Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 475 - Dragon vs. Eagle: Will China Dethrone the US?

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

From AI breakthroughs and supply chains to TikTok and military might, China’s rise has reshaped global power over the past few decades. Can the U.S. hold onto its superpower status, or is the “American Century” nearing its end? What will the world look like, if reshaped in China's image? All this and more on a VERY informative (and ultimately hopeful) edition of Timesuck. Merch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com Timesuck Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious PrivateFacebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch-related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard? Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast.Sign up through Patreon, and for $5 a month, you get access to the entire Secret Suck catalog (295 episodes) PLUS the entire catalog of Timesuck, AD FREE. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In April of this year, the British political magazine, The New Statesman, and esteemed publication, it's been around for well over a century and has published incredibly influential people like economist John Maynard Keynes and writer Virginia Woolf published an article with an ominous headline. The headline was simple, why China is winning. It's impossible to be certain. Journalists are lousy soothsayers, but if we take a cold, hard, logical look, then China will win, wrote Andrew Marr. in the conflict for supremacy that is now raging between the Communist Party leadership in Beijing and President Trump's Washington, we should bet on China.

The article cited a few key facts that on the surface look bad for the U.S., such as China's greater purchasing power parity compared to the U.S. meaning its money can buy more stuff, even though the U.S. has a bigger nominal GDP. And in population, China clearly wins, with about 1.4 billion people to the U.S.'s $340 million. And then there are all the things coming out of China that would give a westerner pause or maybe heart palpitations. China's rapid advancement with its AI technology, including companies like Deep Seek and Manus, its ability to control global supply lines as the world's manufacturer, and the cultural predominance of apps like TikTok, apps that may either be spying on us directly or subtly manipulating our views of the People's Republic. So, is this article correct?

Eh, maybe. It's right, and that China is and has been making huge strides and becoming a major geopolitical player for the past hundred or so years. China has become an indispensable part of modern geopolitics, with not only economic power and military might, but cultural clout and diplomatic leverage as well. Its advance has not been a series of stunning victories like the U.S.'s rise to super-powerdom was, winning World War II, for example, but a steady relentless advance in virtually all areas of statehood. On the other hand, out of the U.S. has been the world's sole superpower since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and that's a hard position for anyone else to overtake. Though it's progressed wildly in past decades in recent years, China's economic growth has slowed, and the U.S. economy has outpaced it in nominal dollar terms. The GDP gap, which was narrowing before 2021, has widened again and China's GDP fell from 77% of U.S. GDP in 2021 to 64% in 2020.

four. And some estimates, like Rans, a non-profit think tank, have suggested that if China's GDP does surpass the U.S., it might not happen until the 2040s, and even then, possibly only briefly, before the U.S. re-over takes them. But then again, China's economy grew 5.3% for the first half of this year, beating expectations. But then again, again, GDP is just one measure of influence. But then again, again, again, China has a lot of other kinds of issues. influence too. The U.S. is winning, currently, but not as comfortably as many of us might want it to, and maybe not for long. So how long can the United States remain the top dog? Obviously, time will tell. The new statesman could be wrong in their prediction. Winning does not happen in the

literary halls of high-level political analysis. It happens on supply chains, on fiber-optic cables, and missile ranges, and boardrooms, and on the phones in our pockets. The question isn't whether China is rising. It is. It's how far it will rise, how fast the U.S. can match its pace, and what happens if it takes a top spot? Will China win and what happens if it does? Right now, on a highly informative, enough about Russia, let's look to Asia, let's shake things up and really learn something current, important, and fascinating. Before I take us back to some more traditionally escapist, dark shit for the rest of October edition of TimeSuck. This is Michael McDonald, and you're listening to TimeSuck.

You're listening to Time, Suck. Well, happy Monday, and welcome and welcome back to the Cult of the Curious. I'm Dan Cummins. King Suck of Fuck Mountain. Crump master. I've been crumping my balls off this past week. Oh, I'm so sore from all the crump. Seven Mountain Mandate Submission Specialist.

and you are listening to TimeSuck. Hail Nimrod, Hail Lusafina, praise me to Good Boy Bojangles and Glory B to Triple M. Just one special announcement and then we are off. The seventh annual Bad Magic Given Tree is coming up

for seven years now. We've been hosting the Bad Magic Giving Tree and Hail Nimrod for that. If you are seeking some support this holiday season in the means of getting gifts, please listen closely as our process is changing.

We've evaluated the system of years past, heard a lot of feedback from parents about how incredibly stressful the previous system was when it came to trying to get gifts for the kids. So we have hopefully made things better this year. Everyone who would like their children to be considered needs to email only your first and last name to Giving Tree 2025. There's no spaces, no capital letters needed, just the word giving, followed by the word

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No new names will be accepted after October 20th. On October 27th, everyone will be notified. Those whose names were picked from the hat will be given next steps. As in years past, we will be applying the December monthly donation to this amazing giving tree. And we'll be giving this money right back to our community. As in years past, we are asking and encouraging community members to donate Amazon gift cards to the cause if they can. For ease, all the shopping happens this way.

For every extra dollar donated to the cause, we will match it up to $13,000. If you have, you know, one buck, 10 bucks, you'd be willing to donate. I assure you, it does add a loan. We can do so little, but together we are so powerful with this kind of stuff. Last year, fans sent in an additional $17,000. It was so fucking amazing. If you're able to help, please go to Amazon.com to purchase a digital gift card when prompted for a recipient email. Please enter that same email.

Giving Tree 2025 at Badmagic Productions.com. So again, just the bullet points. Gift card donations Monday, October 6th through Monday, November 3rd. Assistance, submit your name, only your first and last name via email between our October 6th and October 20th. Recipients will be notified of support on October 27th. Where giving treat 2025

at bad magic productions.com who 40 families can sign up for support this holiday season. I mean, obviously more can sign up but 40 will be chosen. And that's it. So thank you. And now for a topic that brings us to a big question.

Bigger than almost any of the questions we have covered here and with even more big brain heavy lifting. And many of our historical episodes, We've looked at a distinct event, you know, like the what, the why, the how of something that has happened, how there are various ways of interpreting this thing that has happened. We might look at some people, organizations that have interpreted those events according to their own biases to serve their own agendas, but we also don't make a claim to be unbiased when we do our reporting. After all, I am, we all are here at Bad Magic, merely fallible biased meat sacks. We have biases just as much as you and everybody else you know does.

and we try to mitigate that through thoughtful, intensive research asking more questions than we seek to answer and consulting experts. And on the last front, we have consulted a shit ton of experts over the years and a lot of non-experts for, you know, episodes like the conspiracy stuff. Maybe some of those people, some of those sources could be considered experts in being fucking crazy. For this episode, expertise is a lot harder to come by, at least the kind of specific expertise we rely on usually.

When we look at what might happen, China becomes a superpower, we're essentially trying to predict the future, which is the job of people at the highest levels of government, people who are paid handsomely for their intelligent thoughts, and maybe more importantly, not to share those thoughts with the public, aka us. Then there's a fact that while many researchers have looked at what might happen if China becomes a superpower, you know, just one new development on the horizon could upend the entire theory. For example, until relatively recently, it was thought that China would never wield the kind of soft power the U.S. did. Soft power is the ability to convince other countries to emulate

and respect you through your cultural output, you know, movies, TV shows, celebrities, lifestyles, etc. For a long time, nobody in the Western world respected China's cultural output to nearly the same degree that they respected the U.S.s and much of Western Europe's. But then in September of 2016, TikTok launched and went on to capture billions of people's attention during the pandemic. And it proceeded to build up China's cultural clout. We'll talk more about TikTok later, but what's important now is the knowledge

that one little app can translate into so much international power. Also, there's those damn Chinese Labibu dolls, the hottest toy craze in the world at the moment, including here in the U.S., a billion, billions and billions of dollars' business on track to surpass the sales of traditionally popular American toy brands like Barbie and Hot Wheels,

here in the U.S. according to recent reports. So get ready to hear that in your nightmares. Oh, boy. That's how China's going to get us through brainwashing our youth, through a TikTok-la-boo-boo hybrid takeover. Anyway, safe to say. we're dealing with a very complicated chessboard that statesmen politicians analysts spies academics

corporations and so on have tried to understand and predict for years so a disclaimer for today's episode it'll involve you know just more speculation than normal uh won't be just the facts that we're used to discussing here that i obviously react to with sometimes polarizing you know speculation opinions uh while this deviates from the time suck norm what i say deviates i meant to say deviates i definitely think it'll be worth talking about and we're talking about in a high level specific way, both avoiding fearmongering and with the knowledge of the world with China at the forefront, you know, could look very, very different. So how am I going to present this information? Well, for starters, we're going to ditch the time suck timeline. Instead, first, we're going to look at the term superpower. Who coined it? What it referred to originally, how it's evolved as the geopolitical landscape has become increasingly complicated and interdependent in, you know, recent years, recent decades. Then we'll look at why China might want to be a superpower. Well, this might sound silly to you.

Of course, everybody wants to be a superpower. No, they don't. There are many, many nations that don't even pretend to have that kind of ambition. They don't want global preeminence. You know, like Iceland. And I love Iceland. By the way, I think I could live in Iceland for a little while, actually. Lindsay and I have talked about that.

Rakevik is very fucking cool. But if Iceland announced plans to become the world's next great superpower, I think that would be met with a collective oh bless your heart that's adorable so precious so why would China want to be a superpower we'll answer that

then we'll look at what China has done to try and make that vision a reality and how it currently stacks up on the superpower criteria ranking scale finally we'll look at some possible future scenarios for how China might or might not achieve superpower status and what it might do with it

based on trends we have seen thus far this episode is going to get pretty fucking scary in moments in an existential way but i think you're going to like where it ends let's begin so back to our main focal point of the episode what will happen if china becomes a superpower uh well in short you and everybody you love will be given the choice to either be sent to an internment slash re-education slash torture and brainwashing camp or you can work in a factory for roughly a dollar a day making sneakers or computer chips or baseball hats with American flags on him or well pretty much anything and everything that gets

made since it seems like nearly everything is made in China and you will fucking love that work you will love the work you do because there is no higher honor than contributing to the glory of the People's Republic of China hail Xi Jinping right let it be known that he is the greatest leader of the world has ever known the most handsome the strongest most well-endowed most brilliant human in history Meghoichi Subba Okay Got a little worked up

I don't even know I was saying anything with the end For real now What will happen if China Becomes a superpower Well, I'm not sure That that will happen I hope that will not happen

China makes me very very nervous A very very rigidly authoritarian regime To understand what will happen If China becomes a superpower We should first understand What a superpower is And if China may already be one

To answer those questions Let me introduce you to William Thornton Rickert Fox Better known as William TR Fox And his second middle name really is Rickert Which cracks me up because that's a That's a fake name I thought I made up as a joke Just to give a more formal variation of somebody named Rick

Right? Like as in Rick is short for Rickert Similar to some made-up names of Dwaynathan or Duggart Anyway, Mr. Rickert But really Mr. Fox Born in 1912 and grew up in Chicago He attended Haverford College graduating Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelor's of Science in 1932. He would get his master's in Ph.D. at the University of Chicago studying international law.

He would tell no one that his bonus middle name was Rickert, that entire time because it's fucking weird. And people would have definitely teased him. And then it was on to an academic career of his own. Fox initially taught as an instructor at Temple University from 1936 to 1941. And then at Princeton University from 1941 to 1943. He joined Yale University in 1943, became an associate. to a professor there in 1946, so, you know, pretty smart guy, probably one of the world's most brilliant records ever. He was the associate director of the Yale Institute of International Studies

from 1943 to 1950, and the director there at the time Frederick S. Dunn held the idea that international relations was, quote, politics in the absence of central authority, and he would be a huge influence on Fox. And pretty bummed that the director's first name wasn't Frederick, Rickert. Frederickert and Rickert? Oh, phenomenal pairing. Anyway, these new international relations scholars wanted to know what happened when politics had no central authority? How were countries supposed to get along? Who maintained the balance of power and made sure that no blood and land, thirsty, authoritarian power achieved the ultimate fear of nearly all diehard conspiracists, total world domination? No thank you, New World Order. These became especially important

questions, both during and directly after World War II. In 1944, unsurprisingly, the world was in a very precarious place. The old order based on European empires that had acted as the balancekeepers through alliances, wars, and colonial control, but actually carved up the world according to what would benefit them, benefit them, imperially, and economically, was shattered by the Axis powers. By 1945, Britain and France were exhausted. Germany, Italy, and Japan were defeated.

Disarmed, suddenly there was a massive power vacuum in a world with no single global government or system of empires, no central authority, as the international scholars would put it, the big question was who would stop the next Hitler, the next aggressive imperial expansion, the next totalitarian regime from rolling over weaker states. And also, would any nation powerful enough to stop the next Hitler, then become the next Hitler themselves? and then who in the hell would stop them? Fox believed that if there was no world government, then anarchy was the natural state of international relations. And what he meant by that was that every country was on its own, watching its neighbors for threats and forming and challenging alliances for survival. In a world like that, you know, a balance of power becomes the only thing that can keep aggressors in check.

If one state gets too strong, others have to band together to stop them. But that balance can easily collapse leading to World War III. but also to avoid bloodshed, an economically powerful country could use its economic power against whomever they want to conquer, effectively ruling them, not with guns, but with money. And Fox wasn't the only one who saw that. In the immediate post-war era, the U.S. and allies tried to design international institutions like the UN, United Nations, you know, NATO, the Bretton Woods system, the Marshall Plan, just to manage this, you know, potential anarchy. But at the same time, the rise of the Soviet Union meant that all of that work would be fucking null and void, useless if everyone is going to end up a communist

due to the USSR's aggressive post-World War II tactics. Added to this was the advent of nuclear weapons, meaning another imbalance might not just lead to war, but theoretically to total global annihilation. Thank God for the mad doctrine. Mutually assured destruction. I think the main reason a nation like United States or the Soviet Union or China has not started launching nukes at a military

opponent since World War II is because they don't want other nukes shot back at them. Looking at all this, Fox coined the word superpower in his 1944 book, The Superpowers, the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union, their responsibility for peace. I did this to identify a new category of power able to occupy the highest status in a world in which, as the war then winding down demonstrated, states could challenge. and fight each other on a global scale. There would be four main categories to the state of super powerdom. The first was, quite obviously, military reach.

The ability to deploy forces far from home territory and influence conflicts anywhere in the world. This didn't refer just to numbers of troops, but to military technology, logistics, strategic reach. Second was economic strength. A robust, resilient economy capable of supporting global ambitions, along with the capacity to influence other nations through trade, investment, and financial leverage.

Third was political and diplomatic power. The power to shape international norms, alliances, and institutions, and the ability to sway other states' policies or decisions without direct coercion or a show of force. And the last and most interesting to me is what we now call soft power or cultural power, the ability of a country to influence others, not through force or coercion, but through attraction and persuasion by making it's culture, values, policies,

or institutions appealing enough that others want to follow, cooperate with, or emulated, right? And this has become so much more important in the digital age. Fox would refer to this more as a kind of cultural power with the term soft power being coined by Joseph Nye in the late 1980s.

And if you traveled much outside the U.S., you know that America has for a long time now, you know, for a long time prior to the Internet, it's had soft power in spades thanks mainly to Hollywood's films and TV, shows also American music bolstered in part by placement in Hollywood films and movies American fashion also bolstered you know historically by actors and actresses wearing American clothes and Hollywood films and TV shows and I would add a American food

franchises you know I've been to Africa Europe South America I've grabbed Starbucks or maybe some Kentucky fried chicken and McDonald's and all these places you cannot go anywhere without seeing some America and the same cannot be said for Russia or China or any other nation on the same scale. That is some serious soft power. Soft power works through culture, films, music, cuisine, fashion, also the political values expressed in that culture, democracy, human rights, hopefully, you know, foreign policy reputation, credible, fair, cooperative behavior.

One more example, a soft power is expressed through education. In my opinion, too many isolationist Americans these days are threatened, you know, by larger numbers of foreign students and institutions like Harvard, you know, as if these foreign students are going to take over and change America into something they don't recognize somehow, you know, make America like, you know, wherever they're coming from, like China. And that's one way to look at it, but I think it's definitely the wrong way to look at it. Another way to look at it is these students could come over here to America and think, holy shit, I love this or I love that about America. And then they could take some American values or ideas or products, et cetera,

back home into their country and Americanize their own lands a bit. And, and, you know, And that is yet another good reason to be hospitable and to treat foreigners well, to make America desirable and worthy of envy. An important distinction to note before moving forward is it just because a country qualified as a superpower didn't mean that they were equal with all other superpowers. It wasn't like Fox expected that all the countries that rose to the top would have the exact same number of soldiers, you know, exact same GDP, exact same number of allies, etc. Rather, it meant that one country couldn't make decisions without taking the other superpowers into account. So who were these early superpowers? Well, according to Fox, there were, at the particular post-war moment anyway, three states, as you know, referenced in the title of his book, that were superpowers. The United States, the Soviet Union, and the British Empire, which would hold on to many of its colonial possessions into the 1960s.

In Fox's imagination, there were now two ways things could go. It was pretty set in stone that the U.S. and Britain would cooperate. but the big question was what the fuck was Russia going to do, or the USSR? If everybody got along, obviously, you know, everything could go great. But since neither the U.S. nor Great Britain wanted to be communist, since neither nation was too hot at creating a system of secret police, gulags, and widespread fear and terror, what's this big deal? If you don't terrorize own people, who will?

