(02-23-2026, 01:08 AM)busker Wrote: The problem with the west is that Asia can do everything for cheaper, and usually better. The west still has an edge in innovation - anything truly new still begins in the west - but China is starting to close the gap, and leads the west in technology development. It won't be long before China leads in fundamental innovation as well.
And looking at the populations - the US, EU, and Canada + Australia are close to a billion, that's close enough to China's population. So in time, these two geographies should be close in terms of technological development.
But there's one big difference: the west in the last 150 odd years has had the luxury to champion the causes of individual freedom and equal rights. The result is a slower, more static society that can only lurch forward through populist movements with a disruptive leader at he helm, like in the US. However, here too, the limits are ultimately imposed by the public's willingness to pay and self-sacrifice, qualities that are hard to find in individualistic societies.
What does the future hold?
This is an interesting statement (and, at the end, question). If we take care to include countries other than mainland China in the category of "Asian" - Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Japan, Malaysia, and others - it has a degree of validity. I'm particularly impressed by the ongoing Chinese development of fission-free nuclear weapons... sort of a "road not taken" by the US, but a notable achievement. An example of technological development, but also initiative.
Populations are slippery. (Red) China's has recently suffered an apparent large drop, but aside from a birth dearth (real) a good part of this was due to corrupted statistics passed to the central government for various reasons. The medium-term decline is real, though: it happens to (nearly) all nations that move from scarcity to (relative) abundance. It can be blamed on individualism: both women and men, even after the one-child policy expires, don't want to be bothered with children when they have cars and refrigerators. It seems to be an iron law; only Africa is reproducing at a high rate now its endemic diseases have been mostly blocked. (Also famine, with imports.)
To use a term which is said to be current in China, "lying flat" more than flattens the population. With abundance, traditional Asian values collapse because they're founded/evolved/necessitated by scarcity. That includes corporatism and self-sacrifice.
I submit that the Asian nations (Red China being the largest example) are dealing no better with the problems of abundance than the West did, and they're having to do it faster. They've grabbed some Western developments - Marxism, electric vehicles - that look impressive but are soon limiting. And the specifically Chinese inclination to corruption - both official and the sort of
caveat emptor on steroids in all transactions - is very serious as well as hard to measure (the population figures!) because it hides so cleverly.
I think the future holds revolutions, wars, and the ever-popular rumors of wars. Oddly, the first revolutions may be in neither China nor the US, but in Europe as people and nations rebel against unaccountable authorities such as Brussels and the British uniparty. Again oddly, I don't think France will go first - they have an evolved system to squelch populism. Britain's is less developed and stupider (
Amelia!)
With Xi, China has a cult of personality with dangers that entails. In particular, it has no plan of succession other than the short-term ones that involve look-alike stand-ins while the knife work goes on behind the screen. Interesting times.
