🛡 Surviving Tomorrow
🛡 Surviving Tomorrow
China Is Single-Handedly Crushing America
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China Is Single-Handedly Crushing America

Good for them
Photo by DDDanny D

“I’ve spent more time with President Xi Jinping of China than any world leader. He firmly believes that China, before the year 2035, is going to own America because autocracies can make quick decisions.” — US President Joe Biden

My great-grandpa grew up in China and we had Chinese boarders growing up — both, weirdly, were named Lin Ding. The second one taught us his family recipes, helped my mom build a Chinese garden, and he took me to visit the fish tanks at the university where he was studying to be an ichthyologist. Ever since I was a boy, China has always been on my radar.

And 71 percent of Americans are worried about a hot war between the United States and China in the next five years, so we seriously need to talk about it.

For those of you who are keeping score like I am, it’s clear that China is absolutely crushing America:

At some point it makes you wonder:

Maybe China deserves to win.


Obviously, China does NOT deserve to win

This is the same Han-centric nation that’s ethnically cleansing and genociding the Uyghur nation.

And oppressing the nation of Taiwan.

And the nation of Hong Kong.

And the nation of Tibet.

And colonizing dozens of African countries.

And debt-trapping the world via their Belt and Road Initiative.

And exporting their surveillance technology to dozens of other dictatorships.

So… they’re basically like America, but with 4.37X more citizens.


But we can still learn from China

It takes a lot of humility to admit that other nations are succeeding where we’re failing or falling behind.

When I visited North Korea, my guide/guard told me that North Korea was the best country in the world in every single category, even though he’d never left his slave state.

I told him that it’s okay for each nation to be the best at something. I told him that Canada has the best waterfalls (Niagara) and mountains (Rockies), but America has the coolest canyon (Grand) and Italian food is far better than Hungarian.

Here are a few of the many things America needs to learn from China:

1. China has an extremely long-term mindset

It’s important to put things in perspective:

America is 245 years old. 
China is 3,221.

Is there anyone who thinks the United States will still be united in 2,976 years? (I think it’ll be twelve countries within a century.)

America works on a two-year time scale — election, mid-terms, election, mid-terms. It’s awful, and stupid. China works on a millennia time scale. Within twenty years, China will be a two-billion person nation with the biggest economy in world history. And they’re just on Chapter Four of their story.

2. China invests heavily in success

They invest in their Olympic athletes. 
They invest in infrastructure. 
They’re investing $1.2 trillion in sixty other countries.

They understand that national success requires national investment.

3. China cares about unity

Culture = gathered and rooted
Individualism = uprooted and scattered

While America is a hyper-individualist anti-culture that’s fracturing everywhere, China is a more communal place, with a higher value on family, community, and nationhood.


Tomorrow’s superpower

Obviously, China isn’t beating America in every category. We still have the most white supremacists, gun-toting preppers, Kardashians, student debt, vampire corporations, and TikTok narcissists.

And we shouldn’t try to join China’s race to the bottom on cheap goods, human rights and freedoms, invasive surveillance, Hollywood censorship, authoritarian governance, dystopian panopticoins, kidnapping Chinese nationals who escape overseas, sentencing Canadians to death, and their horrendous social credit system.

China has its eyes set on becoming the dominant culture globally, but that would leave us with a world that is significantly less free, more surveilled, less creative, and less human.

Sure, they’re winning, but I really hope they don’t win win.

Because might isn’t right.

Never was, never will be.

What America does have going for it is some semblance of goodwill. While America has friends, China only has clients. Unfortunately, the corporations that own the Fed and Congress have leveraged the stars and stripes to run their extraction scams all over the world, building serious resentment and distrust even among our allies.

America needs to clean-slate itself and have a national discussion about what universal bedrock values we want to live by and promote in the world in the centuries ahead. Right now, the only “values” that America is exporting are vapid consumerism and predatory corporatism. No wonder half the world hates America and China is laughing.

But US President Joe Biden put it well:

“America is unique. From all nations in the world, we’re the only nation organized based on an idea — None of you get your rights from your government; you get your rights merely because you’re a child of God. The government is there to protect those God-given rights. No other government has been based on that notion. No one can defeat us except us.”

Sadly, American elites are hell-bent on doing just that.

Remember, friends: Democracy isn’t the natural state of human affairs.

Dictatorship is.

Will nationalism beat individualism? 
Will fake democracy best bona fide autocracy? 
Will creative culture beat conformist culture?
Will centralization beat disintegration? 
Will coercive “unity” best coercive disunity?

Will China and America learn to get along like the Brock family and the Dings, enjoying years of mutual benefit, cultural exchange, and moral growth on both sides, or will they go to war and destroy the world?

These are the questions of our age.

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🛡 Surviving Tomorrow
🛡 Surviving Tomorrow
A podcast, newsletter, and publication that asks the question: How will you navigate life in the age of democratic destruction, ecological collapse, and economic irrelevance?