The New World Order

I think that three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union and near-continuous trends in one direction or another, it's now safe to say that the new world order is a matter of economics against militaristic power and interest.

Of course I'm talking about China!

And by China, I mean the Chinese government. Just like for America I mean the American policymakers.


Have you noticed that all the news we get about what's going on in there comes from one source, the national news agency? Considering the usual prying Americans love to do, you'd of course expect more American reporters to try and sneak onto the scene...but they'd be watched closely anyway. What do we do about it?

Nothing.

What can we do about it?

Nothing. Unless, of course, we want China to call in all that debt...and to force us to actually start producing shit on our own soil again...and who knows what else.

Remember when Obama denounced the way the Chinese government is regulating Twitter? In particular, how shocked everyone was that he had the effrontery to say it straight to them, and the reaction afterwards, which was pretty much absolutely nothing.

Okay, yeah, it is another Cold War legacy type thing to go around saying that America has to be the bastion of democracy and by association free speech...but at the same time, this is a weird little step in the story of Team America: World Police. We can't interfere with them, and they don't want to interfere with us.

Because let's face it, China is holding America--and, eventually, the rest of the world--by the economic balls.

I'm guessing their military developments are more for defense than anything else, they're pretty damn well consolidated in Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan have just enough freedom to have their own Olympic teams and economic powerhouses, and no one from the West is going to say a damn thing about it.

Okay, so the one thing we definitely can't judge right now is the covert ops stuff going on in the background--secret trade agreements, blah blah--and whether or not the move towards 'local' and conscientious consumerism will actually make any kind of dent in our importing patterns.

Looking back to how isolationism was Washington's original order...I have to say, revolutionaries and revolutionary leaders make terrible long-term decisions. (Just read this book about Tibet and the Chinese takeover. considering India's role in the mess, Nehru would have been booted out faster than you could say 'Jawaharlal' if he hadn't been such a hero in 1947.)


In other news, I read a book that discussed historical views of China--overpopulation was mentioned in the 1600s, and censorship along with subversion has been there for at least 300 years as well. Does anything actually ever change?