We pretty much see that the US-led Western economic system is crumbling under our own eyes. The industrial power-house of the West is completely out-done by the Chinese juggernaut. In every field of technological competition, the Chinese are out-competing the West with the exception of semiconductors. Not that the Chinese could not replicate or reverse engineer that last niche of technology, but it is restricted by the copyright monopoly held by the Western companies. For the Chinese to overtake that last piece of American advantage, it would have to invent a totally new technology, a totally parallel and a superior semiconductor industry. Based on past performance, that will only be a matter of time, in other words a few years.
Thus, the most frightening question is not whether the Western world can hold on to their own vs the Chinese, but what kind of role is going to be reserved for the West when it loses all its chips in the game.
Eastern Europe in the late 1960s and early 1970s offers a good vision of what can come to pass. After the devastating horrors of the two world wars and the separation from the other half of the continent, the Eastern European countries started to recover to “normal” by the late 1960s. Life in those years reached a peak of affluence. Incomes were steadily rising to the point where most families were enjoying substantial disposable income. A mini boom in apartment house construction, vacations abroad (even if mostly within the Eastern bloc), cars, household appliances were now common. It looked like another 10 years or so and they’d be catching up to Western Europe; it seemed all but guaranteed. And then something happened around 1972-73, and they never recovered again, ever since. Was it the first oil shock of 1973, was it the aftermath of the 1968 dissident movements, etc.? One example that seems to parallel the West of today was Romania’s choice of policy in those years.
At the time, Romania was enjoying an economic boom, consistently posting rates of growth of over 11 percent. But the ambitious young president, Nicolae Ceaușescu, had even more impressive plans. Shortly after Nixon’s trip to China and the opening of the new China policy by the Americans, Ceaușescu invited Nixon to Romania and at the same time followed his example and turned to China as a model for Romania itself. After a series of visits to China and North Korea, in April 1972 he issued the so-called “April Thesis,” through which Romania planned to introduce elements of the Chinese model in Romania, that is China’s work ethic, China’s cultural revolution, China’s manufacturing performance, and China’s opening to Western capital investment, and its perceived success. Romania became the first European country to experiment with the Chinese model.
Ceaușescu allowed Western investments to pour into Romania’s economy. From dozens and dozens of textile factories with Western money and Western technology working for Western markets to importing ambitions aviation technology, such as the mid-size British BAC commercial jet, to importing Canadian nuclear power plant technology at Cernavodă, etc., etc.
And just like what we are seeing today, the mini-cultural revolution followed closely behind. From a traditional joi de vivre, easy going, culture of restaurants and pubs with a vibrant nigh-life and partying, the new mini-culture revolution abruptly decreed a 9 PM curfew, a crackdown on work absenteeism, a crackdown on illicit income, a crackdown on assets that couldn’t be unaccounted for, in the name of an overall crackdown on the so-called everyday corruption. The result was that Romania turned into a grey, sullen, unhappy third-world labor pool for big Western capital. Even the public street lighting was reduced, first to fewer and lower lumens of fluorescence and then to total darkness. The whole country became a workshop serving Western capitalist financial interests.
It went like this for some 20 years, but by the time Romania repaid the loans to their Western Masters and would have reaped the benefits of their sacrifices and could have claimed a modern economy, like China does today, the West crushed it mercilessly and returned it to the feudal days.
So, how is that related to today’s world events? Is the China of today in the same situation as Romania around the 1980s? Will China become the enslaved coolie of Western capital again? Is Romania’s example a window into the future of China? And let’s not forget, was Ceaușescu’s fate in Piața Republicii what was and still is planned for the Chinese leaders in Tiananmen Square, as well?!
The answer is NO. What worked for Western Capital against a small, defenseless and opportunistic, hapless country, did not work against the formerly Number One World Civilization. Western capital broke its teeth trying to bite into that big piece of meat.
In an ironic twist, Romania’s example is an illustration of the future of the defeated Western world! It is an illustration of the fate awaiting the Western people. Hard to believe?!
What is the West’s magic weapon against the onslaught by the Chinese technological tide? A militarily Maginot line of defense? The Chinese will never invade the West militarily! A superior work ethic, now that night-life is under curfew on the pretext of fighting the Coronavirus throughout the Western world? Not really. Western man is an aging, soft, obese slob, hardly motivated to work his butt off day and night for the good of corporate profits. Western man is cynical at best and inept for the most part. He is uneducated and hooked up on watching TV, eating potato chips and drinking Coke, if not ingesting crack.
Where are the Western scientists and innovators? Graduates of what schools and universities?
For over one hundred years, the US soaked up the best and the brightest from Europe. All its major technological advancements were created by imported European-educated scientists at the turn of the twentieth century and then after each of the two devastating (to Europe) wars. A big, last hurrah occurred after the dismantling of the Warsaw Pact when scores of well-educated people from Eastern Europe crossed the Atlantic in fulfillment of their lost dreams of a better life. Today, most of the top graduates in America’s top STEM universities are Asians, if not simply Chinese. Any attempt to cut back their influence in the US will be a catalyst for going back to their native country, giving China an even greater edge over America’s moribund R&D efforts.
The future, indeed, does not look bright for the West. I predict that this time the tables will be turned, and the only future that I can see is one where the semi-employable, semi-literate people of the West will slowly but ineluctably slide into the fate that was reserved for the Chinese people. A cruel twist of history is happening under our eyes. We are witnessing not exactly the sacking of Byzantium by the Ottoman forces but the impoverishment of today’s Americans in their own formerly shiny country – just like what happened to the native Indians a few centuries before.
Will the US and Europe be able to avoid such a future? They can prolong the agony, sure. Or they can join the Chinese, becoming an appendage of it while losing all their millennial-long special culture of individual rights, sense of freedom and liberty.
Or they can save themselves by turning their countries into theme parks, making the most of their glorious past, their architecture, and culture. The West could become a series of open air museums, like many small towns such as Mougins in the French Riviera, where the locals are waiting on tables for the tourists from Asia. That’s one of their best choices. But wait, those are in Europe, not in the US. As for the US, it’s different, with no theme park of the past and with Whites a minority by 2050 – if the US doesn’t make the mistake of turning itself into a radioactive wasteland first.
On the other hand, I can see a White Europe kept together by the might of Russia’s military and Russia’s practically unlimited reserves of natural resources. But the US will remain in the memory like a Western movie of some frontier past.
By the same author, see also:
Test… Test… Test… — No, It’s About Collecting Your DNA!
Vaccines for the Useless Eaters
Why the Crash of the US is Mathematically Inevitable
Just When is the US Going to Collapse?
The Specter of a Chinese Future
Trump and the Failed (Bio)War against China
Is there a Strategy in the US’ BLM craze?