It seemed likely that a confrontation was on the horizon. And to mitigate that, Fox argued that leaders needed to have regular channels of dialogue to signal intentions, reduce fear, and avoid. accidental escalation. Superpowers needed to put their weight behind institutions to serve as rules and forces like the United Nations. Even if imperfect, he argued these institutions could create predictable norms that constrained, you know, reckless behavior. Overall, he said this new political arena of superpowers and their allies meant that leaders should anticipate the consequences of actions beyond immediate gain. Essentially, you shouldn't just do shit because it seems like

it'll work out for you. Instead, you should invest in economic strain. and diplomacy that works out for you and your allies. And maybe also, you know, even places that you don't consider allies, you know, just prevent reckless and needless confrontations. But even if superpowers didn't collaborate outright, it was still possible that a rough equilibrium could emerge if each power recognized the dangers of overreach, excuse me, with fear of provoking the others acting as a stabilizing force. And Fox was right.

That's almost exactly what happened during the Cold War. People thought he was a smart cookie back in his day, too, and he was part of the the international staff at the 1945 United Nations Conference on International Organization, a San Francisco meeting that led to the creation of the United Nations Charter. Fox came away from his activities during this period of his life, convinced that the framing of international relations theory should be around the proposition that, quote, if man is to have the opportunity to exercise some measure of rational control over his destiny, the limits of the possible and the consequences of the desirable both have to be investigated.

according to his article titled International Relations Theory and Areas of Choice in Foreign Policy. And that's a fucking brilliant quote. The limits of the possible and the consequences of the desirable both have to be investigated. We all desire all sorts of shit. But is it actually always possible

to get what you desire? Probably not. And also, even if you can get what you desire, what are the consequences? And are they worth it? I mean, the U.S., for example, could take over Greenland, now you know if the powers that be desire it uh we could literally just fucking take it could denmark

stop us nope they are not nearly strong enough could the european nato uh powers you know collectively join together form a new alliance and stop us no formidable still not strong enough uh could these european nato powers really fuck shit up for us though and then uh could the uh could russia jump in and fuck shit up for europe in general and then could now much stronger russia uh much weaker europe become a much bigger problem, maybe fuck us up down the road, especially if they've aligned with China, and we start getting pounded from the Atlantic and the Pacific side simultaneously. Yes, that probably wouldn't happen, though,

but could a bunch of economic embargoes hit us if we took Greenland? Could a bunch of our trading partners now decide maybe we're not worth being a trading partner with? We're too unstable, too unpredictable, too reckless, too aggressive, and now they turn their backs on us. They form new relationships, and that fucks up our economy. Yes, yes, that could definitely happen. Taking Greenland could lead to, you know, World War III type consequences at some point down the road

or at least a tremendous amount of economic pain. Those consequences are not inevitable, but they're very possible. So when looking logically and long term, taking Greenland probably not worth it. The idea of these three superpowers, Britain, the U.S., the USSR, back in Foxes' day, ruling the world through checks and balances isn't so hard to imagine. Indeed, that's the way our government in the U.S. works, theoretically.

A triangle, after all, It is geometrically a perfectly stable system. And if you're like, well, the U.S. and Britain are so tightly allied that it's more like two superpowers instead of three. Yeah, kind of. But remember, this is also taking place in the middle of the conquest of the Middle East for oil in which every country wanted the biggest slice of the pie for themselves. So it really was more like a three-part government back in the post-World War two years

and things, you know, kind of went along that way for a while. But what happens when one of those superpowers goes away, right? Which is what happened. That happened with Great Britain. In July of 1956, Egyptian president Gamal O'Del Nasser recognized or, excuse me, nationalized the Suez Canal, a critical trade route for oil and commerce that had been under the British governance since 1875. Britain, France, and Israel responded militarily to regain control, but the action sparked international controversy. The controversy occurred because the U.S. and the USSR opposed the military intervention in different ways with the U.S. threatening economic sanctions and the USSR issuing Cold War threats. For the U.S., they wanted to protect global financial stability.

Britain's military action threatened the pound and the convertibility of sterling, which could destabilize Western economies. In addition, the U.S. needed to maintain credibility in the emerging post-colonial world, especially in the Middle East and Africa. Supporting an old colonial-style military intervention could alienate newly independent nations and push them towards the Soviet sphere. U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was particularly concerned that the invasion would push Arab states and ally with the Soviet Union.

There was also a little bit of ego playing. into the U.S.'s decision. The relatively younger country wanted to assert as political independence, and President Eisenhower wanted to show that the U.S. now led the Western Alliance, not Britain. It's a bit of a big dick competition, as superpower collisions tend to be.

To that end, it wouldn't look good if it looked like Washington automatically rubber-stamped European military ventures. Meanwhile, for the USSR, Khrushchev could portray the West as imperialist aggressors if Britain was too aggressive, thereby winning influence in the Arab world and by backing Egypt, the USSR

wanted to prevent Western forces from controlling the Suez, which was critical to highly, highly valuable Middle Eastern oil supplies. So much blood has been shed in the Middle East over controlling access to all the oil there for so long now.

In the end, Great Britain could not make good on its threats. World War II had drained its treasury, maintaining the convertibility of the pound sterling was a central goal of British economic policy convertibility mattered because Britain's financial system underpinned its ability to trade maintain overseas commitments and pay for imports

so it was pretty damn important for a nation still desperate to hold on to colonial possessions around the globe and all of this meant that Britain could not act unilaterally on a major international crisis without risking financial ruin and in the end they withdrew they had to withdraw allow Egypt to take back what they had controlled and with that it's big dick didn't look so big and so hard anymore

They clearly couldn't fuck you like it used to be able to. And its superpower status accordingly crumbled. Simplifying all this for the sake of not over-complicating the narrative, but, you know, that's the gist of it. And that meant that there were now two superpowers, the United States and the USSR. This also demonstrated a central tenet of being a superpower that economic power constrains military and diplomatic freedom, even if a country has armed forces without financial strength, it cannot sustain global ambitions. As a result of this shift, the world became very different. Unlike the more fluid tripolar system, bipolarity, simplified alliances, states generally align with one of the poles or tried to remain non-aligned.

Essentially, you either danced with the U.S. now or you danced with the USSR. I would have said devil there for USSR, but Stalin had died a few years previously, and Khrushchev's Soviet Union was, in fact, you know, quite a bit better than Stalin's. In 1956, same year as the Suez Crisis, Khrushchev actually denounced. He announced Stalin, who had died in 1953, the cult of personality he had fostered, and the crimes he had perpetrated, including the execution, torture, and imprisonment of loyal party members on false charges. He blamed Stalin for foreign policy errors, for the failings of Soviet agriculture that led to famines, for ordering mass terror and for mistakes, you know, that led to the appalling loss of life in the Second World War, and, you know, a lot of other shit. He shit on Stalin for literally four straight out. Well, he didn't, he spoke unkindly about Stalin for literally four. straight out. He didn't actually take his corpse out and shit on it.

During a speech addressing the 20th Congress for the Communist Party of the Soviet Union assembled in Moscow in the Great Hall of the Kremlin, February 25th and 1956, that was the first Congress since the death of Stalin and during a closed session in front of 1,500 Soviet delegates in an array of invited visitors,

Crucift went fucking off, stunned everybody present. He was not the best leader, but he was much less brutal than his predecessor to the Russian people. But enough about him. Back to the narrative of the day. The forming of post-World War II world order of the United States versus the Soviet Union. Those two nations being the centers of the two biggest spheres of influence in the world.

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Now let's return to discussing the formation of the post-World War II World Order of the United States and the Soviet Union, excuse me, being the centers of the two biggest spheres of influence in the globe. NATO and the Warsaw Pact formalized blocks, creating collective security arrangements centered on each superpower.

The UN, meanwhile, became a forum for ideological disagreement rather than genuine multilateral cooperation. Economic institutions Institutions like the IMF, IMF, excuse me, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were increasingly influenced by the U.S.-led order while the USSR promoted ComConn for the Eastern Bloc. ComeCon is, or was, I guess, exactly what it sounds like. It was a conference for communist cum. Yeah, the world Soviet leaders, you know, just various, you know, communist, you know, people of import.

They would gather in a large gymnasium in St. Petersburg. twice a year actually, to relentlessly come on one another in the spirit of international comradeship. No, of course not. I just wanted to say the phrase relentlessly come on one another because of the absurd imagery that I imagine that puts in your mind like it does in mine. No, Comcon, ridiculous phrasing. The Council for the Mutual Economic Assistance, the Akronism makes sense in Russian, was an economic organization from 1949 to 1991 under the leadership of the Soviet Union that comprised the countries of the Eastern Block along with a number of socialist states

you know scattered around the globe Comcons I cannot stop thinking about that fucking image I'm torture myself right now I'm just picturing Gorbachev and fucking Khrushchev and all these guys just one big fucking weird like orgy type situation but they're not happy about it

like just stoic cold communist faces and then just like that jerking sound from a couple weeks ago that ASMR video just all the lotion they're also wearing like their military type communist you know uniforms and just just a weird like the weirdest bucocky ever anyway comcon's major accomplishments uh include coordinating the infrastructure of eastern europe's railroad and electric power grids establishing a joint venture financing bank financing bank the international bank for economic cooperation and constructing the quote friendship oil pipeline to supply oil to other member countries uh in essence this bipolarity

between the West and Russia turned competition into a defining feature rather than any cooperation or interplay. You know, capitalism and democracy versus communism and centralized planning. And with that, proxy wars, cultural influence, economic aid became tools of rivalry. But as we know, the USSR would not last forever. After 1991, the Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union leaving the United States as the sole superpower. And now we have a Russia that has suffered over a million dead and wounded since it unjustly invaded. Ukraine in 2022, still fighting a one side of war, it still can't win. Fucking pony boy Putin.

Come on, CIA, do your thing. Assassinate that KGB dildo. That is a regime I would love to see toppled. And the Ukrainian people have suffered far too long, as have the Russian people. Anyway, with the USSR gone, the U.S. now had unmatched military, economic, technological, and cultural power. Its dick had never looked fucking greater, never bigger, the shaft, never so smooth, hard, and majestic. On the military side, the Gulf War showcase the U.S.

ability to project power globally, while on the economic side, the Silicon Valley tech boom that created companies like Apple and Microsoft, globalization, dominance and finance, and technological innovation reinforced its influence. And of course, U.S. culture, movies, music, fast food, the English language spread or continued to spread worldwide, right? The dollar economically is fucking used everywhere. This all, however, was not the straightforward path to super powerdom that it might seem like it was in the surface. In 1999, political scientists and author Samuel P. Huntington wrote, The United States, of course, is the sole state with preeminence in every domain of power,

economic, military, diplomatic, ideological, technological, and cultural, with the reach and capabilities to promote its interest in virtually every part of the world. There is now only one superpower, but that does not mean that the world is unipolar. He added, describing it instead as a strange hybrid, a uni, multipolar system with one superpower and several major powers. He further wrote that Washington is blind to the fact that it no longer enjoys the dominance it had at the end of the Cold War.

It must relearn the game of international politics as a major power, excuse me, not a superpower and make compromises. What Huntington was getting at there is that it's easy to be a superpower when you only have one opponent, when your whole deal is to vanquish them. And when you've accomplished that,

bore well when the Soviet Union has vanquished itself, well, now you're riding high. But what comes after that? As Huntington hinted at, while it is relatively easy for the government to use our tax dollars to keep military bases across the world up and running, that's not all that needs to be done. If your goal is to keep on being the sole global superpower, you can't just have the biggest dick in the room. You also need other people to want to stroke it. You need other people to want to suck it. You need to have a nice, pleasing to look at dick, a nice cup of fucking, you know, smooth, symmetrical balls beneath it.

or what's the fucking point? Kidding, not kidding, with my weird dick analogy. Being a sole superpower meant that the U.S. had to be on 24-7 to experience economic growth, diplomatic success, military achievement, etc., year after year, with no downtime. The U.S. needed to have the rest of the world, or at least most of it, not just be aware that its dick was the biggest, but also continually want to play with it.

And the first decade of the 21st century would see some challenges on that front. Both the Iraq War and the 2008 financial crisis exposed Americans, structural vulnerabilities, military, economic, and political, that made other nations question the invincibility of the U.S. on the first front, the U.S. invaded Iraq largely unilaterally with limited coalition support, siding weapons of mass destruction that were never found, which definitely caused the U.S. some good guy reputation points globally. Some people started to think, okay, sure, America's dick is big, but I'm not sure it's clean. Despite them telling us that it doesn't have herpes pretty sure that's obviously a cold storm looking at the war became a you know a costly

quagmire as insurgency secretarian violence or sectarian excuse me secretary a lot of secretaries were fighting do you remember that you remember that in the gulf over there in the middle east when all the secretaries just started fucking dishing it out to each other uh no anyway i'll restart that the war became uh a costly quagmire as insurgency sectarian violence and uh overstretched supply chains revealed limits in U.S. military capability and planning. Also, going back to the dirty dick comments, the conflict-strained alliances, France, Germany, other major world powers refused to support the invasion, showing that U.S. leadership in international coalitions was not automatic. As a result, global opinion now shifted against the U.S., especially in Europe and in the Middle

East, and the U.S.'s reputation of moral authority was damaged. Then in 2008, that year's financial crisis, which could be a time-suck subject all of its own, that was triggered by the housing market collapsed in excessive risk-taking in financial institutions, and that was a huge problem. The U.S. was not, you know, only the world's largest economy, but also the center of global finance, meaning that many countries held U.S. dollars as reserves, invested in U.S. financial markets or relied on trade with the U.S. or all three. So when the housing bubble burst, leading to mortgage-backed securities losing value in major American banks failing or teetering on collapse, the effects spread across the world. Credit markets froze. Stock markets plunged.

trade slowed. The crisis showed the world that domestic mismanagement in the U.S. could ripple through the entire global system, creating instability even in countries with strong economies or currencies. As a response, countries like China and the EU, so I guess that wouldn't be a country, the EU would be a coalition, started hedging against this risk, diversifying reserves, building regional financial mechanisms, pulling away from the U.S.'s poll. And that, you know, much of the rest of the world, feeling like they could not depend on the American market to be financially stable was not good for America continuing to be the sole superpower. However, calling this an erosion of the U.S.'s superpower status could also be an

oversimplification. Indeed, some experts argue that the experts argue that the same complex economic interdependencies revealed in strain during the 2008 financial crisis meant that the world was in fact multipolar, with many superpowers or superpower-like entities operating at once. Some international relations scholars started to argue that we had moved beyond the idea of superpowers in general, which some countries, like Russia, have seemed to accept and even embrace. Some see Russia's recent years as an attempt to regain superpower status that it held during the Cold War. Others are doubtful. Indeed, Russia does not match the U.S. in economic size, technological depth, or global influence, and corruption and stagnation or debiless.

entrenched into Russian society and politics, meaning a rise to superpower status is highly unlikely. I mean, again, they can't defeat a neighboring nation like Ukraine. They're also too scared of retaliation to drop nuclear bombs as they should be, and outside of nuclear weapons, their military is pretty weak. They're very good of propaganda, however, very, very good. But being adept at destabilizing other nations does not mean that they are stable themselves. Doesn't mean that they would be able to step in and actually control a nation they've weakened. Being a highly effective agent of chaos does not translate to being

an imperialist power, thank God. It just makes him super fucking annoying. Indeed, Russia has its own chaos strategy dubbed the Gerasimov doctrine after top Russian general, Valerie Gerasimov. Grosomov heads Russia's general staff broadly overseen war-making efforts, which their fake news

pushes undoubtedly are. If you can persuade a person, he said in a 2014 interview, you don't need to kill him. The chaos doctrine lets Russia punch above its weight class as a regional power, slowly weakening superpowers and leveling the plane field, even though it's not taking the kinds of advances it needs to on the economic and diplomatic sides to become a superpower in its own right. And again, CIA, please assassinate a whole bunch of these motherfuckers. In the end, this chaotic position seems to suit Russia just fine because Russia's ambition is more about being a great power with global relevance than matching the U.S. dollar for dollar, soldier for soldier or institution for institution. chaos accomplishes, you know, more of its goals on an international scale than, say, making a Russian app super popular and being able to wield soft power. Not all countries, of course, want to embrace the chaos.

Some want the traditional position that the U.S., the USSR, and Great Britain had, economic, military, technological, diplomatic, cultural domination, like China. And in this way, China is far scarier than Russia. China's drive to become a superpower is rooted in a combination of historical pride, experience, security concerns, economic strategy, and prestige ambitions, all of which we will cover here today. Unlike Russia, which leverages disruption, China wants broad, sustained influence across every major domain of power so that it can shape global norms, institutions, and infrastructure

in ways that protect its interests and growth for decades, if not centuries, if not millennia. Does that sound scary? it is to understand what would happen if China became a superpower we need to go back we need to know more about their motivation for becoming a superpower in the first place crucially this is not all about the future some distant what if the Chinese politicians have spun up like science fiction and sold to their people it's way more about the past a large part of Chinese desire to be a superpower is the result of the so-called century of humiliation that China suffered from 1850 to 1915 roughly. It still shapes how China views itself, how Chinese politicians think China is viewed on an international scale. China, in addition to already being wildly powerful and

influential in the geopolitical sphere, they have a massive fucking chip on their collective shoulder. They're like some dude at the gym, who is already easily one of the strongest, if not the very strongest dude at the gym, but still goes home and just yells at himself in the mirror. You're weak, you're nothing.

you don't work hard enough you gotta be better you gotta be stronger like they're that kind of fucking scary uh now let me explain this century of humiliation uh the century of humiliation roughly spanning again the mid 19th to mid 20th centuries remains a central lens through which modern china views its place in the world and thus directly informs why it wants to be a superpower during this period a series of devastating military defeats unequal treaties and foreign occupations eroded china sovereignty and expose its vulnerability to external power These experiences created a persistent narrative that the CCP could and has drawn on for decades. The narrative that a strong, independent, and globally respected China was the only way to avoid foreign domination and humiliation.

