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Comment by tomohelix | Hacker News Reader

Tale as old as time.

China has historically always been a leader in Asia. At its peak, it controlled an empire as vast as the entirety of the EU. Its cultural influence in Asia rivals that of Rome in the West, except that Rome is no more, but China still is.

The US is younger than a single Chinese dynasty. And like all great historic empires, with Chinese ones being great examples, the US is fracturing from the inside. Corruption, apathy, a false sense of exceptionalism, etc.

China has went through this rise and fall dozens of time. This might be the first time for the US.

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The reports of the US's death are greatly exaggerated. It's still the world hegemony. China is a regional power. The US is a global one. The US's force projection, alliances, economic integration are and will be unmatched for decades at the very least.

Spain, France, Holland, Britain - they all rose and fell as major powers.

The US Steven Bradbury'd it's way into world hegemony less than a hundred years past following a European home goal that took out Britain and Germany.

China hasn't been just a regional power for a few decades now; eg: how many nuclear power stations (long term big infrastructure) are being built by China in other countries right now .. how many are the US building?

The US will be around for a century and more most likely, but it's alliances and economic integration are alteady on the wane.

Depends whether the US can bring back proper diplomacy or whether it'll continue to rely on force projection.

One difference is that the US is a mixture of all the worlds people's. Is there a historic world power as diverse?

There are many differences, is this a difference that will reverse a historic trend of world powers rising and faliing, of waxing and waning?

Will the diversity within the US enable it to pull together as a nation, overcome infighting, and out innovate China with it's plethora of phone and EV types, overnight pprototyping, on demand cheap bulk bespoke pharma production, etc?

> Is there a historic world power as diverse?

Rome?

Is there any legitimate evidence to this being a benefit?

To be fair, the germans were (let's lump both world wars here) attempting to replace the brits with themselves, not just play spoiler[0] and take them down.

(I've seen at least one economist claim that given the growth differentials, they would've been better off peacefully outcompeting them, but maybe the "Thucydides trap"[1] was already sprung? Even so, it's still an own goal)

[0] although this does make doing a Bradbury even more apt

[1] compare "always two there are. no more. no less."

China is helped by a straight forward "interests" based foreign policy

The USA has a "principles" based policy, that is hypocritical and is actually a private property based interests based policy.

It makes the Chinese straight forward to deal with, whereas the USA is not easy to deal with, you can never be sure where you will stand with them in a decade.

Then there is Trump....

Henry "America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests" Kissinger would disagree.

(I'm willing to bet that in a decade the US will still consider their interests to be closer to the Athenians at Melos than to JFK being summoned by the trumpet. In particular, I'll bet that the US will remain interested in carrier strike groups, and remain uninterested in having either universal health care or skilled labour)

Would Henry “to be an enemy is dangerous, but to be friend fatal” Kissinger not agree to the immigration of skilled labour? Do you mean that, as a first order effect, both sides implicitly understand that imported skills would not survive generation 1?

Tough question: as a 15 year old immigrant of different culture and religion and concepts, he seemed happy enough to have emigrated, but as a 100 year old he wasn't so sure about whether that ladder should be pulled up.

(or maybe he was just miffed that instead of loanwords from hebrew, eg Tacheles reden, the kids in germany are shocking their elders by getting their loanwords from other semitic languages, eg Ahki?)

which sides are both sides again? in this case I claim that it's difficult for imported skills to be transmitted to the next generation when the US educational system is (or at least it was during my time) built around producing the sort of highly fungible Schumpeterian worker bees who play well with others.

Who in america doesnt argue for skilled immigrants from Europe/China/India/Russia is an enlightened fella, who doesnt just listen to the people, he thinks for himself & the world. cependant, they shant get the party nomnom, or even the afterparty nomnom

(Bernie? Chomsky? DJT, only whilst on goldplated throne?)

Afterparty nomnom: the final scene of The Candidate (1972)?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myEpap3TxVs

consequentialist ethics less prone to SiGINT failure modes?

consequentialism in action: https://www.athensnews.com/news/local/louisiana-gov-huey-lon...

(although I guess every consequentialism has to have a steep discount factor, otherwise putative desired consequences arbitrarily far in the future could be claimed to justify obviously undesirable actions today? Note also that Gov. Long didn't die in bed.)

The facade of principles-based foreign policy falls pretty quickly once interests are at play.

The US used to be a supporter of an international trade framework, based on the WTO. Now, the US is probably the WTO's greatest antagonist.

The US talks about human rights and international law, but then backs Israel as the latter flattens Gaza and kills tens of thousands of civilians in a massive turkey shoot.

To me Trump is a symptom, not a cause.

These analyses don't make any sense. The people born in China right now are much more influenced by a combination of contemporary Western and Chinese media/tech than anything having to do with ancient Chinese dynasties.

Same is true for most nations these days.

Cultural influence isn't just popular media. The language (Latin based), the government (democracy/senate), architecture (the white house), etc. They are the sum of a nation identity, how it appears, act, interact with others.

You can see Rome's traces in almost everything in the West, from entertainment to moral norms. Same thing in Asia, except they are Chinese, like the language (Japan, Korea, Singapore), architecture (Vietnam, Japan), entertainment (see that new Wukong game), etc.

The culture of a nation morphs and changes on the surface but deep down, it is based on a rather stable foundation. In the West, it is Greek-Roman, in the East, it is Chinese-Indian.

Today's China is not Qing and might as well compare Rome to the EU.

> This might be the first time for the US.

The great depression could be considered a soft-mini fall for the US. Although it wasn't a hegemonic power at that time, so maybe it doesn't count.

> The US is younger than a single Chinese dynasty.

Eh? There are like 60 Chinese dynasties throughout history. The US has been around longer than most of them. And some of the dynasties that were around longer than the US has been will lose that title if the US lasts another ~30 years. The Qing, Ming, Tang, etc. dynasties all lasted ~275 years, and the US has been around for 248 by now. But the vast majority of the Chinese dynasties lasted like 10 to 50 years.

I see this or a variant a lot. However, while this can still happen, it’s not a given and is rather unlikely as the world is a lot different now.

It’s more connected, broader alliances, different laws and so on.

I mean, China _was_ _the_ poster child for exceptionalism, they called themselves the middle kingdom and still call themselves the central country. For much of their existence they despised the outside so much they became very insular --and still are, yet they thrive and thrive despite no superficial diversity we so clamor in the West. Their strength is their unity and long-view.

china are a diverse group

similary to the arabs, they all write the same way but talk differently,

at least until the advent of tv and radio and all that

They kicked out all the people that did not fit the Han identity, so lots of the peoples that populate SEAsia today lived in what is now China. Those left in China, see themselves as unified Chinese people --they all adopted the mainstream prevalent culture --and don't long any erased ancient culture they might have had. They do not consider themselves as the remnants conquered tribes who were abused or decimated and subjugated by the Han. They see themselves, from their point of view as Han Chinese. Even Manchurians who at one point subjugated and controlled China, today see themselves as Chinese as any other Chinese in Beijing or Wuhan. They assimilated and took to Han culture and practice Han culture so much they are all one and the same today --with two exception and that is in their northwest and southwest --and those because those were very recent conquests. Most likely those in the southwest will assimilate despite a an exiled renegade spiritual leader who opposes the inevitable.

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