in thread "Spenglerism with East Asian characteristics": Agree, it seems very strange to conflate whatever the situation was in ~1912 with what it is today. Whatever one thinks of the CCP, one should give them at least that much. I don't know which will be the most powerful nation in the world in 50 years, but i... 13mo ago (collapse hidden) retry 2 2 Agree, it seems very (view hidden) retry 2 2 Except the CCP doesn't need Tang anything to succeed. It just needs state capacity, sufficiently directed. For the past decade, it seems to have been doing better at this than the US. That's no guarantee of a given outcome, of course, but it seems more sal... 13mo ago (collapse hidden) retry 2 2 Except the CCP doesn (view hidden) retry 2 2