Understanding the century of humiliation is crucial for interpreting China's current drive towards superpower status. Every policy, every technological investment, every strategic posture can be read as part of a long-term effort to ensure that China will never again be thought of by the international community, as a weak backwater that could be pushed around by stronger players. There are three basic parts to this humiliation, a loss of territory, a loss of control over its internal and external environment, and that one time a bunch of British and American diplomats got drunk at a party, the imperial palace, broke into the emperor's room after he went to bed for the night, and then took turns holding him down while somebody yells shit on his face.

Truly, China's greatest historical humiliation. especially when you factor in how they then dragged him out of bed dragged him out of the palace tied him to a horse rode him out of the forbidden city paraded him around Beijing for much of the next day

while yelling stuff like all hail emperor shit face can you imagine why just thinking about stuff like that amused me so greatly no the third part of the humiliation was a loss of international standing and dignity completely unrelated

to get anyone's face shit on anyway all three parts will play a factor in this story. So let's begin with the opium wars. In the mid-19th century, Western imperial powers, Great Britain, France, and the U.S. mainly were aggressively expanding their influence around the world through economic and military strength. Economic and military strength were directly tied to each other since they embraced free trade, also had the military strength to impose free trade upon others. So not as free for whoever we were fucking imposing our will on. 19th century China was not in the same position. It was a large, mostly land-based

empire administered by a roughly 2,000-year-old bureaucracy and dominated by centuries-old and conservative Confucian ideas of political, social, and economic management. In the decades leading up to the first opium war, trade between China and the West took place within the confines of the Canton system based in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou. In the year 1757, the Qing emperor had ordered that Guangzhou would be the only Chinese port that would be open to trade with foreigners, and that trade could take place only through licensed Chinese merchants. This effectively restricted foreign trade and subjected it to regulations imposed by the Chinese government. For many years, Great Britain worked within this system to run a three-country

trade operation. It shipped Indian cotton and British silver to China and Chinese tea and other Chinese goods back to Britain. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the balance of trade was heavily in China's favor because British consumers had developed quite the liking for tea, porcelain, and silk. Chinese consumers, however, they didn't have to be. have a similar preference for any goods produced in Britain. They were like, fuck fish and chips and fuck bangers of mash, too. Oh, and also fuck those old Scottish shortbread cookies. They're coming to cute little metal tins.

And that's unfortunate because all those foods are delicious, especially those little cookies, my God. For real, though, they didn't really want any British goods, not on a large scale. And because of that trade imbalance, Britain increasingly had to use silver to pay for its expanding purchases of Chinese goods. In the late 1700s, Britain tried to alter this balance, save some of the They're fucking silver by replacing cotton with opium, also grown in India. Hey, you know what I bet you guys will love more than silver? Heroin.

Once you try it for some reason, you just can't stop. You just want so much more of it. And of course, opium's not heroin, but, you know, heroin, synthetically derived from opium. In economic terms, this was a success for Britain. By the 1820s, of course it was. By the 1820s, the balance of trade was now reversed in Britain's favor. Turns out, fucking opium has a little more draw than tea. And it was a Chinese who now had to pay with silver for opium,

which was used for medical and recreational purposes, but mostly recreational. I mean, again, it's basically heroin. Not a strong, not as addictive, but still pretty damn strong, pretty damn addictive. By the early 19th century, more and more Chinese were smoking British opium as a recreational drug. But for many, what started out is recreation, of course, became a fucking punishing, life-destroying addiction. Many people who stopped ingesting opium would suffer chills, nausea, cramps,

sometimes would even die from withdrawal, much like people. people do from opioids today. And much like today, once addicted, people would often do almost fucking anything to continue to get access to opium. Borrow, steal, suck dicks behind 7-Elevens, leverage their property, send their families into financial ruin, even presumably murder. And all of this very, very bad for the established Chinese social order. The Chinese government recognized that opium was becoming a pretty serious problem, and in the year 1800, it banned both the production and the import of opium. In 1813, it went to step up. further by outlawing the smoking of opium and imposing a punishment of beating offenders a hundred

times with the fucking stick. And I wonder how being beat by that stick felt on opium. Maybe not so bad. In response, the British East India Company hired private British and American traders to transport the drug to China, right? Just a little bit shady. Almost like they cared way more about profits than human life. Chinese smugglers brought opium from British and American ships anchored off of Guangzhou, its coast, distributed within China through a network of Chinese middlemen. By 18, There were more than a hundred Chinese smugglers' boats working the opium trade. Then in 1834, the British East India Company lost its monopoly over British opium to compete for customers, new opium dealers, lower their selling price, which made it easier for more people in China to buy more opium, which meant more and more people are getting addicted. And all in less than 30 years from 1810 to 1838, opium imports to China increased from 4,500 chests to 40,000 chests, nearly a 10-fold increase.

and each chest weighed roughly 140 pounds so 5.6 million pounds of opium flowed into China in 1838 and as the Chinese consumed more and more imported opium, the outflow of silver to pay for it increased from about 2 million ounces in the early 1820s to over 9 million ounces a decade later. In 1831,

the Chinese emperor Dao Guang already angry that opium traders were breaking local laws and increasing addiction and smuggling discovered that members of his army and government were also ingesting, quote, the tears of the poppy. By 1836, the Chinese government began to get more serious about enforcing the 1813 ban. It closed opium dens, even executed Chinese dealers.

But that still didn't help. Because once you get addicted to that shit, you just don't fucking care what the laws are. You'll do nearly anything to get more of it. So the problem now grows worse. And so the emperor calls for a debate amongst Chinese officials on how best to deal with this problem. There were basically two sides to how to solve it.

One side took a so-called pragmatic approach focusing on targeting opium users rather than opium producers, which doesn't sound very pragmatic. They argued that the production and sale of opium should be legalized and then taxed by the government. Okay. Their belief was that taxing the drug would make it so expensive people would have to smoke less of it, not smoke or not smoke at all. They also argued that the money collected from taxing the opium trade could help the Chinese government reduce revenue shortfalls and the outflow of silver and eventually be able to reform the military and other things. that would help it on the national stage. Okay, I see where they're coming from. I mean, they didn't have treatment back then

for this kind of stuff, but okay. Another side vehemently disagreed with this pragmatic approach, led by Len Zeshu, a very capable, very ambitious Chinese government official. This side argued that the opium trade was a moral issue and an evil that had to be eliminated by any means possible.

If they couldn't suppress the trade of opium and addiction to it, eventually the Chinese Empire would have no peasants to work to land, no townsfolk to pay taxes, no students to study, no soldiers to fight. They argued that instead of targeting opium users, they should stop and punish those who imported and sold the drug in China, the people who were essentially robbing the Chinese government of its own citizens.

That argument does feel more pragmatic to me than the previous argument. In the end, Len Zishu's side won the argument. In 1839, he arrived in Guangzhou to supervise the ban on the opium trade and to crack down on its use. He made rapid progress by arresting over 1,600 Chinese dealers. and seizing and destroying tens of thousands of opium pipes. He also demanded that foreign companies, British companies in particular,

turn over their supplies of opium in exchange for tea. When the British refused to do that, Len stopped all foreign trade and quarantined the area. Len's troops also seized and destroyed the opium that was being held on British ships. The British superintendent tried to claim these ships were in international waters, but Len was like, go fuck yourself,

claim they were anchored in and around Chinese islands, which they were. Len got the immediate victory here, but, as I'm sure you're already probably guessing, the British not very happy about this, like it all. Finally, Len pressured the Portuguese who had a colony in nearby Macau to expel the uncooperative British, forcing them to move to the island of Hong Kong, and now the British are very aggressively not happy.

In truth, Britain had been waiting for an excuse to stage a military intervention, and British merchants had argued for years that China was out of touch with, quote, civilized nations, which practiced free trade and maintained, quote, normal international relations through consular officials and treaties so now they were going to get what they wanted

in June of 1840 16 British warships and merchantmen many leased from the primary British opium producer of Hardin Matheson and Corporation arrived at Guangzhou over the next two years the British forces, I guess it would be

Jardine Matheson and Coe over the next two years the British forces bombarded forts fought battles sea cities attempted negotiations A preliminary settlement called for China to seat Hong Kong to the British Empire, paying indemnity, and grant Britain full diplomatic relations. It also led to the Qing government sending Len Zenshu into exile for his safety. Chinese troops using antiquated guns and cannons and with limited naval ships were largely ineffective against the British. Dozens of Chinese officers committed suicide when they could not repel the British Marines, steam ships, and merchantmen, adding to the humiliation.

The first opium war would end in 1842 when Chinese officials signed at gunpoint the Treaty of Nanjing. The treaty providing extraordinary benefits to the British including an excellent deep water port in Hong Kong a huge indemnity, aka compensation to be paid to the British government and merchants. That's unreal.

Five new Chinese treaty ports at Guangzhou, Shanghai, Xia Mun, Ningba, and Fijou, where British merchants and their families could reside. extra territoriality for British citizens residing in these treaty ports meaning that they were subject to British not Chinese laws and a most favored nation clause

that any rights gained by other foreign countries would automatically apply to Great Britain as well and China got fucking nothing other than being humiliated Chinese imports of opium would rise to a peak of 87,000 chests in 1879 because of all this over 12 million pounds of opium

after that imports of opium declined and ended then ended during the First World War war only because opium production within China now outgrew foreign production, so it is just a fucking major problem that seems here to stay now. However, trade did not expand as much as British merchants had hoped, and they continued to blame the Chinese government for their lackluster revenues. A bitter rivalry about how to deal with opium use continued to divide the Chinese government, meaning there was no central effort to assert themselves against the West. In 1844, another system of unequal treaties between China and Western powers would take hold through the most

favored nation clauses. These treaties allowed Westerners to build churches and spread Christianity in the treaty ports. And this will be viewed historically as another big loss for the Chinese, a cultural one. Then in 1856, a second Opium War broke out and continued until 1860 when the British and French captured Beijing and forced China to accept a new round of unequal treaties, indemnities, and the opening of 11 more ports, as well as seating the Kowloon Peninsula across the straight from Hong Kong to Britain. This in turn led to increased Christian. missionary work and more opium trade. From China's historical perspective, the opium wars with the beginning of the end of late

imperial China, a powerful dynastic system, an advanced civilization that lasted thousands of years. The continuation of the opium trade added to the cost to China in both silver and the serious social consequences of opium addiction. Furthermore, the many rebellions that broke out within China after the first opium war made it increasingly difficult for the Chinese government to pay its tax and huge indemnity obligation so china is in a real sorry state the worst state it had been in well over a thousand years its initial interactions with the west had led mainly to widespread misery misfortune

humiliation and the chinese will not forget this have not forgotten about this and now let's move ahead to the boxer rebellion the second in this buffet of humiliation right after today's second of two mid show sponsor breaks thank you for hearing out those sponsors hope you hurt some deals you liked. Hope you could use our codes and landing pages so the sponsors know that you heard about the deal here. And now let's discuss the boxer rebellion as China's century of humiliation continues. We've talked a lot about the Chinese government's perspective, but now let's switch to a populist lens. While the opium wars were ongoing, the people of China did not see their government trying to protect them. They saw them fucking bend to the knee and frankly

just bending over, you know, waiting to get fucked, conceding to foreign governments and Christianity. and this anger led to a violent uprising in the north of the country that targeted foreigners, Christian missionaries, and Chinese Christian converts. Although started by peasants, it soon gained support from elements within the imperial Chinese government and armed forces. The uprising was initiated by a Chinese secret society called the Yihatuan, aka the righteous and harmonious fists. They were mostly men from an ecologically fragile, impoverished region of Shandong province,

This area whose peasant farmers could only barely Where, you know, the peasant farmers there could only barely scrape out a living Had suffered from frequent natural disasters. From 1852 to 1855, when the Yellow River shifted its course From the south to the north of the Shandong Peninsula, massive floods struck the whole province And destroyed commerce on the Grand Canal, The lifeline of the marketing system.

Foreign competition and the closure of the Grand Canal Damaged the market for cotton, which was almost the only crop that provided farmers with cash income. banditry flourished everywhere and the local officials were helpless to suppress it they turned to literature for comfort outlaws of the marsh

a famous Chinese novel of the 16th century was widely read and retold by storytellers the story celebrated a band of martial arts fighters from southern shandong the strong men fought tigers engaged in drunken brawls and like Robin Hoods they defended local people from abuse by the wealthy

in response to the interest in fighting martial arts teachers founded schools that taught young men special fighting techniques and rival schools fought each other in competitions in the marketplaces. The boxers, as they became known, made their living by traveling around the countryside to perform before audiences. So a little cool piece of history there. Then things got, you know, more violent.

When a drought struck Sean Dong in 1900, desperate starving farmers looked for scapegoats. Interpreting the drought as heaven's wrath against the moral decadence caused by Christian converts in their minds, they attacked all signs of foreign influence. They attacked anyone who relied on the missionary. protection. The boxers embarked on an armed campaign to drive foreigners out of China in 1898 and 1890, masses of Chinese peasants armed with swords and spears attacking Christian Chinese villagers in the North China provinces of Shandong and Hubei. As the boxers rampaged across Shandong, conservative officials at the court convinced the Empress Dowager,

Sichi, grandmother of the ruling emperor, and the real power behind the throne, to view them as a useful tool for resisting foreign pressure. And so she told provincial officials not to suppress them. Let them keep doing their shit. Fucking boxed away, guys. And she would live to regret this. By June of 1900, the boxer, supported by Qing troops, had killed the chancellor of the Japanese mission and the German ambassador, burned the British embassy west of Beijing, and cut off telegraph contact with the city. The growing violence forced foreign diplomats, missionaries, soldiers and Chinese Christians to take refuge in the legation quarter or a diplomatic quarter of Beijing where they issued a call for international help. An eight-nation alliance then quickly dispatched a 20,000 strong

international force to help. It was commanded by Lieutenant General Sir Alfred Gaisley, a British officer of the Indian Army. In response, the Empress Dowager, Sichi, ordered her imperial forces to block Gaisley's advance on Beijing. However, the Chinese would suffer a series of defeats. Despite its military successes, the International Relief Force also suffered heavily, mainly from heat exhaustion, sunstroke, and disease. By the time it arrived in Beijing, the number of men available was down to around 10,000. Meanwhile, though, guards from Austria, Hungary, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Russia, and the U.S. were hard-pressed defending the diplomatic quarter in Beijing as the boxers laid their siege. Siege. In a 55-day siege, about 60 foreigners and hundreds of Chinese

Christians were killed by the boxers and things were looking bad. But then, after breaching the city's outer defenses, Gaisley's multinational force began their advance to the diplomatic quarter on August 14th, after liberating the targets of the boxers, the international relief force, mainly the British divisions that arrived first, cleared the outer walls of boxers. Then with assistance from the Russians and the French American artillery units, then blasted their way through a series of walls and gates into Beijing, and the imperial city was theirs. The international forces then divided Beijing into districts, with each nation administering one of these areas.

In some districts, those suspected of being boxers were subject to summary execution. At the same time, the foreign forces pillaged the city, partly in revenge for the deaths of Christians, partly because they just could. In the British district, for example,

Gaisley established auctions of Chinese loot, with the proceeds being distributed by a prize committee to the troops. The rebellion officially ended in September of 1901 with the signing of the boxer protocol, and this allowed foreign troops to be stationed in Beijing it also forced China to pay a huge indemnity,

more money to the nations involved in the conflict, another humiliation. And some estimates say that roughly 100,000 Chinese died due to this rebellion. All of this underscored, some say up to 200,000 actually, some sources. All of this underscored how utterly incapable China was of defending itself, either from internal rebellion

or from foreign armies. And in the CCP's later retelling of history, the boxer rebellion would be an important historical lesson, blind rage against outsiders was not enough to create real change. In fact, it made things worse. Only systematic modernization of the economy, military, and state could prevent China from being humiliated yet again. All of this led to more hatred of Western interference.

Of course it did. Meanwhile, back at the turn of the century, Chinese activists in exile, fearing that China would be carved up by European powers like other countries had before, agitated for rapid strengthening of China's military forces and economy to respond to the foreign. threat. And the court launched a reform program in 1905. But it was already too late to save

the Chinese dynasty, which collapsed in the wake of nationalist uprisings in 1911, ending two millennia of imperial rule. After the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911, it officially ended in 1912, China entered a period of fragmentation and turbulence that set the stage for both internal revolution and external invasion. Sun Yotsen's fledgling Republic of China was quickly undermined by weak central authority and the rise of regional warlords who carved the country up into fiefdoms. As a result, political power was brokered through shifting alliances of military strongmen rather than functioning institutions. Beijing remained the nominal capital, but the state itself was fractured, poor, and vulnerable. And then the 1919, May 4th

movement marked a turning point in intellectual and political life and began to usher in communism. Thanks, Bolsheviks, for inspiring them. Sparked by outrage, over the Treaty of Versailles, where German concessions and China were handed to Japan rather than returned, the protest galvanized students and intellectuals who began demanding both modernization and resistance to foreign domination. It was during this time that Marxist and socialist ideas began to circulate widely, planting the siege for the eventual creation of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921. In 1921, with help from Soviet advisors and inspiration from the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks again, the Chinese Communist

party, the CCP, was founded in Shanghai by a small group of intellectuals. The CCP initially aligned with Sun Yat Sen's Nationalist Party, aka the KMT in the United Front, since both sought to expel foreign powers and unify China. But after soon's death, the new KMT leader, Chiang Kai Shek, turned on the communist in 1927, unleashing massacres against them in Shanghai in other cities, driven out of the urban centers, the CCP regrouped in the countryside, reorienting itself towards peasant revolution under leaders like Mao Zedong.

