RE: mick/nom/kenny15 Jul 2020 00:17
Trojan,
There was a time that the Chinese were the top dogs, but they missed the Industrial Revolution as they had no middle class to buy machine made goods (just peasants and rulers). Having become a Communist society they were able to force Industrialisation which lifted the standard of living of the peasants to a middle class level and now their economy is much closer to self-sustaining.
Today they are close to becoming the leading technological society, partly by acquiring technology and partly by having a command economy. This threatens the traditional Western World's pre-eminence and, by doing so, the privileged ways of some of us. The economic pie is not big enough for all to eat cake so conflict is coming; we can only hope it is trade and economic wars and not bullet and bomb wars.
But life as we know it is changing and Covid-2019 has speeded up the pace of change.