huge asymmetry of power between the U.S. and the target country. As China becomes more of a near peer, it becomes impossible to continue our dominant position so far from home and in their backyard. The development of the Chinese military is the result of Chinese industrialization. As their industrialization continue, their military will be even more formidable. If we are not careful in handling the relative decline of the U.S. military, it could accelerate our decline as the dominant country of the world.