But before China could consolidate, in Walk, Japan. Japan had already seized Taiwan in 1895, eyed further expansion on the mainland, in line with its imperial ambitions to become the superpower, so to speak, of Asia. In 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria after staging the Mukden incident. This false flag operation on September 18, 1931, Japanese officers in Manchuria secretly detonated a small bomb on a section of the South Manchuria Railway,

near Mukden, present-day Shonyang. The explosion was so minor, trains kept running within minutes, but Japanese military leaders immediately blamed Chinese saboteurs. And the subsequent takeover was swift. The weak Chinese government was powerless to resist, and within months, Japan had established

the puppet state of Manchuquo under the figurehead emperor Pui, the last emperor of China's Qing dynasty. This would culminate in a full-scale invasion of 1937. That summer, Japan launched a military. major offensive against Shanghai, eventually capturing the city and the Chinese capital, Nanjing, which was followed by the brutal Nanjing massacre, sometimes called Non-King massacre, between 100,000 and 200,000 Chinese were slaughtered, upwards of 20,000 Chinese women and girls were raped. Beyond Nanjing, Japanese occupation forces carried out scorched earth campaigns

across the countryside. Civilians suspected of aiding resistance fighters were tortured, executed, sometimes burned alive. Whole villages were wiped out in retaliation rates. fucking wiped off the face of the earth. Women, men, children, everybody. Force labor became routine, with men pressed into building military infrastructure or shipped to Japan's mines, work to death there,

worked to death in factories under brutal conditions. And we've already covered the work of Unit 731 a long time ago on TimeSuck, this Japanese biological and chemical warfare research program based in Manchuria. Their Japanese doctors conducted horrific experiments on Chinese civilians and prisoners of war. Vivisections, without anesthesia,

deliberate infections with plague, anthrax, frostbite experiments, weapons testing, sexual torture, all kinds of horrible shit. Tens of thousands killed in these ungodly experiments, outbreaks caused by biological weapons spread even further. Ultimately, historians estimate that 15 to 20 million Chinese died as a direct result of the occupation through massacres, starvation, forest labor, disease, and combat. Shit!

This occupation would last until 1945. Drawn out, brutally violent. a consistent reminder of China's military weakness and it would shape politics for generations. It has shaped things until the present day. For ordinary people, the occupation proved that neither the Qing dynasty's remnants nor the nationalist Kuomantang, aka KMT, could protect them, right? Chang Kai Shek's regime appeared more concerned with crushing domestic communists

than with defeating the Japanese, and many civilians saw this as a betrayal. By contrast, the Chinese Communist Party or the CCP, they seized the moment. Ma Zedong, his comrades, they portrayed themselves as the only group truly committed to grassroots resistance. Communist guerrillas embedded themselves in rural communities, organizing peasant militias, redistributing land, carrying out smaller but symbolically powerful acts of sabotage against the Japanese forces. After 1945, when Japan is defeated, Mao and the CCP cast themselves as the Avengers of National Humiliation, the righteous defenders of Chinese honor and sovereignty. The Japanese occupation became part of a broader story, right,

that China's century of humiliation was only possible because weak, corrupt elites had failed to resist foreign powers. Communism, they argued, was not just a domestic revolution, but it was the only path to restoring China's dignity, strength, and independence on the world stage. And that's unfortunate that they went that route, but that's how they got there. For more detailed information on what happened next,

you know, with the communist revolution, you can go back, listen to our episode, if you want, on Mao's Cultural Revolution. episode 238 for the purposes of this episode important to know that the cultural revolution

which lasted from 1966 was Mao Zedong's attempt to reassert control over the Communist Party and ensure that the revolution that the revolution

remain pure what it really did was destroy China from the inside Mao fearing that China was drifting towards bureaucratic stagnation and capitalist tendencies

mobilized students later known as the Red Guards to attack perceived enemies of socialism schools and universities were shut down intellectuals were humiliated beaten, exiled, murdered China's cultural heritage

was systematically destroyed in the name of revolutionary fervor all the old ways pushed aside in favor of modernization meanwhile factories and farms already stressed by the failures of the great leap forward Mao's campaign to transform China

from an agrarian economy into an industrialized one were thrown into further chaos things not looking good by the time Mao died in 1976, the nation was exhausted, economically stagnant, socially fractured, institutionally paralyzed. His successor, the little-known Hua Guafung, often referred to as the forgotten successor, faced a stark choice now, either double down on ideological communist purity at the expense of prosperity

or fundamentally reorient the country towards pragmatic growth. It was in a vacuum that Deng Xiaoping emerged at China's leader. he quickly outmaneuvered Hua, seized the nation's leadership, this vacuum that Mao left, and now chose the second option. He has been described as the man who made China great again.

Deng himself twice purged during the cultural revolution understood his damage firsthand. He drew a sharp lesson. Ideology alone could not feed or modernize a nation of nearly a billion people. You had to improve the lives of the people

if you expected your country to succeed. Sounds pretty obvious, but yeah. If open markets could help improve life for the Chinese people, then it made sense. to try that option, even within a social estate. His mindset was that, quote, it doesn't matter if a cat is black or white

as long as it catches mice. That's actually really fucking cool. That's a proverb that will become strongly associated with him. So he decides to start with farmers. Some farmers had already begun to contract with local authorities to gain rights to lease land from the collective, like the communist collective, and sell produce in private markets,

you know, once they had met their communist quotas. as this informal contracting system gained popularity, it was eventually sanctioned by officials. In 1982, Dung recognized the new institutional arrangement and labeled it the household production responsibility system. And this was a radical departure from collective farming. And the results were immediate. Within just a few years, food production soared,

rural incomes doubled, and famines receded into memory. By the mid-1980s, the old communes were effectively dismantled nationwide. At the same time, Dung moved to break China's self-imposed isolation. In 1980, he designated four special economic zones, aka SEZs for some experiments. Shenzhen, Jujai, Shantou, and Shammun, or Shaman. These zones offered tax incentives, looser regulations, and foreign investment opportunities. And within a decade, Shenzhen transformed from a, you know, so-so fishing village into a bustling metropolis, a physical symbol that China could master modern capitalism on its own terms, not as a colonial

subject of the West, but as a sovereign state. The SEZs were in essence a reversal of the treaty port of the 19th century. Instead of being carved open by outsiders, China was inviting foreign capital in, but under strict party conditions, doing it their way. In essence, the CCP was saying that this time things are going to be done on our terms. In 1984, the party extended the SEZ model to 14 coastal cities, creating a broad network of open coastal zones that invited foreign direct investment and export-oriented manufacturing. Cities like Shanghai, Tianjin, Dalion, they began to modernize rapidly. This is fucking fascinating to me. During this period, the government also allowed township and village enterprises, aka TVEs, to emerge, locally run,

but market-driven businesses that became a key engine of Chinese rural industrialization in the 1980s. Under the dual-track price system, planned in market prices Exits it side-by-side for TVEs, however, as individuals began to leap into the private sector, market pricing spread. Finally, in October of 1997, the CCP approved private enterprises at its 13th Party Congress and the following year, the Constitution of the People's Republic of China was amended to give private businesses legal status. So it's like this fucking hybrid now of communist and capitalists and capitalists. then in 1992 during his famous southern tour dung visited shen jiuhai in shanghai declaring that quote development is the hard truth in speeches across guandong dung bluntly argued that abandoning reform would doom china to backwardsness and backwardness meant vulnerability his message was as much about power its prosperity only by sustaining rapid growth could china protect itself from foreign encroachment and reclaim its rightful place in the world order this tour realized ignited market reforms, reassured foreign investors, and sideline conservative opponents.

And thus, in 1990s saw sweeping changes. In 1992, China created the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, laying the groundwork for a modern financial system. In 1997, China formally privatized or restructured thousands of state-owned enterprises, SOEs, keeping only the largest under central control, i.e., government control. This move was spearheaded by Premier Zhu Rongji, who became the chief architect of fiscal reform in the late 90s. And all of this would culminate with China's acceptance to the World Trade Organization,

the WTO in 2001 under President Jong-Zemin and Premier Jurongji. The path to joining the WTO had been laid out when President Bill Clinton signed the U.S.-China Relations Act of 2000 in October granting Beijing permanent normal trade relations with the U.S. And I know I praised Clinton in the past for fighting to keep alive, these student loan programs. I needed to be able to finish my college degree but fuck him for this fuck both major parties for this

fuck both Congress in the Senate this bill passed the House with 74% Republican support 34% Democrat support the bill garnered much more support in the Senate 90% of Republicans and 80% of Democrats supported this a 2016 paper by

economist David Otter David Dorn and Gordon Hansen estimated that the increase in Chinese imports due to this act eliminated over two million U.S. jobs, primarily in manufacturing between 1999 and 2011, two million blue-collar, good benefits, good pension having jobs. But you know what? It helped corporate profits. And that's what America cares about most, right? The executives. In 1991, China had only counted for one percent of total imports to the U.S. In 2011, the United States imports from China

represented approximately 18 percent of the total value of all U.S. imports, making China the largest single source of imports. U.S. politicians sold out the average American worker, but helped U.S. corporations helped their stock prices soar, which, of course, helped CEOs and upper-level executives when it came to their 401Ks and compensation packages. It was a fucking massive boost to the already growing wealth gap. Led to lower costs for basic goods, but who fucking cares about that if it's counteracted by much lower wages and benefits?

Sorry, hard not to get distracted by that bullshit. If the current wealth gap was not as dire as it is, I truly think that current politics and the cultural overall would be far less divisive and full of different and less extreme political movements, right? Desperate dire times lead to desperate dire choices. But anyways, that act, oh, it's fucking awesome for China. Hooray. Hard to understate how huge this was for China. It meant the Western world agreed to treat China as a legit global trading partner and in return China agreed to play by international trade rules. exports now fucking explode it out of China cheap electronics cheap clothes cheap toys flooded the shelves of you know walmart similar big box stores just all stores in this way china deliberately inserted itself into the global economy at the lowest rungs making use of its cheap labor assembly lines and export processing zones like shen jen and now you might be thinking wait how is being the world's factory for the cheapest shit you can buy in esteemed position

How does that solve the humiliations of the century of humiliation? At first, this could look like dependence, right? China was opening itself up to Western capital and technology, risking a repeat of semi-colonial economic subjugation, just like it had been forced to suffer during the Opium Wars and the Boxer Rebellion. But over time, this dependency flipped, just like Chinese leaders hoped it would. These dudes, they fucking play the long game, and they play it very well.

Within years, China was not only in support, supply chains, part of the link that made the global economy work, it was the linchpin of them. Because of all that it manufactured, if you pulled China out, the chain would completely collapse, which means that we had become dependent on them. If China cut off all the exports to us, if they did that right now, right? The U.S. economy would fucking collapse. All of our kids would, uh, you know, throw themselves off the fucking nearest bridge with no more sweet labo booboos to play with. But for real, that is power, right?

We're not holding them by the balls. They're holding us by the Labubus. The humiliation of once being carved up and dependent on foreign industry became inverted. Now a whole bunch of foreign companies and governments became dependent on China's manufacturing ecosystem. There are many examples of the ways this has played out. During trade disputes, for instance, Beijing is cut off exports to rare earth minerals, which are essential for tech and defense. The 2020 COVID supply chain crisis made clear.

that everything from PPE, personal protective equipment to pharmaceuticals, had bottlenecks in China. Even Apple, an icon of American innovation, relies so deeply on Chinese manufacturing expertise that decoupling would be so enormously painful it's likely never to happen. And so, by becoming the World Factory, China transformed its role from vulnerable to indispensable, from humiliated to revered, desperately needed. It learned the lesson from centuries of superpower back and forth. that superpowers are not just military giants, they are the axis on which everything else turns.

Speaking of military giants, China would use the same logic in the military arena as well. From the crushing defeats in the Opium Wars of the mid-19th century to the obliteration of the Bayong fleet in the first Sino-Japanese War, Chinese leaders saw firsthand the consequences of technological backwardsness and strategic weakness. So that would also be fixed.

While initially China focused more in economic growth, President Xi Jinping has made clear, that a world-class military is essential to his vision of China's national rejuvenation by 2049, a goal that has defined his agenda since he assumed control of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012. In 2015, he initiated the most sweeping overhaul of the People's Liberation Army since 1950s, introducing a streamlined joint command structure closely modeled after the U.S. military. Uh-oh. Indeed, China's military defense budget has shown sustained rapid growth, increasing nearly five-fold.

in nominal terms over the past two decades. While the official annual increase was 7.2% for both 24 and 2025, real-term growth accounting for inflation has also been substantial. According to geopolitical intelligence services, the post-2015 reforms reorganized the previous seven military regions into five theater commands and created a joint staff department to coordinate, integrated, multi-domain operations. They also introduced the People's Liberation Army Rocket force, now responsible for China's nuclear and conventional missiles. Cool, cool. And the strategic support force, the SSF tasked with space, cyber, and electronic warfare capabilities. In addition, Chinese emergence as a great maritime power, ideally by 2035, not far away, is essential to President

Xi's vision of a world-class military paving the way for national rejuvenation. Drawing lessons from centuries of sea mastery by the U.S., the United Kingdom, and their allies, an achievement that secured their global influence, leadership, and control to shipping lanes, Beijing now intend on realizing the same. And perhaps most concerning of all, under Beijing's strategy of military civil fusion, in which ostensibly civilian assets are repurposed by the central government for military ends, China's maritime ambitions further benefit from China having the world's largest fishing fleet, with an estimated half a million vessels, of which up to 3,000 operate as the, quote, distant water fleet, which have helped China evolve and

the world's largest producer by quite a bit of fish and seafood. Even cruise ships are again being considered as potential assault platforms. For instance, China's first domestically produced liner, Adora Magic City, launched in December of 2023, and it is capable of deploying more than 6,000 troops in a single boat. Assessing China's military capacity is challenging because virtually any asset in the communist country can be directed towards this end. In addition, Chinese firms produce diverse technologies that can be militarized, including including diesel engines, advanced electronic systems, submarines, unmanned systems, such as autonomous underwater vehicles and drones.

And then there's the nukes. By 2030, China is expected to have more than a thousand nuclear warheads, many of which are likely or will likely have, you know, the range to strike the continental U.S. And we'll get to a weapon for weapon comparison with U.S. later. Another side of the military conversation is territory itself. After all, what are you going to do with the great big military, if not eventually, try and take some shit. From the height of China's regional power during the Ming Dynasty to China's biggest downturn in the 1920s, China effectively lost control over one-third of its territory, a process

that later came to be referred as being carved up like a melon. So between the 14th and 20th centuries, this happens. Thus far, the PRC has been able to reassert control over Tibet, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong, but not over Taiwan. And according to documents from the U.S. government's testimony before the U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission hearing on China's narratives regarding national security policy, the view is nearly unanimous that the losses of the century of humiliation will not be fully rectified until Taiwan returns to the mainland. Big gulp for Taiwan. This is considered a non-negotiable policy, a sacred duty for all the Chinese people, according to this document. And indeed, this

position has been strengthened in recent years with the passage of the PRC's to 2005 anti-secession law, which made clear that China was prepared and willing to use force to compel reunification if it did not occur peacefully. There's a lot of speculation that China is going to fucking attack Taiwan in 2027, the 100-year anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army. Recent U.S. intelligence reports indicate that China is rapidly developing its military capabilities towards that end, including refitting commercial ferries for amphibious operations and building specialized landing barges.

reports also suggest Russia may be assisting China with developing airborne capabilities needed for this invasion other smaller pieces of territory in particular a number of disputed islands in the yellow East China and South China seas are often also encompassed in this narrative and now we can't forget to move on from military for a bit we'll go back and talk about the Chinese military a little bit later right now let's cover soft power and diplomacy

China's soft power strategy also reflects a conscious inversion of its previous humiliation. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Western observers portrayed China as backwards, stagnant, culturally inferior. Missionaries, colonial officials, historians, framed the nation as, you know, a place to be saved or subdued. The memory of this denigration remains a cornerstone of contemporary nationalist Chinese identity,

something to be corrected by numerous top-down initiatives. Cultural diplomacy through Confucius Institutes, media expansion with outlets like CGTN, the displays of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, China Global Television Network, International Infrastructure Projects under the Belt and Road Initiative have all helped transform China

from an objective mockery to a model of competence and opportunity. Indeed, China's Belt and Road initiative, this thing is fucking wild. Sometimes is referred to as a new Silk Road. It's one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects ever conceived by any nation at any point in history.

Reminds me of like Rome's expansion all over Europe. Launched in 2013 by President Xi Jinping, the vast collection of development and investment initiatives originally was devised to link East Asia and Europe through physical infrastructure. The plan was two-pronged, the overland Silk Road Economic Belt, and the Maritime Silk Road.

