In the search for stability, some western nations are turning to a country that many in Washington see as an existential threat
If geopolitics relies at least in part on bonhomie between global leaders, China made an unexpected play for Ireland’s good graces when the taoiseach visited Beijing this month. Meeting Ireland’s leader, Micheál Martin, in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China’s president, Xi Jinping, said a favourite book of his as a teenager was The Gadfly, by the Irish author Ethel Voynich, a novel set in the revolutionary fervour of Italy in the 1840s.
“It was unusual that we ended up discussing The Gadfly and its impact on both of us but there you are,” Martin told reporters in Beijing.
China is on a charm offensive with western leaders, a path cleared by Donald Trump’s increasingly erratic and destabilising power grabs on the global stage. Although Europe breathed a sigh of relief this week when Trump withdrew the threat of using military force in Greenland and said he would not impose tariffs on opponents of his plans in the Arctic, the US no longer seems like a reliable partner.
The world will be a better place with China as a more dominant world power. People are going to get a taste of what real cheap and well made commodities are like without the looming threat of economic warfare. They are gonna get electrified infrastructure with cheap solar panel tech.
Well everyone except the US. We will continue to rot and suffer as our political class insists that if we only deregulate our industries for a few billionaires to jerk each other off over while actively working to collaborate with and bolster the fascist elements of the owner class.
The future is socialist. The US is hellbent on staying in the past and wants to drag everyone down with them.
Is China socialist, though? I keep seeing them labeled as being communist and socialist but they seem like something else altogether.
It’s more like a state controlled capitalism. They do tons of business, have plenty of billionaires, exploited workers working ridiculous hours, hunger wages, etc., but without the ability to vote or access information freely.
It’s not a model to emulate.
Which is really the definition of fascism… But so is the US to a large extent.