voxlashi wrote:China has absolutely not taken a long term vision ...
The Chinese are very much taking the long term view! Especially with regards to geopolitics; and that is what we are talking about here.
With regard to Hong Kong and Taiwan, they continue to pursue the long term strategy of "one country" without taking any short term measures to achieve this, because they know that in the end they will win. In regards to Hong Kong that is already paying off. And they have absolutely no need to invade Taiwan because it is just a matter of time before Taiwan will come under the influence of Beijing in one form or anther. You just don't ignore a 1.3 billion market at your doorstep.
Chinese leaders will increasingly take the view that the last 300 years of Western domination was only a short interlude in the long Chinese hegemony that lasted more than 3,000 years, and that China is about to take its rightful place at the center of the World.
From a business point of view too, they are taking the long term view. Just like Japanese and Korean businessmen, the Chinese aim for the long term aim of conquering market share instead of maximizing short term profit, like their Western counterparts. The emphasis on shareholder value of US finance capitalism will be the undoing of the West.
On the other hand though, the West is indeed undermining its own future with neoliberalism and consumerism. A domestic industry is strictly necessary for the prospect of society.
That is exactly my point. I don't know about the US, but Europe urgently needs an industrial policy to promote technological innovation and to rebuild domestic high-tech industries. The Chinese now file more patent applications than any other country and they are aiming for 2 millions patent applications in a few years, which will be twice the number of all other countries put together. Even if the quality of the inventions isn't yet comparable, the shear numbers are staggering.
We need to compete with China commercially not militarily.
Stingrei wrote:Another thing worth mentioning is control of the trade routes.
The Chinese "string of pearls" is a string of sea ports from Shanghai to Piraeus in Greece where the Chinese have acquired port facilities. Some can be used for Chinese naval vessels, but most are primarily commercial ports to safeguard China's commercial interest abroad.
With their "silk road" project they are extending their influence through Central Asia all the way to Eastern Europe.
I don't believe the Chinese will try to project military power on a global scale for a long while yet. They are quite happy to leave that to the Americans. I can even imagine a future in which China pays the US like a mercenary force to maintain the peace. In the past, the Chinese have always found it more convenient to pay the "barbarians in the North" rather than to fight them.
I think the biggest danger is that the US is trying to isolate China economically by substituting multilateral trade under the WTO by a series of bilateral trade agreements (TTIP, etc.) with its allies. If there is an attempt the isolate China economically, that might well lead to a trade war which could culminate in a real war.