She's vision included creating a vast network of high-speed railways, energy pipelines, highways, streamlined border crossings, both westward through the mountainous former Soviet republics and south through Pakistan, India, and into the rest of Southeast Asia. Such a network would expand the international appeal of Chinese currency, the renminbi, commonly referred to as the yuan, aka the people's currency, another indication of soft power. In addition to physical infrastructure, China would fund hundreds of economic zones or

industrial areas designated to create jobs and encourage countries to embrace its tech offerings such as the 5G network powered by the telecommunications giant Huawei. The project has now expanded to Africa, Oceana, Latin America, significantly broadening China's economic and political

influence and ambitions. As of 2023, 147 countries, accounting for two-thirds of the world's population, and 40% of global GDP, signed on to projects or indicated a strong interest in doing so. Construction has began in numerous countries,

over 1.3 trillion U.S. dollars, you know, the equivalent of 1.3 trillion U.S. dollars has either already been spent or awarded in construction contracts. It's fucking crazy. If you look at a map of this thing, it's like, holy shit, they're going to connect the world. New deep water ports, you know, are going to be built under this plan, not just in Asia, but in Africa, the Mediterranean, South America. China will have the most modern land and sea transportation routes in the world by far, sprawling around the globe from its many, many ports and massive cities. nobody else is doing anything nearly this ambitious should we all be learning Mandarin this is unsettling to many countries most of all the US and the US government doesn't seem to currently have a plan to offer a competing global economic vision

and all of this increasing political economic military and cultural might sets the stage for China as a 21st century superpower aspirant capable of not just challenging the US in multiple dimensions but defeating the US and multiple dimensions. Some intelligence experts already believe that China

has not only a larger number of troops in the U.S., but that it has a more powerful military in most respects, more advanced weaponry. Their military seems to be evolving in a more rapid pace, as does their economy. And that will help ensure that they'll never again face these same humiliations, incursions, and unfairness heaped upon them by Western powers

in the 19th and 20th centuries. So the question now is, is China a superpower? maybe. On the global scale, not sure. Better question is, what happens next? Now that we've covered what a superpower is, why China wants to be one, let's actually figure out. Let's look into the details, decide if China is already a superpower based on its advances in the last 50 years or so, or, you know, moving towards being one. If you recall, our definition of a superpower fit the following criteria. Military reach. The ability to deploy forces far from home territory

and influence conflicts anywhere in the world. Economic strength. A robust, resilient economy capable of supporting global ambitions along with the capacity to influence other nations through trade, investment, and financial leverage. Political and diplomatic power. The power to shape international norms,

alliances, and institutions, and the ability to sway other states, policies, or decisions without direct coercion or a show of force. And finally, soft power or cultural power. The ability of a country to influence others by making its culture, values, or institutions appealing enough that others want to follow, cooperate with, or emulate it.

Of course, measuring and comparing power between nations and across time is an imprecise exercise at best. You know, you're always going to be running up against some piece of incongruous information or bias. That's why international relations experts have added other terms to this arena of definitions, a sort of sliding scale from insignificant, sad. That's not how I view you, Iceland. I love you. It's a superpower. Let's cover some of those related terms now. In international relations, a pole, right, P-O-L-E, a pole, or the bottom level on the path to superpowerdom just means a center of power around which other states orient.

It's relative, not absolute. In a multipolar world, you might have several poles, each strong enough to shape balances, but not necessarily capable of running the world order. Poles matter because they create the gravitational fields of diplomacy and trade that smaller states navigate. A regional hegemon, on the other hand, is a state that dominates its own geographic region politically, militarily, and economically. The U.S. in the Western Hemisphere, since the Monroe Doctrine is a classic example. Regional hegemons do not necessarily project power globally, but they can prevent rivals from rising in their neighborhood and they set the rules locally. Being a regional hegemon is often the stepping stone towards superpower status because it frees resources and establishes prestige. then of course being the superpower as being on the top shelf

with the ability not just to dominate your region but to shape global events across multiple domains right again military economic diplomatic technological cultural so where does china sit in all of this let's go back briefly to our history lesson after the communist victory in 1949 china was certainly a pole in the cold war system had a large population ideological influence and military weight especially after getting the bomb in 1964

but it was poor, inward-looking, isolated from the global economy. Mao's China mattered because it had sheer size and revolutionary zeal, but it didn't have the economy or the military might to be an international player. And everything going on with the cultural revolution meant it didn't have the resources to back itself up on the international scene. With Deng Xiaoping's reforms after 1978, China shifted gears. Economic liberalization created the world's factory, growth rate soared, and life got better for the average Chinese person.

By the 1990s, early 2000s, China had become the largest economy in East Asia, a WTO member in 2001, the dominant trading partner for neighbors from Aishon, the Association of Southeast Asia Nations to South Korea. Militarily, it modernized its Navy and missiles to deny U.S. dominance in the Western Pacific, which it surpassed in 2019, according to a study from the University of Sydney's United States Study Center. not satisfied to rest on those successes, China has kept pushing ahead in his quest to become the regional hegemon. Did it make it to that status? Once again, it depends on who you ask, but fuck yeah. Of course. Definitely yes. In April 2025 article from the Australian Strategic and Policy Institute was headlined, it's time to imagine how China would act as a regional hegemon, meaning it's not there yet but imminent. However, a lot of others say it already is there. A 2023 article in foreign policy made this case, quote, China, however, is only a regional power.

It wields global economic power and influence, but the geographic reach of its military is largely limited to the Asian and Indo-Pacific theaters. From its position in the Far Asian Rimland, China has more limited geographic reach into the Eurasian continent than the Cold War era Soviet Union and less access to the high seas than either the United States or the Soviet Union. the United States blessed geographic position gives its direct and unhindered access to the Atlantic Pacific and Arctic oceans although the Soviet Union's access to the high seas was more restricted than that of the United States it still had direct access from its homeland

to the Pacific and Arctic oceans as well as almost but not quite direct access to the Atlantic Ocean China only borders the Pacific Ocean and is largely hemmed in by major island chains it does not control the question now becomes will China be satisfied by this position?

Probably not. A 2020 study from the humanities and social sciences review, quote, hypothesizes that China's strategic behavior under President Xi Xi Jinping has metamorphosed into an admix of assertiveness and benevolence carefully crafted to pursue its core interests. In aspiring benevolent regional hegemon, it also is proposed that the aspirations are not regional in nature. In other words, it wants to be a regional hegem. hegemon, or if it already is, that is only a step towards superpower status. China ideally does not want to have the biggest dick in Asia.

It wants to have the biggest dick in the world. Let's look at how close China is to becoming a true superpower right now. We'll glance again in our criteria beginning with the military. Over the past two decades, China's People's Liberation Army has transformed itself from a large but antiquated force into a very capable, very modern military. When you look at total paramilitary forces, it appears that. China's paramilitary personnel in the range of 625,000 to 1.5 million, you know, it's a little harder to get exact information. What goes on there, they're not as transparent, compared to the

U.S. is approximately 876,000 forces. So in terms of total size, no nation in the world has a larger military than China. But largest does not always equal most powerful. Let's move on to budget. The U.S. military's annual budget vastly outpaces China's. Over 820 billion to around 245 billion as of this recording, but can the U.S. keep spending that amount going forward and for how long? The U.S. is currently over $37 trillion in debt. China's true debt amount, again, harder to lock down due to a lack of transparency, seems to be around $10 trillion according to sources. There are some concerns that if the U.S. continues to accrue more and more debt, which is the trajectory it is currently on, that will affect our ability

to spend on military. China currently has way more foreign reserves, slightly more purchasing power than the U.S., which comparatively could allow it to spend more on its military going forward. However, currently the U.S. outranks China in every category of airpower, including total aircraft, fighter aircraft, transports, trainers, special missions craft, aerial tankers, helicopters, helicopters, and attack copters. The U.S. actually has the largest air force of any nation in the world by a fucking long ways. With over 13,000 active aircraft in its fleet, China ranks third behind Russia with just over 3,300. So the U.S. has approximately four times the amount of military aircraft as China. China, however, has more tanks at 6,800 to the U.S. is 4,640, and more self-propelled

artillery, though the U.S. has more armored vehicles. China has far more mobile rocket projectors, about 2,700 to 600 for the U.S. In terms of naval power, the U.S. has more aircraft carriers in China, 11 to 3, and more helicopter carriers. More helicopter carriers. We're about even on submarines. U.S. has 81 destroyers to China's 50, although no frigates to China's 47. On the other hand, the U.S. has about 15,000 airports that can be used by the military, where China has only a little over 500. The U.S. also has approximately 666 ports and terminals ready for military use. China has roughly 66. It's only 10% of the amount. China and the U.S. are about even on roadways, although the U.S. vastly outpaces

China on oil by producing 13.5 million barrels a day compared to China's 4.6 million. with about 38 million in reserves compared to China's 26. The U.S. also produces more natural gas, with more in reserves, though China produces more coal. So what does all this mean? Well, China has a massive population advantage with more active personnel, but the U.S. can scale up more rapidly if need be due to reserves. The U.S. defense budget is greater. The U.S. being able to invest more per soldier in advanced systems, research, and development,

and overseas operations, but its external debt is a long-term vulnerability, all told. it means that the U.S. can currently project far more power globally while China is still at domestic and regional levels but has more growth potential at this moment than the U.S. On the ground forces side, China's stronger and massive ground-heavy operations

whereas the U.S. favors mobility, combined arms, precision. The U.S. dominates in aircraft numbers and variety, right? Fighters, transports, tankers, special mission craft, etc., again. China's Air Force improving but lags in basically every sector. China has more frigates.

Also more patrol vessels showing a focus on coastal defense and regional dominance rather than blue water projection, whereas the U.S. has more destroyers, which are critical for fleet defense and multi-role operations. On the infrastructure and logistics side, the U.S. can sustain long-range deployments more easily, China more self-reliant domestically, but logistically limited overseas. And that means that in a regional conflict near China, well, China could leverage large fucking numbers and, you know, use the local train to its advantage. But in a global conflict, the U.S. maintains strategic mobility and reach. So on the military side, China, not yet the superpower of the U.S. is. However, according to the AP News, China poised to quadruple its stockpile of nuclear warheads by 2035, bringing it close to the U.S. So while the U.S. is stronger, China is certainly a country we don't want to fuck with or be fucked by. They do, in fact, have a massive war dick.

Hopefully, we will not ever be fucked by. however tensions have been rising in recent years regarding territorial disputes in the south china sea and taiwan south china sea connects much of east asia to critical trade routes through the strait of malacca so the country that exercises the most power over this area can also control the safe passage of trade to india and africa china is increasing his military presence here by building artificial islands on coral atolls deploying fighter jets to surveil the skies and setting up over 20 million outposts to monitor shipping activities this will help China greatly should have tried to conquer Taiwan. Won't help it if it tries to conquer the U.S., which it won't. As for Taiwan, reunification with the mainland has long been an agenda item for the Chinese Communist Party, like we mentioned a while back. Currently, China officially does not even consider Taiwan to be a country.

Under its one China principle, Beijing views the self-governed island as a breakaway province that must be reunified with the mainland, you know, by force if necessary. On October 2022, President Xi Jinping delivered multiple emblazance speeches, warning for powers, notably the United States, against interference in a reunification regarding Taiwan. He said, quote, to achieve a great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, the military has ramped up preparations for a possible invasion which puts the U.S. in a very precarious diplomatic position, so much so that American businessmen have begged Congress to help relocate Taiwan's semiconductor industry the largest one in the world to new factories in Arizona

in Ohio. Taiwan currently produces about 90% of the world's most advanced semiconductors using everything from AI to high performance computing and smartphones to high-end graphics processing and gaming. Disruption to that tech in a military invasion could have catastrophic short-term consequences in the tech industry. Let's hope that hasn't happened. And also what I just learned there is that if China wants to invade Taiwan, there's little the U.S. can do to stop them. They don't have the military to come over here and fuck shit up, but they are strong enough regionally where they could, we would not want to engage in a war with them over Taiwan. Okay, now let's move on to the economy.

The economy is probably the arena in which China has the strongest, or is the strongest. Indeed, searching for China is China a superpower? You know, I found a lot of articles that referred to China as an economic superpower. Currently, the U.S. still has the largest economy by nominal GDP with over $30 trillion, while China's economy is second largest at around $19.2 trillion. However, when measured by purchasing power parity, China's economy is larger than the U.S. While the U.S. leads in nominal GDP and GDP per capita, China shows faster real GDP growth rates and has a larger share of global GDP growth.

What does that all mean? Let's do a little comparison and pretend we're 10-year-olds. Imagine that you and your friend both have piggy banks. Nominal GDP is like counting how many dollars are in each piggy bank using today's exchange rate. By that measure, America's piggy bank is bigger than China's piggy bank. bank. There's more coins in it. But purchasing power parity or PPP counts how much shit you can actually buy with those coins. And a dollar in China buys more toys, food or bus rides than a dollar in the U.S. does. When you measure it that way, China's piggy bank actually buys a lot more shit

than America, so in a way, they have a bigger bank, even if it doesn't look like it. Because if you drained each piggy bank and spent all the money on, say, Lubu dolls, China would have a bigger pile of Labibu mystery boxes at the end of the day than the U.S. would. And then there is GDP per capita, yet another measure. In GDP per capita, you divide the piggy bank by how many people are in your family. The U.S. has fewer people, so each person gets a bigger slice. In China, there's way more people. So even though the piggy bank is huge, each person's slice of the piggy bank is smaller.

continuing with the Labibou analogy while China's piggy bank buys more total libuboos in the U.S. Each kid gets more libuboos. La bu la booboo La boo la boo

la boo La boo And now let's talk about real GDP growth rate which is how fast the piggy bank is filling. China's is growing faster even if each slice

is still smaller than America's. So on the current trajectory eventually more Chinese kids will get more luboos than American kids. Finally, when looking at global GDP growth shares, China is growing faster than anyone else. Of all the new money added to piggy banks around the world each year, China's piggy bank is adding a bigger chunk than anyone else's is. In essence, the U.S. piggy bank is full of really valuable dollars. That means it has lots of money that travels well around the world. If you want to buy a fighter jet, a company, or a movie studio in another

country, U.S. dollars will take you a long way. Each American also has more spending money per person, economy is rich in innovation, high-tech research, and military power. America's piggy bank, quality, very high. So many Lububoos, so many blind boxes. Wait. Oh, no, that's a wrong La-boobo song. Sorry, this one's the better one. Ah, shout out to the YouTube.

channel Laura's horror sounds for making a cursed Laboooo song there for a second. Anyway, while China's piggy bank may not look as good abroad at home, it buys a mountain of shit. That means China can build more bridges, trains, and cities for less money, its piggy bank, also filling faster so it is catching up to the U.S. And because it adds a giant chunk to the world's piggy banks every year, other countries rely on its growth, making China and its currency central to global trade more and more each year. This means that whether or not China becomes an economic superpowers largely based on what the future will need. If the future is about who can build influence by providing infrastructure,

cheap goods and fast growth, China has the edge. If it's about who controls finance, technology, military might, America will still be the king, hopefully. The big problem, the mother of all problems when it comes to the U.S. versus China is that the technology, military, might, and stable economy on the part of the U.S. does not exist without China. For many categories of goods, China is not only America's top supplier, but also the world's dominant supplier,

meaning that the U.S. cannot simply get the same shit it needs from other countries. According to data gathered by Jason Miller, a professor at Michigan State University, who specializes in supply chain management, China produces more than 70% of the world's lithium ion batteries, air conditioners, and cookware, more than 80% of the world's smartphones, kitchen appliances, and toys,

and about 90% of the world's solar panels and processed rare earth minerals, the latter of which are crucial inputs to cars, phones, and Labibu dolls! Sorry, I mean, several key military technologies. So if we get into a huge pissing contest with China or Big Dick contest, they could stop selling us the shit we need

to make sure our war machine, our giant destruction cock, is more powerful, bigger, and harder than theirs. Pivoting to producing these goods at home would take years. If not decades, it would involve forming new companies, building new factories, creating supply chains from scratch,

training fleets of workers, you know, as has begun this year with the tariff wars. I mean, that is, you know, what that is supposed to bring America, and I do hope it does. China, meanwhile, are only heavily dependent on the U.S. for a small fraction of its imports. And most of those items, such as soybeans and sorghum, can be imported from elsewhere. If the U.S. cut off Chinese imports, like with tariffs, China can redirect some of its exports to countries to Europe and East Asia, whose citizens also need phones, toys, toasters, and other shit. could also give money to its own citizens to create more demand for its products at home and provide subsidies to its businesses to help them remain solvent. This asymmetry gives China what the

economist Adam Poison calls escalation dominance, the ability to inflict disproportionate harm on economic enemies. In this respect, China's advantage has been bolstered by years of meticulous preparation. Trump's 2018 trade war, in which, at its height, the U.S. imposed an average tariff of about 20% on Chinese goods, convinced, Since Beijing, that it had to be ready to engage in economic combat at a moment's notice. Since then, China has invested heavily in such industries as energy, agriculture, and semiconductor production to reduce its dependence on American imports, while pursuing a concerted strategy to consume more goods at home and find new non-U.S. export markets. And that's scary, right?

They're making new deals with a lot of new nations all the time. Going back to China's Belt and Road initiative, that project could be viewed as a massive, go fuck yourself, we don't need you America, right? The more that gets built out, the less reliant China will be on American consumerism. And if we get cut out of the loop, that leaves us at a huge economic disadvantage, which will eventually lead to a huge military disadvantage. Chinese president Xi Jinping has said that he is making all these moves, quote, to ensure the normal operation of the national economy under extreme circumstances.

