By many metrics and anecdotal evidence it already is.
They literally own the means of production.
It’s hard to argue given their trajectory
The reality is that if China stops supplying the world with stuff, we’re fucked
The entire world relies on China’s cheap and available “stuff”, and it encompasses everything
They have economic power, they have soft political power and have been pumping money into Africa and the pacific
They have harder political power in Asia
The have enormous military power
They have abundant resources
They already have the world by the balls, but it’s unpleasant for most people to acknowledge it
Honestly modern China in my lifetime has been a more benevolent world player than the US by orders of magnitude. Not perfect, obviously, but at least they haven’t been starting wars or electing fascists. I’m excited for this shift.
Mostly agree, but;
The reality is that if China stops supplying the world with stuff, we’re fucked
The entire world relies on China’s cheap and available “stuff”, and it encompasses everything
I think is more their engineering expertise than cheap manufacturing. Cheap manufacturing can be easily moved to other countries as is already happening in India and Vietnam among others. However China has big expertise in high tech/large scale manufacturing in many areas like electronics, batteries, EV’s,… that doesn’t move easily.
However for those engineering domains China also strongly relies on other countries. In our world you can’t do everything alone.
The have enormous military power
They haven’t fought a war in 4 decades though.
They’re not spilling treasure fighting another country’s wars.
They’re not ruining their economy by fighting what makes them great or their people healthy. They have their grift and corruption more under control. They’re not cutting back on investments for their future in favor of investments for their past. They have the attention span to commit to a plan for more than four years at a time.
