The list is VERY SURPRISING.  Who is #3,4,??? Is Russia (really?) #10? Where are the Sauds?  Iran?

A think tank founded in the name of Henry Jackson sees China as replacing the UK as a world power: “China poses the single biggest threat to Britain’s position as one of the great super-powers …”

The Henry Jackson Society ranked the top 20 world powers based on economic growth and naval investment.  The Navee is still the major claim the Brits have to their heritage as a global power.  The report says that just 0.4% separates China and the UK.  China added approximately 65,000 tonnes of large new warships to its fleet since 2016, comparable to around one fifth of the mass of the Royal Navy combat fleet.  While not included in the HJS study, China has also emulated the British Empire of yore and now controls over 50% of all world cargo ships.  The red flag has also planted roots by buying control of major ports in the Indian Ocean, Africa’s East coast, and the Mediterranean.  China has also begun to explore similar opportunities in central and latin America.

While the US is obsessed with the Trump drama series, what is left of any geopolitical policy by the US is pitiful. As one example, he is so proud of committing funds to build two more aircraft carriers. I have no idea where he will put these .. the Great Lakes? Lake Washington? Maybe the Rio Grande to defend our Mexican border?

While ignoring the effects of Trump, the Jackson Center also warned that “China’s rapidly expanding geopolitical capacity poses a serious challenge to the West … If the rules-based order is breaking down, the UK should urgently invest in its armed forces’ projection capacities forward basing — not least in the indo-Pacific region — if it seeks to halt this shift …”

The China Daily Mail argues that Trump is very much the issue. “At least two points to note here. Firstly, this report is obviously under the heavy influence of the Offensive Realism thought which is prevailing in Washington . The urge to maintain Britain’s global power serves not just the purpose of retaining the UK’s glory, but also the goal of containing China hand in hand with the US by stressing the “indo-Pacific region”. Secondly, the worry about ‘what if’ the rules-based global order breaks down is indeed a real concern. From Pax-Britannica (1815-1914) to Pax-Americana (1914-present), these two Western powers dominated the world one after one (overpowering France and Spain by the former, and then Germany and Japan by the latter), and throughout the past 200 years set lots of rules to hammer out an ‘order’ of some sort.”

China looks a lot like the British Empire.  China is something new .. a corporate structure grown to the size of a state. Unlike German or Japan China does not have cult like nationalism, nogreat leader or racist ideology. Russia comes closer to Jaoan in the 40s with a regional threat that is mostly threatening because of the alliance between Hitler and Tojo.  In contrast,  China is already close to the British Empire in the 1800s .. a mega power based on trade and state corporations. As for the US. since Trump we have no model for leadership. The model we had was the US as leader of like minded democracies. Trump has poisoned that.  If that is gone, we look more like Bismarck’s Germany, a regional power with global pretension, then Lesser Britain that remained after the US won WWII.

“Now, Russia and China are two different civilizations, and they both want to alter some rules. Whether they (and some regional powers such as India, Turkey, Saudi and Iran) are able to change the rules of game, or more fundamentally, transform the status quo into an order which is not “rules-based” is a fantastic challenge to analysts and scholars.

So far, the main anxiety is not about the growing strengths of China and etc as they still lag behind by a large extent. It is about the numerous internal problems in the major Western nations, or the so-called ‘Decline of the West’ as suggested by German theorist Oswald Spengler, British historian Arnold J. Toynbee, Harvard scholar Pitirim Sorokin and many other contemporary intellectuals. Plato foretold that democracy could not last long because it would spoil human greed to an uncontrollable level, and thereafter some sort of non-democratic elitist governance would return. Of course, new tech such as AI, hyper-sonic weapons and bio-cloning were unknown to Plato, therefore we need to shoulder the task to revalue the present situation. Readers are always welcome to join this discussion to have our common mankind duties fulfilled.”

MEANWHILE: China is on course to become the world’s

biggest economy as early as 2021

and by 2030 it could also be behind India!