In addition, China has also built an arsenal of offensive economic weapons already. like offensive sorry I pronounce that weird offensive economic weapons he has fucking dollars smeared and shit it's going to offend you no they built an arsenal

of offensive economic weapons already China responded to Trump's recent terrorists by placing a restriction on the exports of several rare earth minerals and threatening a total ban a move intended to produce shortages of both major consumer goods cars and phones and military equipment

submarines and fighter jets if fully enacted if the situation escalates further, China theoretically could block certain high-profile U.S. companies, such as Apple and Tesla, from doing any business in China at all. And holy shit, would that wreak havoc on the U.S. economy? Then there's a nuclear option. China, the second largest foreign holder of U.S. debt, could quickly sell off a sizable chunk of its $760 billion in U.S. treasuries, a move that would send interest rates in America's soaring, spook investors, perhaps trigger a national financial crisis. And all of that, of course, sounds very scary. because it is. But the U.S. does have a secret weapon, its diplomatic superstar status. If the U.S. were to join forces with its traditional allies in Europe, North America, and East Asia, to collectively cut off China while deepening trade relations with one another, that block could inflict much more damage to China, which would have fewer places to sell its goods. While minimizing its own pain, Chinese imports could be more easily and quickly replaced. But also, we do need to bring back more manufacturing to the U.S.

to not be as dependent on China or any other nation so we can survive an economic attack. And on that front, I definitely appreciate the efforts that the Trump administration is making. And to wrap up this section, economically, I do think China fulfills superpower criteria. Let's move on to our next superpower category, diplomatic power. China has the most expansive diplomatic network in the world, closely followed by the United States. the Lowy Institute's 2024 Global Diplomacy Index revealed China currently has a larger diplomatic footprint than the U.S. in Africa, 60 to 56 posts,

East Asia, 44 to 27 posts. The Pacific Islands countries 9 to 8, Central Asia 7 versus 6, after the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan. The United States still leads China diplomatically in Europe with 78 posts to China 73, North and Central America, 40 versus 24. and South Asia 12 to 10. Both countries have an equal number of posts

in the Middle East was 17 and in South America with 15. The 2024 Global Diplomacy Index report noted that, quote, China's rise to the top spot was rapid, having lagged behind the U.S. by 23 posts as recently as 2011. And now China, you know, is just going to keep taking things further. In the Central Conference on Work relating to foreign affairs held in December of 2023, Chinese President Xi Jinping outlined six foreign policy imperatives

that included upholding firm positions on international issues, channeling China's growing weight in international affairs into promoting development and prosperity, applying a quote, correct understanding of history and the big picture to navigate global trends, channeling tradition while also seeking innovation in diplomacy, vigorously defending national interest to confront bullying and leveraging institutional strength

under the guidance of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee. When it comes to Washington's efforts to promote its diplomatic presence abroad, a state department spokesperson told Newsweek in February of 2024 that, quote, the U.S. continuously examines ways to expand our diplomatic development and people-to-people efforts in countries where we do not have personnel physically present and regularly review staffing in the region. However, President Trump has radically altered that trajectory of U.S. diplomacy in a very short amount of time. The Trump administration has undertaken a massive restructuring of the State Department, which has included the dismissal of numerous foreign service officers and the complete dismantling of certain departments. A smaller number of U.S. embassies and consulates are planned with a goal of greatly narrowing the State Department's focus. The Trump administration has curtailed or eliminated programs altogether that advance human rights, democracy, and other efforts that build international goodwill, such as U.S. aid, the U.S. Agency for International Development.

92% of U.S. AIDS grants have been eliminated. The global workforce of the agency's roughly 10,000 employees has been drastically reduced, drastically being the understatement of the century, with reports from May of 2025 indicating that the force has been reduced from about 10,000 people to 15. Not kidding. 10,015 working under the State Department. How much hatred towards America this will build abroad remains to be seen and how, you know, China can leverage that remains to be seen. A study published in July in the medical journal,

the Lancet estimated that USAID programs have saved over 90 million lives over the past two decades. The researchers also estimated that if the current cuts continue through 2030, 14 million people who would have likely otherwise lived will die. Over the past few months, in many places, especially in Asia, where USAID has reduced or limited funding, China has been stepping in to offer its own foreign assistance, and that down the road could come back to bite America in the ass. So it sure seems like China has achieved superpower status in diplomacy. Now for soft power, the measure of cultural power. Chinese officials and academics expressed the importance of Chinese culture in the 1990s and early 2000, but soft power was explicitly referenced in national government policy for the first time

at the 17th National Congress of the CCP in 2007, under the leadership of Hu Jintao. Whose successor, Xi Jinping, said in 2014, we should increase China's soft power, give a good Chinese narrative, and better communicate China's message to the world, calling for a stronger national effort to link China's popularity and likability to its meteoric rise. Soft power, a little harder to distinguish from other kinds of power. Indeed, the Belt and Road Initiative, which increases Chinese esteem amongst other nations, is it kind of a bet on soft power. But China has other soft power outlets. Separately, Beijing has also implemented aid programs that do not conform to international development assistance standards. standards. China's aid typically focuses on partnerships in the developing world, comes without conditionality, includes not only grants and interest-free and concessional loans, but also other forms of official government funding. A number of training programs have supported public health, agriculture, and governance. For example, between 2010 and 2012, China provided technical

and on-the-job training for about 50,000 people from poorer countries, including the provision of around 300 training programs for around 7,000 agriculture. officials. Additionally, in those years, Beijing's health diplomacy drives supported the transfer of 3,600 Chinese medical personnel to 54 countries to treat roughly 7 million patients. That's a lot of people. But Chinese aid programs, though growing, are still a fraction of what large donors like the U.S., European Union institutions and Japan offer. However, again, the U.S. is significantly scaling back on these kind of programs currently. China's leaders have also turned to more traditional tools of soft power, promoting.

Chinese language, educational exchanges, media expansion, and pop culture icons. China opened the first Confucius Institute in 2004 in Seoul, South Korea. Now, two decades later, there are over 500 Confucius institutes all around the world. These centers, non-profit organizations affiliated with China's Ministry of Education, while they provide Mandarin language courses, Chinese cooking and calligraphy classes, celebrations of Chinese national holidays. the Institute's ecocultural associations like the UK's British councils

France's Alliance Francaise and Germany's Gota Institute and Spain's Cervantes Institute but they're a little different since they have to align with the repressive CCP for instance Chinese teachers at the CIs are pressured to avoid sensitive topics like the Tiananmen Square Massacre

and the Cultural Revolution yeah I fucking bet they are this has effects that ripple out into the universities that are nearby writing in the New Republic Isaac Stone Fish said he found on many American campuses, quote, a worrying prevalence of self-censorship regarding China. Some of America's most distinguished schools gave in to communist China, including Columbia University's Global Center in Beijing,

which canceled talks it feared would upset Chinese officials. At North Carolina State University, and North Carolina State University canceled a visit by the Dalai Lama, Tibet's revered religious leader. The university's pragmatic provost explained, his decision with the revealing statement that China is a major trading partner for North Carolina. So having history whitewashed on American soil by leaders, foreign, and domestic, that is troubling. The University of Chicago would end up shutting down its Confucius Institute after 100 professors signed a petition, citing the dubious practice of allowing an external institution to staff academic courses within the university.

Sounds fair. linked to the CIA is the China Scholarship Council provides student financial aid to not only Chinese students going abroad but also foreigners coming to China more than 440,000 international students from 205 countries studied in China in 2016 though the number seems to have dropped off a bit in recent years

they came primarily from South Korea the U.S., Thailand, Pakistan, and India based on stats from the China Scholarship Council which is affiliated with the Ministry of Education for those not studying or traveling, there's always the news. The government's primary news agency, Shinwa, has grown to more than 180 foreign bureaus.

China Daily and the Global Times publish English language editions available worldwide. But the most famous state-controlled media outlet by far is China's national broadcaster, China Central Television, CCTV, which launched its English-language satellite news channel, CCTV International, in May of 2004. In April of 2010, the channel was,

rebranded CCTV news expanded to include affiliate CCTV America, CCTV Africa. Its most recent relaunch occurred in December, on December 31st, 2016, when CCTV news was rebranded as China Global Television Network, CGTN, to consolidate its worldwide reach. So far, this network has not been that effective at spreading Chinese news and a large amount of propaganda in the West so far. Chinese efforts to influence global public discourse have been largely met with mixed reviews while there's no systematic research available

on Chinese media audiences and influence most of what is available suggests that there are only small numbers of Western consumers of Chinese media and those consumers who do exist largely unmoved by Chinese efforts to persuade them of this or that I will say when I watch some examples

I was like this feels like there's a fucking gun off camera to these anchors just the way that they're so rigid and the way they're speaking. This doesn't seem like they're saying what they think is true and it feels like they're sharing what they are told is true.

However, some limited evidence does suggest that CGTN, like other Chinese state media, is gaining traction in places like Africa and the Pacific. In some Pacific island countries such as Vanuatu, then CCTV was the second most watch station

with 12% of viewers ahead of the Australia network at 2%. But Vanuatu only has about 300,000 total people. So, not a major win. No offense, Vanuatu, but I don't think it really matters on the global stage, what fucking news you watch. But interesting that CCTV, you know, gained a decent share of viewership anywhere outside of China. And now let's talk about TikTok. TikTok has given China a lot of soft power. Owned by the Chinese tech giant bite dance,

although, as I record this, a recent executive order signed just a few days ago, has paved the way to shift ownership to the U.S. here in America. But the platform is used by somewhere between 1.5 to 1.9 billion users. Holy shit, that's a lot of fucking people. All of them taking in content from an app whose algorithm is not publicly known. So you do not know what's being hidden or suppressed. And I can share from experience.

It is fucking crazy how that stuff changes. For a while, a couple years ago, I was releasing stand-up clips. We started a TikTok channel, released because other comics were gaining traction. This is while I'm touring, of course. And kind of exploded from, you know, I don't know, 10,000 followers

to, I think, 350,000 somewhere around there, somewhere between 300 and 350,000. And it was like literally one day, just completely stopped gaining followers, putting the same content out, new videos instead of getting like a million plus views, or at least in the hundreds of thousands, getting like 5,000 views. Same kind of content. Even re-release some of the same stuff, nothing, because clearly behind closed doors, TikTok was like, I don't like this.

This feels too divisive. Let's promote dance videos. Let's promote Laboo. or whatever instead. But yeah, it's just fucking crazy, how they can just shift things around and you don't know why, you don't know why you're suddenly being shown new information,

why your information is no longer getting out there. Anyway, a pair of academic studies in recent years made the case that the platform was biased in favor of Chinese governmental views. Makes sense. Other studies conducted by the network contagion research institute, the NCRI at Rutgers University, quote,

present compelling and strong circumstantial evidence of TikTok's covert content manipulation. The most recent one, published in 2024, found that TikTok suppresses far more anti-China content compared to YouTube and other social media platforms. TikTok responded by saying the studies are deeply flawed, but then presented no evidence of why they thought they were deeply flawed. Another study and analysis of the ownership structure of TikTok parent company Biden, obtained by NBC News, argued that the company was deeply entangled with some of China's major government propaganda organs. And then there's just a plain old security concerns, though China's national intelligence. law, or through China's national intelligence law, Biden could gain or has already gained access to the personal data of its 170 million U.S. users. TikTok has attempted to rebut these accusations

by storing U.S. user data on American soil, supposedly through Project Texas, and limiting the reach of Chinese state-backed accounts. But again, that's just what they're telling us. We can't fucking prove that. So is China's superpower when it comes to soft power? Labuba would say yes. I don't agree, though. You still don't see nearly the same amount of Chinese cultural influence around the globe compared to American influence, and it's not like TikTok is just kicking out nothing but fucking Chinese videos. Now let's introduce one last category that actually was not its own thing

when Fox introduced the superpower criteria, and that is technology, once considered primarily a subset of a nation's military strength in today's world technology spans everything from military power to economic power

to cultural influence and diplomacy right to TikTok so where does the U.S. and China stand technologically when Deng Xiaoping's reforms allowed foreign investment joint ventures

and technology transfer China started absorbing foreign tech especially from Japan the U.S. and Europe copying it, adapting it and improving it. Patents be damned China historically has not given a single fuck when it comes to honoring other nations' patents and intellectual property.

And that in a tech race gives them a huge advantage. With the entrance into the WTO back in 2001, massive state investment in R&D began. And so-called national champions, meaning national corporate heavyweights like Huawei, ZTE, and Lenovo were groomed to compete globally. And this would lead to the ambitious technological policy known as, made-in-China 2025, aka M-I-C-2020, launched in 2015. The program aims to elevate China into the ranks of high-tech superpowers by targeting 10 strategic sectors, including robotics, aerospace, biotechnology, and next-generation IT. Unlike La Zaffaire capitalism in the U.S., China's state-led model channels billions of dollars

in subsidies, research, and partnerships to accelerate technological breakthroughs. The electric vehicle EV industry illustrates this approach vividly. Chinese firms like B.YD and NIO have not only caught up with Western competitors, but are outpacing them in innovation and cost efficiency. China is now the largest EV market globally, accounting for over 60% of global sales in 2024, according to the IEA. Similarly, in the solar industry, Chinese companies dominate every step of the supply chain from polysilicon production to module assembly. Overall, in 2023, it was reported that China led in 37 of 44 technologies tracked in a year-long project by the Think Tank, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. The report said the U.S. was the leader in the remaining seven technologies, such as vaccines, probably on our way out there, quantum computing and space-launch systems. The report said, quote, our research reveals that China has built the foundations to position itself as the world's leading science and technology superpower by establishing a sometime.

stunning lead in high-impact research across the majority of critical and emerging technology domains. In addition, China was at high risk of establishing a monopoly in eight technologies, including nanoscale materials and manufacturing, hydrogen and ammonia for power, and synthetic biology.

Futuristic shit! So, in essence, China's coordinated state-backed approach has allowed it to overtake the U.S. in breadth of emerging tech, while the U.S. remains dominant in select high-impact sectors. The most important current tech race between the U.S. and China is AI, broadly speaking, the U.S. currently leads the world in developing

the most advanced AI models. U.S. officials estimate that America has a lead of up to two years in producing cutting-edge AI chips. American AI firms, Open AI, Google, Anthropic, XAI, still generally seen as best in class when it comes to high-end innovation, although Chinese outfits such as Deepseek narrowing the gap. But the AI race is about more than crossing some imaginary technological finish line, and in this case, America's position seems less secure. While the U.S. leads in high-end innovation, China excels at broad adoption, at integrating AI into the everyday workings of the economy and the state. In this context, the autocratic Chinese system helps, right? Beijing can easily direct and access private sector innovation, while the U.S. government struggles to do the same,

you know, because of pesky laws around freedom to not have the government constantly fuck with your shit. That may be shifting a bit in the U.S. though. The U.S. government announced it was taking a roughly 10% stake in the chipmaker Intel this summer, which would make it an Intel's biggest shareholder and give the government a lot of sway regarding company direction. Also this past summer in July of 2025, the Wall Street Journal reported that Chinese artificial intelligence companies are closing the gap in the AI race. In Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, users raging from multinational banks to public universities are turning to large language models from Chinese companies, such as Deepseek and e-commerce giant Alibaba

as alternatives to American offerings like ChatGPT for example Saudi Aramco the world's largest oil company recently installed Deepseek in its main data center

but still Open AI's chat GPT remains the world's predominant AI consumer chatbot in March of 2025 it accounted for over 82% of all traffic to the top 40 generative AI websites

still American AI widely seen as the industry's gold standard things to advantages in computing semiconductors, cutting edge research, and access to financial capital. However, China could continue to erode this lead by offering performance that is just as good

at vastly lower prices, right? That's kind of been China's thing for a long time, commerce-wise, you know, giving you something just as good for a much lower price than an American competitor. That's going to be fucking tough to compete with going forward just like it's already been tough to compete with. So who is winning when it comes to tech?

Kind of hard to tell. In practical terms, China closing the gap And overall technological power May dominate certain industries But the U.S. remains unmatched In the most advanced high-impact areas. And this has spillover into soft power Like we discussed with TikTok,

Which in the tech sphere, the U.S. is certainly dominated. U.S. tech exports shape global culture, platforms and standards. Chinese tech exports build infrastructure influence But sometimes face pushback over surveillance, intellectual property or data security concerns like with TikTok. So, so much fucking information. I know this episode is so goddamn dense. But to summarize, when it comes to tech, the U.S. leads in depth. China leads in breadth.

And which nation wins kind of depends on the sector and the metric. What kind of dick do you prefer to play with? So we're going to call it a draw. Now let's review all these sectors again quickly to wrap this up and then look ahead. Militarily, the U.S. has the advantage. with China maintaining a regional hegemon status. Economically, China has the advantage in superpower status and diplomatically too. Culturally and with soft power, the U.S. continues to lead

and technologically, it's sort of a draw. Excuse me. So if China is not a superpower already, it sure as shit seems like it will become one and very soon. So now the question is, what the fuck happens next? All right, this section, my favorite, will be split up into five different scenarios. The first will be China as an uncontested superpower, a situation where China surpasses the U.S. economically, technologically, and militarily, becoming the dominant global power.

In the second, we'll see if China becomes the co-dominant superpower alongside the U.S., kind of like Cold War 2.0. In the third, we'll look at China as a regional hegemon that is unable to take the next step and project power globally. And the fourth, we'll look at China as a chaos agent like Russia, triggering instability through aggressive or opportunistic behavior. possibly exploiting crises to expand influence without fully achieving stable superpower status. And in the fifth, we'll see what happens if China's rise, stalls, or even falls. Let's proceed with scenario one.

