Power

I have been listening raptly about how this is the time for the Chinese to thrust themselves into the fore.

Hogwash.

This is merely sloppy thinking by commentators who think in terms of silly games. If the US loses power, the power has to go somewhere else. As if the geopolitical world is a simple zero sum game where loss by one actor implies victory for another. This is silly at best, dangerous at worst.

I spent way too much time in China. Set up a couple of factories, made a couple of friends, am comfortable with guzzling Yanjing and Beijing beers, and can successfully use the verb (肏) if the woman is drunk enough.

Hence my credentials. The other part of my credentials is that I did actually spend time working daily with folks, seeing their lives, eating with them, and getting along. Most of the folks who babble on about the "coming Chinese century" do the bulk of their work from the business center on the upper floors of the Kerry Center Hotel after being squired about by well-trained Chinese flacks.

They supposedly see a country that is coming on(China). They also see a country that is supposedly declining (us).  The assumption that they make is that the "power" concept that they wave about like a fetish is flowing from the waning country to the waxing country. Fools.

What we are seeing is a net loss of "power" in the entire system. The US is waning more rapidly because it is falling from a higher level. The Chinese is not gaining power, they are just losing it less quickly from a lower starting point.