Thread: Belt and Road Initiative: China redraws the map while the West implodes

The current Silk Road seminar highlights the Chinese initiative of expansion through infrastructure that is already underway.
The proposed $900 billion investment dwarfs the post WWII US Marshal plan and could lay the foundation for a new era of Eastern led globalisation.

Interesting summary from the Keiser report... haters gonna bury their heads in the sand and all that, but while Western globalisation continues to implode and US hegemony down the barrel of a gun escalates tensions, the rest of the world moves on to the future.

^ Western globalization will surely continue to implode as long as a nationalist mentality, such as Trumpism or Brexit, carry the day.

What more can the East wish for?

Seems utterly sensible to me- logical even.

Would be a bit worrying if a nation like China with its human rights record and repression of ethnic minorities and violent suppression of free speech in Tibet, Hong Kong and other regions and its illegal occupation and fortification of islands in international waters were able to assume any kind of primacy whether by military force or by economic marshalling.

Is it just good fortune that the most powerful bloc of nations in the world (the west) also happens to lead the world in terms of social, political and moral progress? I hope not. I hope there is a causal relation and not just a correlation. I hope one of the reasons we lead the world is that the world looks to the west for exemplary direction on what is morally progressive social policy and international diplomatic conduct.

Originally Posted by Looper

Is it just good fortune that the most powerful bloc of nations in the world (the west) also happens to lead the world in terms of social, political and moral progress?

In a way. It is good fortune that you are a westerner. Certainly not one of our victims!

But the fact that industrial behemoth China, joined by land to the major markets & population centres of SE & Sth Asia, Europe and the Middle East, is developing overland trade corridors to these regions is hardly a surprise.

Frankly, oh morally superior westerner, it seems positively benign compared to our historical methods of expansion- involving military conquest, colonisation, subjugation and sometimes genocide of native peoples, 'divide and conquer tactics, slavery etc. The Chinese corridor of expansion is Trade.