China as an uncontested superpower. This is obviously the most dramatic scenario, wherein China surpasses the U.S. in economic, military, technological, geopolitical, geopolitical influence, establishes itself as the dominant world power. This would mean that China would play to its strengths in manufacturing tech,

and geopolitical influence. What would happen? For starters, China would most likely not be a benevolent pacifist power. In an address to the United Nations General Assembly in September of 2020, Chinese President Xi Jinping repeated Beijing's off-stated claim that it was committed to peaceful development. However, according to the 2009 book, when China rules the world by Martin Jacques,

China will also insist on its own world order, vastly different from Western democratic norms. In years past, under China's denastic and, empire, other governments were expected to pay tribute to the Chinese court as an acknowledgement of Chinese superiority, at least ceremonially. And the emperors then considered these people paying tribute vassals. Whether such a tribute system really existed as a hard and fast or consistently applied foreign policy is debated amongst historians, but it is clear that the Chinese have usually tried to foist their diplomatic norms and practices onto those who desire former relations

with China. Though it may not seem like historical China has much in common with a modern Chinese superpower, there are signs that the Chinese will restore aspects of the old imperial order as their power expands. On two occasions, at least, she, sorry, not at least, on two occasions, hard too. She has summoned high-level delegations from countries participating in his infrastructure building Belt and Road initiative to pump heavy Beijing forums, like some sort of medieval tribute ceremony. Conversely, when countries, defy Beijing's edicts, they are denied access to its bounty. In 2020, China blocked imports from Canada and Australia amid diplomatic tussles. And China targeted the South Korean businessman in China in

2017, after Seoul agreed to deploy a U.S. missile defense system that the Chinese saw as a security threat. If China was unmatched on the world stage as a superpower, would this kind of shit evolve outright into China acting as a sort of international mafioso, letting other nations share in the spoils if and only if these other countries paid tribute and cutting them off if not. Perhaps if not, probably. According to some, this is exactly what China is trying to do with its Belt and Road initiative. It's what is trying to set up. If China reaches the status of an uncontested superpower, the Belt and Road Initiative

could evolve from an investment diplomacy project into a tool for enforcing geopolitical compliance. For example, let's say China loans large sums to countries for infrastructure projects like ports, railways, or energy centers. Countries struggling to repay, then become financially beholden to China. And compliance, in order to keep getting support, might include political alignment, voting in accordance with China and the UN, or limiting security cooperation with U.S. aligned nations. Many BRI projects involve essential national assets, which means that China could threaten to withhold access or further operational support unless a country meets its demands. For example, control over some Chinese private port, but really a Chinese

government port because of how they control quote unquote private corporations, could allow China to restrict trade or energy flow temporarily to a nation or region, not playing ball, a frightening prospect. Legally speaking, Chinese agreements often include clauses that favor arbitration in Chinese courts are under Chinese law if problems with their projects arise. These contracts can be used as legal leverage to enforce compliance if political tensions arise. And this might have crazy impacts not just on countries, but on regular people's lives. For example, if local economies are tied to Chinese supply chains, prices could fluctuate based on Beijing's policy decisions, sometimes causing sudden inflation. Chinese funded infrastructure projects might

prioritize Chinese contractors, machinery and labor standards, limiting local employment opportunities. In addition, contracts and legal frameworks favoring Chinese arbitration could make it harder for citizens or businesses to contest government or corporate decisions, and foreign governments reliant on Chinese funding may crack down on dissent just to avoid jeopardizing loans or investment or even adopt Chinese tech that would do the censoring for them. And here's another scary idea. In the wake of the pandemic, Chinese officials and state media outlets have been relentlessly marketing their authoritarian governance system as superior while denigrating the Democratic U.S. by mocking its pandemic response. This suggests that ultimately China will support

like-minded, aka authoritarian regimes, meaning that the few countries without deeply entrenched ties to China could see themselves taken over by a different authoritarian regime. And indeed, China already supports authoritarian regimes, its befriended governments shunned by most other countries like North Korea, Iran, Be LaRousse, Venezuela, any and all of this would come with a good dose of China also pushing its values the same way it has tried to do with its Confucius institutes. We should popularize our cultural spirit

across countries as well as across time and space with contemporary values and the eternal charm of Chinese culture, Xi has said. For the average person, that means that schools might adopt programs promoting Chinese language, Chinese culture, a version of Chinese history. emphasizing alignment with Beijing's worldview and the worldviews of Beijing's totalitarian allies. That's not fun.

This all means that by 2050, the world might look like a China-aligned network of semi-sovereign states with economic life, infrastructure, and tech systems deeply integrated into China's orbit, local governments constrained by debt, contracts, and strategic dependencies, daily life, shaped by a combination of economic opportunity, information control, and cultural influence, and a smaller number of non-aligned countries or coalitions acting as alternate hubs like the U.S., EU, or India, but with limited global impact. And that sounds pretty fucking scary, right?

But take a deep breath. Probably not going to happen. Why not? Well, for one thing, China is in the midst of a massive demographic crisis. And this crisis could be the one thing, more than any other thing, that will prevent them from ever attaining true superpower status. When China introduced the infamous one-child policy in 1979, they fucked themselves. They strictly enforced this from 1980 all the way to 2016. The nation's fertility rate had already been declining in response to a must-less, stringent 1970s policy,

which called for later marriage, longer birth intervals, and fewer births. That temporary measure was intended to counterfears that swift and unchecked population growth could stifle economic momentum, strain scarce resources, lower the quality of life. life. The problem is that one child does not meet the replacement rate of 2.1 necessary to make sure a society has enough young people to keep society moving forward and to take care of its aging members. And it's been a while since China hit that 2.1 threshold, right, which means they have a young people shortage that might wreak fucking havoc on their future. Despite the one-child mandate, a lot of exceptions were made for many families and China didn't actually fall below the

replacement rate threshold until the early 1990s. Now it's far below it. In 2024, the country recorded its third consecutive year of overall population decline and experienced a small birth rate bump its first in eight years. In 2024, China's fertility rate was 1.01 births per women. And that was up. The government has taken measures to increase births in recent years. Officials replaced the one-child limit with the universal two-child policy in 2016.

Then in 2021, up the maximum number of kids per family to three. And the government has also increased funding for reproductive health care like IVF, in vitro fertilization, and epidurals. But too little too late in all likelihood. Rapid economic development, heightened education, and urbanization have contributed to a workforce that doesn't fucking care about having kids, especially when they face employment insecurity. Wang Feng, an expert on Chinese demographics and a professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine, says, quote, young people in China are trapped in a post-hyper-growth economy with much increased cost of living combined with slowing income growth. In addition, environmental influence like

diet and pollution has increased China's infertility levels. And if even if China could surmount this and make its economy more prosperous and help out with medical issues, it might not turn things around. After all, a culture that sees women as citizen-making machines does not exactly read as very attractive to most modern women. Blaming women for the fertility crisis, for example, has led to a practice of labeling non-married Chinese females who are under 27 years old or I'm sorry, who are 27 years old or older, some sources say 35 or older, Shung Nu, which translates into English as leftover women. How fucked is that? If you are not married by the age of 27, according to most sources, you're a leftover woman. I thought old maid was

harsh. Leftover woman's fucking brutal. This shitty slang term is backfired. Rather, than persuading women to have more children earlier, seems to make women more determined to resist efforts to control their bodies. Hey, Lucifina. In China, single women are not allowed to freeze their eggs yet, but on red note, a female-focused social media app with more than 300 million monthly users, plenty of young Chinese women are sharing suggestions on where to travel to have the procedure, meaning they're determined to have kids on their timetable. This is not only a problem with China. It's a problem elsewhere in Asia. In recent years, ultra-low fertility rates have plagued a number of other countries, such as Japan, South Korea, and Singapore.

They've all tried a variety of measures to encourage more births without much success. This means the workforce will become smaller and older, leading to fewer engineers, fewer innovators, fewer soldiers, but maybe a lot more robots. Skynet, here we come. Kidding, not kidding about the robots. AI and automation, i.e. robots may be able to partially fill gaps, but it's unlikely that it will replicate. you know, what a large young talent pool could provide. I guess time will tell.

And this applies in the reverse, too. Over the next decade, about 300 million people who are currently age 50 to 60 are set to leave the Chinese workforce. This is the country's largest age group nearly equivalent to the size of the entire U.S. population, and they'll be relying on pensions to support themselves. And China's pension fund could run out of money by 2035,

according to the state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, unless new action is taken to reverse the current trend of depletion. That reminds me of our own social security concerns. If the money runs out, China's elderly will suffer. Trust in the government will erode. The next two generations will face new financial and emotional strains, trying to take care of their parents and grandparents. And with fewer kids, thanks to the one child policy and other factors we mentioned,

one adult might be caring for two parents and four fucking grandparents, the so-called 421 effect, meaning that they're now going to be especially unlikely to have kids themselves. Right? It's a vicious cycle. And luckily, not America's problem. That one-child policy, in addition to how repressive it was and how much infant death it led to, some sources estimate that approximately 20 million baby girls, quote, disappeared over the policy's three and a half decades due to sex, selective abortions, or infanticide. It was incredibly short-side.

Complicating things further, China does not have the nursing homes, health care system, or social services to support a massive population of elderly people, meaning health care costs may skyrocket and local governments already dead-ridden. A debt-ridden may buckle. And all of that could lead to a lot of instability. The CCP's social contract is prosperity in exchange for obedience. That's the implicit promise of communism, right? It takes, you know, you take care of it. It takes care of you. If the economy stagnates under demographic pressure, discontent will rise.

And the government could find itself on the outs with its own people, hello insurrection, or even a full-blown revolution. And you can't be the world's only superpower if that shit happens. So now let's look at the second scenario. the new Cold War. In this scenario, China and the U.S. enter a long-term rivalry marked by strategic competition rather than direct military conflict. The world splits into two loosely defined blocks, one orbiting the U.S. and as Democratic allies, the other around China and states more comfortable with authoritarian models or Chinese patronage. Unlike the original Cold War, globalization prevents a total severing of ties, trade and technology still flow

across borders, but always with suspicion and restrictions. Looking at you, TikTok. Economically, this world would be defined by a term known as decoupling. Supply chains would split into Western-aligned and China-aligned networks, forcing countries to pick sides when sourcing critical technology, semiconductors, and energy. This fragmentation would slow global growth, raise costs, make innovation more regionally siloed. Smaller countries would be pressured to choose between markets, often trading away political flexibility for access to infrastructure or investment.

Militarily, both sides would avoid war, but maintain friction, much like the OG Cold War. More of that mutually insured destruction. The South China Sea, Taiwan, and cyberspace will become the primary battlegrounds for influence. Proxy conflicts would flare in Africa, the Middle East, or Latin America as both powers funneled money and weapons to allies. The competition would drive military innovation, just like it did in the space race, except this time with hypersonic missiles, AI-driven surveillance, and space assets. at the same time, technological advancement may also raise the risk of accidental escalation into military conflict. Culturally and ideologically, the simmering ideological divide already in existence between the U.S. and China would deepen, with the U.S. framing itself as the champion

of democratic values, free speech, open markets. Although, like we saw with Joseph McCarthy, the U.S. would likely become more repressive itself as it sought to root out anything considered on American. Fuck me. Not sure I could handle a lot more of politicians labeling criticism of them as un-American. China, on the other hand, would portray itself as stable, capable of huge infrastructure project and bringing prosperity. But what about for the average person? How would their life be?

Well, for ordinary people, the new Cold War would mean more expensive goods, fractured digital ecosystems like two internets, one U.S.-led one, one China-led one, a sense of ambient geopolitical tension, the way kids in the 50s felt when they were doing nuclear drills under their desks. Things would definitely be more inconvenient. A Chinese app might not work in the West. A Western bank might not function in Asia. University's media, even sports, could become arenas of rivalry, echoing the Olympic

boycott to the 20th century. And, of course, your daily life, your culture, your community might become about how patriotic you appeared to be, which, of course, we've already been dealing with here in recent divisive years, but this would make it even worse. Also, interestingly, this is already kind of happening. we are essentially in the early stages of this Cold War dynamic. The U.S. has restricted semiconductor exports to China, pressured allies to keep Huawei out of 5G networks,

and created groupings like the Quad, the U.S., Japan, India, and Australia, to remain a strong presence in the Pacific. China, for its part, has deepened its belt and road footprint, expanded ties with Russia, invested heavily in domestic tech independence, moves that mirror the Cold War-style block formation. This will probably continue into the future

as China's looming demographic collapse and slowing growth makes it less likely to outrun the U.S. and become the sole superpower, but political dysfunction and polarized governance weaken the U.S.'s ability to lead unchallenged. Now let's move to the third scenario. China as a regional

hegemon that's unable to project its power globally, basically the same, if not a little stronger than it is now. In this framework, China consolidates dominance in East and Southeast Asia, but stalls out when it tries to extend influence globally. China's Navy, missile systems, anti-access area denial capabilities make the South and

East China seas essentially Chinese property. Contested areas like Taiwan might not be absorbed, but it would be encircled and economically dependent. Because of China's military and economic strength, Southeast Asia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, for example, will not be able to ignore Beijing's gravity. They will quietly align on trade, diplomacy, and tech standards out of fear, if nothing else. Even Japan and South Korea, while still U.S. aligned militarily might still feel compelled to hedge towards Beijing for economic reasons, granted concessions where they can afford to. Outside Asia, however, China will struggle. The U.S. Europe and India will push back. Africa and Latin America will

remain contested spaces for influence. The Middle East and Russia will likely try to play off whoever it can. This would leave China regionally strong but unable to truly displace the U.S. globally. This scenario, attractive to many analysts, because it looks like the default trajectory of China, China's economic slowdown continues. Beijing gets what it's always wanted, security and dominance at home, without controlling enough resources to displace the U.S. globally. According to the Carnegie Endowment, quote, the scenario involves a core geopolitical bargain in which the United States accepts China's continued growth and development,

but works to balance its regional hegemony and receives reassurance from Beijing that it can be content without global preeminence. Both sides, meanwhile, compete economically to. maximize their national wealth, but they do so in a way that does not intentionally damage the other. Protective scaffolding in the form of military crisis management procedures, arms control and cooperation on at least some key issues of global governance, help to stabilize the relationship. And this may even be more likely than the COVID war scenario because of factors we have talked about already, like China's looming demographic collapse, but not many people have written about it, so it's hard to tell. I like this third scenario. So far, I feel like I'm rooting for that one to be the one.

Now on to our fourth scenario, what happens if China becomes like Russia an agent of chaos? Well, this path would involve Beijing deliberately undermining the existing international order and weakening rivals rather than acting in its own long-term economic self-interest. China could become part of a quartet of chaos in this scenario that threatens the West, consisting of China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran, or Iran militarily instead of seeking global dominance, China would use its forces to create unpredictable flashpoints, harass points. in the South China Sea, limited interventions in Africa, cyber attacks on rivals, always enough to throw the board off balance but not enough to trigger total war. China could also weaponize as economic centrality by turning supply chains into whiplash machines, squeezing rare earth exports one month, flooding markets with cheap steel the next. And of course, China would do what Russia already does, conduct disinformation campaigns, amplify political extremes abroad,

instead of seeking to be seen as a mediator and cultural ambassador the way it is today, China might deliberately play countries off one another. It would refuse to mediate conflicts, fan rivalries, and veto resolutions at the U.N. So what would that mean for daily life? Economically, things would become a lot more volatile, marked by inflation and shortages. Politically, things would be more volatile as well. Fewer election results, we can count on. More people believing in whatever truth their side is peddling.

conspiracy theories flying off the shelves like hotcakes. This option, of course, does not sound good, fortunately, highly unlikely to happen. As we have seen, China has spent pretty much the last hundred years working in its self-interest. It's unlikely to throw that all the way just to hurt others. The whole message of the CCP is prosperity for Chinese citizens, and eventually creating a massive amount of instability would rebound on its own regime, the way it has in Russia. Currently, Ukrainian drone strikes have knocked out roughly 17% of Russia's refurb. refinery capacity, triggering severe petrol shortages in far-flung regions like Siberia in the Far East. Pump queues are long. Prices have spiked about 54%. Rationing is growing. In addition,

frequent mobile internet shutdowns have become commonplace in Russia, including entire regions going offline, and across the economy, inflation and consumer goods, food, fuel, housing, hovering about 12 to 14 percent. While GDP growth is skewed heavily towards defense, not normal life, meaning citizens, are suffering. Substance abuse amongst veterans climbing alarmingly with opioid and alcohol dependency skyrocketing. And nearly no one is willing to step in and fucking help Russia because the Russian government is full of fucking dickheads, chaotic, untrustworthy pieces of shit. Finally, China is already going to face some instability due to population decline, making it even less likely to court further chaos. It has learned its lesson from its opium days, we hope.

So what about our last scenario? A scenario in which China, China stalls even falls backwards power-wise. The biggest current factor that could make this a reality, again, China's aging population and the strain that will put on the economy, possibly as we saw as early as 2035. As a result in this scenario, growth flatlines returns negative under the weight of demographic collapse. Fewer young workers, more retirees, real estate bubbles are popping. There's an ongoing debt crisis. As a result, China's economy will fucking wobble, potentially leading to better trade deals for the U.S.,

though goods will not come through as fast or as reliably, meaning a lot of production will have to reshore to the U.S. or shift to India or countries like Vietnam. And this will create a feedback loop. Less investment will mean less innovation. A so-called brain drain will develop as top engineers and other thinkers immigrate to places where they can be compensated for their talent more. China's diplomatic efforts will falter as belt and road projects could stall,

potentially leading to the world thinking of China as a country that overplayed its hand. With that, Beijing would lose a lot of its international bargaining power. And while this might sound good from a Western perspective, less of a threat for the U.S. at least, you probably should not actively wish for this because life will get a lot worse for Chinese citizens. As we covered with the demographic collapse, ordinary citizens will be responsible for carrying up to four grandparents and two parents, leading to harsh economic strain, evaporating savings, ultimately tighter social control as the CCP feels itself backslide. And ironically, a weaker China could be more dangerous in the short run, a country that feels like it has nothing to lose. History shows declining power sometimes lash out to distract from domestic problems.

Or in this scenario, attempt a land grab to add more young people to its population. That can mean sharp flare-ups over Taiwan, border disputes with India, naval harassment, outright invasions. But just because there's currently a looming demographic collapse doesn't mean that scenario is set in stone. if China can figure out how to reverse fertility trends or reopen its borders to large-scale immigration, labor bottlenecks might ease. And again, advancements in AI and robotics could account for some of the labor shortage, along with political and fiscal reforms that reallocate investment from real estate to productive innovation ecosystems and social safety nets, China could avoid ever falling in that hole. So, which of the five scenarios do you think is most likely? in my opinion there are two most likely outcomes the first outcome is that china stalls and falls back the issue of demographics plus debt plus technological choke points make sustained high growth pretty implausible i know that seems crazy given how much time we have devoted to talking about how china's on the rise but check this out historical evidence shows that we generally overestimate the underdog upstart when it comes to countries and underestimate the stain power of the current superpower In Peter Heather's the fall of the Roman Empire, Heather shows the rise of repeated cycles of what he calls crisis rhetoric in the third and fourth centuries due to invasions, plagues, financial woes, but still institutions and the imperial system persisted far longer than critics predicted.

