For me, “height” does not mean “territorial extent”. In terms of economic power, today’s China alone is more important than all the Eastern Bloc countries of the 80s combined. I even think the Soviet Union at this point tried to bite off more than they could swallow; trying to create and support socialist states during the Sino-Soviet split and without the economic weight to make this sustainable in the long term.
Today, China is doing the opposite. From the 80s onward laser-focused on its own domestic economic development, it has only recently reached for goals beyond that; and even now, its international goals remain economic, and its social goals remain domestic, ambitious though they are.
However, I believe this too will change once the global network of BRI and AIIB carries enough weight to actually do topple the Western hegemony. At some point in the near future, China can, like the Soviet Union once tried, finance and support socialist revolutions around the world, but even then I suspect they won’t. They will just continue to invent and produce new technologies that will further blunt the economic and military edge of the West until it is reduced to an ignominious regional power. Undramatic and perhaps disappointing as this prospect may be, I believe that capitalism might not swiftly die by the guillotine, but slowly suffocated, crushed, and then swallowed whole by a Boa constrictor.
For me, “height” does not mean “territorial extent”. In terms of economic power, today’s China alone is more important than all the Eastern Bloc countries of the 80s combined. I even think the Soviet Union at this point tried to bite off more than they could swallow; trying to create and support socialist states during the Sino-Soviet split and without the economic weight to make this sustainable in the long term.
Today, China is doing the opposite. From the 80s onward laser-focused on its own domestic economic development, it has only recently reached for goals beyond that; and even now, its international goals remain economic, and its social goals remain domestic, ambitious though they are.
However, I believe this too will change once the global network of BRI and AIIB carries enough weight to actually do topple the Western hegemony. At some point in the near future, China can, like the Soviet Union once tried, finance and support socialist revolutions around the world, but even then I suspect they won’t. They will just continue to invent and produce new technologies that will further blunt the economic and military edge of the West until it is reduced to an ignominious regional power. Undramatic and perhaps disappointing as this prospect may be, I believe that capitalism might not swiftly die by the guillotine, but slowly suffocated, crushed, and then swallowed whole by a Boa constrictor.
China big dragon = China big sneke