those of us in the west, even in north america, view china as a distant, exotic thing. it is the far east. it's far away. distinct. different. and, this is true. the first european visitors to (northern) china and japan were surprised to realize they were white and described them that way, but china has the sole distinction within surviving civilizations (because subsaharan africa may be powerful one day, but as a post-european colonial construction) in that it is not greek.
china really is different and it really is far away.
we should realize that they view us the same way and through a very long historical filter. realizing the depth of this historical filter is important in understanding how china will interact with the western part of eurasia, which will be keenly important in the upcoming decades.
in north america, when we talk about european civilization, we talk about the cities that developed from the development of global capitalism after the age of enlightenment - paris, london, berlin. we might mention older cities in the south of europe as falling apart tourist destinations, but they are not seen as being in the centre of european culture or vital parts of european civilization. in china, when they talk about europe - and this is true. look at their statements about european trade routes. - they talk about the exit points to the silk road, which include jerusalem, constantinople (which is currently temporarily renamed as istanbul while it remains under foreign turkish occupation), alexandria, carthage and rome. china has a long history with the persian empire and has had to deal with pillaging arab barbarians trying to interfere with the trade routes to europe (and tax them) since the dawn of recorded history.
when europe came to terms with the collapse of trade from china, it had to find a way to get around arab civilization to reconstruct important supply lines, which is what led to european seafaring and the "discovery" of america, and then of america as a military force, itself. china is exiting it's own dark ages, brought on by it's own religious backwardsness, which manifested itself in a severe opiate crisis that lasted centuries. it is now trying to re-establish land-based trade routes directly with europe, mimicking the process europe went through in rebuilding trade routes to china in reverse. this time, china is in control, and the arab taxation racket for transiting through the desert, which caused such a myriad of problems for both china and europe, will be placed under chinese oversight.
it seems difficult to make sense of the barbaric attempt by iran to shut down the suez canal, except it isn't at all. it's clearly in the chinese interest to re-establish land-based trade routes as it tries to rebuild a system of trade that collapsed centuries ago and that left it incredibly wealthy. that would make china great again.
in the end, both europe and china will benefit from increased trade, if the ancient trade routes through cities like samarkand, persepolis, babylon/baghdad, constantinople, jerusalem, alexandria, carthage (tunis) and rome re-establish themselves, with distant terminal points in provincial backwaters like paris and london. however, america will suffer in it's newfound irrelevance. dramatically.
the post war order was supposed to be that europe was the market for american manufacturing, whether they liked it or not. this would maintain full employment in america and keep the trade balance on america's side. nixon destroyed this by reversing the role of the american economy from exports to imports, and it's been economic decline in america ever since (but the multinational investor class, disproportionately located in europe, saw increased profits). nato evolved into a protection racket, but it was supposed to be an american military occupation of europe to enforce it's place as a dumping ground for american exports. in the end, the guns were the biggest export. increased chinese trade will lead to greater european autonomy. this will cripple american hegemony, and that is actually not in canada's self-interest at all, as much as we may moan about the fucking yankees.
the fundamental mistake of biden's presidency is that he has decided that russia is america's enemy, and china is america's competitor. such neat boxes are always foolish. as my father was fond of stating, all generalizations are false. however, as a basic analysis, this box-placing exercise is completely backwards; not only is russia not america's enemy, but russia sees itself as a western and european civilization and wants to be america's friend and ally, while china sees westerners as a distant, alien species of barbarian to be dominated and pacified and perhaps even colonized and replaced. china is not america's friend and does not want friendly competition in some victorian british sense; china is america's only true enemy in this world, and the americans are largely utterly oblivious to it.
it's like nixon left notes for biden or biden was always a republican or something.
biden is basically wasting time fighting the last war, while china has been busy starting the next one.
the most important lesson in european history is that russia always steps in and saves the day. it was russia that defeated hitler; it was russia that defeated napoleon. these are two of many examples. it was the russians that saved constantinople from collapse for centuries. the russians are the great protagonists of history that have been repeatedly pushed to the brink but always step in on the right side and always win.
in the inevitable epic, centuries long war between america and china to control the world's oceans, which historians in the distant future on other planets will compare to the even more ancient punic wars to control the eventual mare nostrum (imagine the pacific ocean as a true american or chinese lake), russia will eventually step in and decide who wins, as it always does. america will need russia's help to defeat china; it will lose if it tries to fight this war alone. if the end result of this foolish war in ukraine that biden personally incited and is personally responsible for is german rearmament, as appears to be the case, it is china that is the sole and only victor. russia will have no choice but to align with a german-chinese axis based on mutual trade interests, and then america is basically fucked.
america might have avoided this outcome by being less aggressive and more collaborative in eastern europe. it is not clear if the situation is reversible at this point, but i will remind america that russia does not hate it and likely still wants to align with it to try to contain chinese encroachment into east and central asia. it cannot do so when it is fighting a stupid war to protect it's western flank against nations it in truth actually wants to do business with but are stuck in a military occupation by a foreign power run by psychotic extremists that are using it as a terminal point for a military build-up as a consequence of a protection racket, which is both weakening it and the west and giving the chinese the upper hand. russia loses. america loses. britain loses. china and germany win.
china would certainly benefit from a port in the eastern mediterranean right about now, say right about where haifa is.