Same thing happened in Britain in the 20th century. Elites believe the empire was collapsing under German U.S. pressure, yet Britain remained a central global power throughout World War II and for, you know, several years afterwards. And in Robert Kagan's book, The World America Made, this theory is applied to the U.S. Kagan argues that declineism is cyclical in U.S. history, from the 1970s Vietnam Malays to the 1980s, Japan rising, to the post-2008 China rising, the current concerns voiced by a lot of critics that Trump and his policies are destroying America. However, while all empires fall eventually, American primacy has proven multiple times to be a lot more durable than critics suggest. The other option that seems

most likely is the outcome of regional hegemony, which by many counts China has right now, I think it does right now. The U.S. has some cloud in Asia due to its close alliances with countries like Vietnam and Japan, but if China continues to beef up its military, it's likely that the combination of that plus its economic

powerhouse status will enable it to get what it wants almost all of the time, but only regionally. In the middle, we have the bipolar world scenario, a.k.a. the Cold War. China's demographic crunch, dead overhang, and tech bottlenecks make sustained parity with you as pretty damn hard to attain. It would need decades of high growth, innovation-led productivity to get there. Something the evidence suggests is very unlikely without massive reforms.

But China could achieve parity with the U.S., especially regionally and in tech if the U.S. stumbles or China avoids a demographic collapse. There's enough size, talent, and accumulated capital that some form of bipolarity is plausible. But again, videos would have to stumble. China would have to make some big gains, policy, and tech-wise. Second to least likely is the chaos agent. I don't think that's going to happen. China is inherently self-limiting. To be a chaos agent effectively, China would need to accept economic pain and diplomatic blowback. And the CCP doesn't seem to want to destabilize its own citizens anymore than the future already will. At the bottom, thankfully, is global dominance. Being a

sole superpower, as the U.S. has proven, pretty fucking hard job. You need unbroken high growth for decades. Technological parity in critical sectors like AI, semiconductors, and defense, population stability or growth, and enough diplomatic skill to prevent coalitions against you. Even if China doesn't stagnate miraculously figures out its own population stuff, guess what? It'll need to outpace everyone, not just America. And that's a pretty fucking tough task. So what do the two most likely scenarios mean for the average person? Globally, it'll mean supply chains will diversify. The production of a lot cheaper consumer goods might shift to Vietnam, India, Bangladesh, and other countries, although if China maintains and grows its regional hegemon status, inside Asia, Chinese dominance will largely shape prices, media, and regional security dynamics. That means that prices for electronics, furniture, and some everyday items could rise slightly, but nations and companies outside China may benefit from more balanced global trade.

It means that geopolitical tensions remain moderate, luckily, and China's inability to project global power will reduce the chance of a worldwide confrontation, but regional flashpoints like Taiwan and the South China Sea will still exist. And that is not so bad, is it, well, at least not for Americans, or at least not for the Western world, at least not as bad as it could be. For all of America's problems, I would still rather have us be the superpower as opposed to a country where, according to multiple human rights organizations and the UN, more than a million. million people are believed to have been detained in China's so-called re-education camp since 2017, torture facilities, concentration camps, essentially. China is a country that only allows its citizens to access a heavily centered version of the Internet, a country that recently scored a fucking 9 out of 100 on the global freedom score compared to 84 out of 100 for the U.S.

The U.S. ranked as the 17th most free nation in the world in this index. China ranked 150th. I was not expecting to leave this episode with optimism. But here we are. And I'll take it. And you know who else will take it? Fucking Labu-boo-boo-Boo.

Time shock. Top five takeaways. Number one. being a superpower, it's complicated. As the saying from Spider-Man goes, with great power comes great responsibility, and to add to that, it's hard to get to the top, even harder to stay there.

Militarily, a superpower has to be able to project power globally. Its economy has to be sustained, robust, broad growth and influence, has to lead technologically, wield soft power, have powerful allies. Will China achieve that? Maybe, but probably not. And let's not fuck things up so we don't lose it.

Number two, China's century of humiliation, a period that spanned from around 1850 to around 1950 and included the Opium Wars, the Boxer Rebellion, both world wars resulted in foreign occupation, drug dependencies, unequal treaties, and shame. It made China vow never to be subjected again to foreign power, telling them what to do, and paved the way for the CCP to raise China's status globally over the last 75 years or so via economic modernization, diplomacy, initiatives like the Belt and Road projects, tech and science research, even culture outputs like TikTok and Lubbubo. Number three, a world where China dominates is a very scary world indeed. It's a world where China could use its economic and political influence to get what they want, potentially limiting the opportunities of other countries via trade and infrastructure projects to put Chinese citizens above the rest of the world and enforce the CCP's political agenda. Number four, number three probably won't happen.

China's aging population and shrinking workforce. will most likely prevent it from reaching Seoul's superpower status. Economic growth, military recruitment, innovation, social stability, all depend on human capital. And China will face severe headwinds with this in coming years.

Number five, new info. There's one aspect of Chinese diplomacy we have not yet discussed that's possibly more effective than all the other ones. Labubu. Labubu diplomacy. Kidding. I've spent too much time to say in the word, Labuble already.

A panda diplomacy. Since its founding in 1949, the People's Republic of China has used so-called panda diplomacy to boost its international image, either by gifting or lending pandas, literal panda bears, to foreign zoos as goodwill animal ambassadors. In 1957, Miles Adong gifted a panda named Ping Ping to the former Soviet Union to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution that ushered in the Soviet regime. To further cement ties with its socialist allies, China dispatched another panda to the Soviet Union in 1959, on on. Five more to North Korea between 1965 and 1980. In 1972, China gifted two pandas, Ling Ling and Sing, to the U.S. following President Nixon's visit. This gesture marked a thaw in Sino-U.S. relations is often cited as the beginning of modern panda diplomacy. Since 1984, however, China stopped gifting pandas due to their dwindling numbers and began loaning them to oversee zoos instead,

often in Paris for 10 years with an annual fee of up to about a million dollars. Finally, sometimes pandas are used to express China's displeasure with the nation. In 2010, China recalled two U.S.-born pandas, Tishan and Milan, after Beijing warned Washington against a scheduled meeting between then-President Barack Obama

and the Dalai Lama, which Beijing views as a dangerous separatist. That's hilarious. That's it, motherfucker. Give us back the pandas. You don't deserve them. In November of 2023, President Xi Jinping hinted that he was open to sending more pandas

to the U.S. though. After meeting with then President Joe Biden in California, a gesture seen as Chinese willingness to improve relations. Currently, no talk of more pandas being sent our way. I guess China's maddest again. For you panda lovers, China's domestic conservation programs have seen the status of

pandas improved from endangered to vulnerable. The population of giant pandas in the wild has grown from around 1,100 in the 1980s to roughly 1900 pussy bears. A little throwback to an old joke of mine as of 2023. Time suck. Top five takeaways.

Dragon versus Eagle, will China do thrown the U.S. has been sucked. That was the most information heavy episode. I've done in a while. My brain's a little tired. But I was really fascinated by the information. I thought it was a nice little departure from what we typically do. And then it'll feel good to jump back into some good old escapeism for a few weeks. uh thank you to the bad magic productions team for help making time suck thanks to queen of bad magic

linds thanks to logan keith helping to publish the episode designing merch uh at bad magic productions dot com big huge thanks to time suck research veteran sophie evans for her killer research on this one uh she has helped so much on so many episodes since like i don't know end of year one and done such a phenomenal job so many times but i think this was her best one yet as far as just taking a lot of complicated information and putting it in a structure that makes it able to be digested. Also, also thanks to all the all seen eyes moderating the cult of the curious private Facebook page, the Mod Squad, making sure Discord keeps running smooth and the fine folks on the time suck and bad magic subredits. And now let's head on over to this week's

time sucker updates. First up, traumatized Sack Nicole. Sending a quick little message to crack me up to Bojangles at timesuckpodcast.com with the subject line of masturbation soundbite. Dear Dan, last night as I was finishing my game before bed, I was finishing up South Africa's Ted Bundysuck. I must have fallen asleep

because I woke up to the nasty sound of someone masturbating. Thinking somehow I must have clicked on a random ad of my sleep, I start trying to close apps on my phone to get the sound to stop only to realize it was coming from the podcast. so nasty, I am now traumatized, Nicole. And Nicole did add a little laughing emoji to show that she's not actually traumatized. But Nicole, thank you for sharing that.

Fucking crack me up. Imagine you waking up to the sound of some dude aggressively jerking off with a stupid amount of lotion, not knowing why you were hearing that and trying to figure out like what fucking ad would have that sound in it. That is a surreal way to regain consciousness

and I appreciate you sharing it. And now Aussie sucker, Raymond Roll. oh man we love raymond uh sent in another short message with a subject line of my dad did not let us eat breakfast because of lindy chamberlain this is the uh baby uh you know ate my dingo suck here he's talking about uh hey dan rayman writes i'm not going to praise you your head will get too big to get out of the studio when i was a kid i remember the lindy chamberlain trial by media it was all the talk of the playground i remember an assortment of ten-year-olds confidently and heartily giving their opinion with a great deal of certainty i love thinking about little kids waning on fucking world shit like that. Clear these opinions were flavored by what they heard around the dinner table. As I remember, most of the children thought she was guilty and by proxy their parents did too. My family agreed with that sentiment

wholeheartedly. In fact, my dad was so convinced that she had killed that little baby that he banned us from buying anything from the Sanitarium Food Company. Sanitarium, where are the manufacturers of a variety of breakfast cereals and several milk-based breakfast things. His blacklisting had nothing to do with their products

or the quality of their unremarkable breakfast offerings. He disliked them, because they were owned by the Seventh-day Adventist, the same religious group that Lindy and her family belonged to. He felt that she was hiding behind the group to, quote, get away with murder, and that she was, quote, guilty as sin. Just look at her, he said. Cue the Alf Stewart impersonation.

He got so heated one morning when finding a small box of wheat bicks in the cupboard, his face looking like an overripeed tomato. Ultimately, we were able to eat those cardboard wheat bricks with milk as long as we didn't think about the good lord and the horror that awaited us. on another note i had a friend at school called wally he was a wally in every sense of the name i also have an uncle called wally uncle in this case means anyone who is allowed to take their belt off and hit you with it oddly he's russian australian and an avid conspiracy theorist but he also hosts an annual golf tournament that's legend in these parts oh i had no idea until this episode i live in the same approximate location as lindy chamberl the more you know three out of five stars wouldn't change a thing raymond raoul t-shirt wizard and you can find raymond stuff at uh Harley Warren.com. I've bought stuff there before.

He's awesome. Raymond, thank you for sharing an Australian perspective on that recent short suck and thanks again for designing the badass time suck collectible trading cards that I think we still have

in the store. I love them. Also good to know that Wally is in fact a very solid Australian name. I hope you're good. And now a bigger, more in-depth message

from concerned sucker Paul concerned regarding cults. I will leave Paul's last name out of this message since he discusses some people who might be pissed off if they ever hear what he has to say. and I don't want him getting blowback for the transparency he shares here.

He sent in a message with a subject line of, My Sister is an occult of one. Suckmaster. I just finished up your Crumping for Christ episode, and I keep thinking about my sister and how we were raised. I've written before, thank you so much for the donation to the Hamilton County Youth Center, and mentioned how I was raised in a fire and brimstone Southern Baptist household.

I did mention that I have five brothers and sisters who were affected in different ways from this upbringing. My older sister is Rebecca, and she fell hard for the good message. I think it was a combination of being a people-pleaser and being told over and over and again how a woman's job is to submit to her husband and to never ever have sex before marriage.

We were told that we could and would get AIDS from simply kissing someone. My sister never had boyfriends in high school or friends for that matter. She went to school, she came home. She often helped my mom clean the house, do the dishes, and do the other, quote, woman work in the house.

When she graduated high school, she went and lived with my aunt in Denver for a while I believe she was going to school to be a hairdresser or something but I can't quite remember while she found dating and was engaged five times in two years they never lasted for reasons she would not say I'm almost positive it was because

she wouldn't do anything before the wedding while one engagement stuck and she married who might be the only person I hate on this planet his name is Cameron and his tagline on MySpace was quote Jesus loves you but I think you're an asshole he is the most controlling person I've ever

ever heard of limiting how many M&Ms my sister was allowed to eat during a day like you could have five not a whole bag but specific amounts when my sister was six months pregnant he decided that she had gained too much weight he took her car away so she had to walk to the grocery store in the Denver winter and haul the groceries up four flights of stairs that fucking piece of shit he continues she had the baby three months early she spent the first six months of her life in the NICU since then they have fled from CPS and multiple states, Cameron claims to be a prophet and God talks directly to him and tells him that he will be king of the USA. Oh, that's nice. He says he will have every planned parenthood doctor put to death by his hand.

He says that he will sell myself and all of our other family members into slavery. Okay. I have screenshots to all this publicly posted to his now deleted Facebook. They do not attend any churches because if God speaks directly to Cameron, well, why do you need to leave the house? He also wrote a book, which is a wild read. They currently have a level. or 12 kids, seven or eight, do not have social security numbers because they were not born in a hospital. None of them have seen a single day in school from a conversation with a DHS, DHS worker three years ago. They're all, quote, as mean as snakes. I could go on and on about their lives or what I've been able to glean from being decent at Google and contacting local

police departments and other various resources. My therapist has heard a lot about her, and I'm sure she will continue to. I've kept the same phone number since before my sister left on the off chance that one day she'll call and ask for help. I've kept track of where they are. I've reached out to DHS and sheriffs for welfare checks. I have not entirely given up on her being lost to a cult of one, but some days are harder than others. I love your cult episodes because you don't pull punches.

People should stop doing that, and I applaud you for calling them out for what they are. They're dangerous. And honestly, I'm frightened at the future we are facing with maniacs like, maniacs like this in charge. Praise be to good boy, Bojangles, glory be to Triple M, and Hail Lucifer.

Paul yeah paul holy shit so sorry that you have had to uh you know go through so many for what you've had to go through watching your sister be abused in this way and your nephews and nieces feel terrible for your sister also thank you for being candid yeah religion can be a beautiful thing for many but also can be so fucking poisonous for me i've thought about this so much i think there's a clear indicator of when religion goes from being a force of good to a force of control, which is always bad to some degree. And it's when a believer, in particular a believer, who is also a leader in some capacity,

goes from, I think, or I believe this is what God's will is, to I know this is what God's will is. It's that ironclad level of certainty where shit goes off the rails. It's what turns the faithful into zealots. You know, believe all you want, think all you want, but when you start to think that you have it all figured out with certainty, that's when you can fuck right off because you don't know.

You're not sure. You're guessing to some degree. And when you start to refuse to admit that, you're disingenuous and you're dangerous. Because, you know, now you're emboldened to try and enforce what you actually don't know on the rest of us. Now you're ready to start controlling the lives of those around you, maybe limiting their fucking M&Ms because, you know, you know God's will. And therefore, you know better than anyone else what's right and what's good.

So fuck man's laws. fuck the wants and desires of anyone around you, they don't line up with what you know. I hope your brother-in-law gets hit by a fucking truck, a big one. I hope they don't even bother putting him in an ambulance. I hope there's not enough left of him to be put into an ambulance. And then I hope your sister reconnects with you, Paul,

and you help her, and you help those kids find a new and better way to live. Hail Nimrod, hail Lucifina. Hail you, Paul, for keeping that phone number. Don't ever, ever give up on hoping that one day, maybe she will call and you will be there to fucking save her next time suckers

I needed that we all did well thank you for listen to another bad magic productions podcast be sure in rate and review time suck if you haven't already check out nightmare fuel

please and thank you please don't uh I don't know uh help China take over more of the world yeah don't don't do that don't buy too many lububos. They're probably funding that Belt and Road initiative

with fucking Labibu money. The Belt and Road and Labibu initiative. I don't know. Just keep on sucking. And now let's end on something light and silly. Like a little dessert after a big heavy meal. So, let's hear a short Labibu unboxing reaction video. You're going to be listening to grown adults losing their fucking minds.

When they open up a blind box and either don't or do get the Labubu they were hoping for. I swear to gosh, if I don't get a pink Labubo this time, I'm crudging out. This is my final straw. Please, please be picked. What is this? Ray Labou? That's a good one. you've got to be kidding me

I know I should be grateful and really excited but just why? I just wanted the orange one Is it on the camera? Ready? Set? Go. Oh!

Jesus! I've never been even 10% that invested in opening any gift I've literally ever been given in my entire life. Not sure if I should be jealous of that amount of motion in investment around a toy or Grateful I don't share it. The first person It was three different groups. The first woman you heard scream

literally just like bawling her fucking eyes out over not getting the Laboobo she wanted. Let's hear it one more time. I swear to gosh, if I don't get a pink Labubo this time, I'm scratching out. This is my final straw. Please. Please be pink. What is that? Ray Laboobo?

That's a good one. This guy just so disappointed. You gotta be kidding me. I know I should be grateful and really excited. but just, why? I just wanted the orange rat. And these guys so happy. They got the one they wanted. My God. Go. I'm fucking Kimmy. I said.

I'm fucking Kimmy. Perfectly said, Miles. Perfectly said.