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As America Recedes, China Rises
TownHall
As our July 4th celebrations were beginning, the U.S. quietly closed and abandoned Bagram Air Base, the largest American military base between the Persian Gulf and the South China Sea.

Afghan looters were soon seen scavenging inside the base.

The long retreat of the American Empire is under way, and this longest war is likely to end in bloody retribution for the Afghans who sided with us against the Taliban and are left behind.

When the last American departed Bagram, The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. is making plans for "an emergency evacuation of the American embassy in Kabul amid concern that a worsening security situation in Afghanistan could imperil the remaining military and diplomatic corps."

Apparently, we are preparing for a possible Saigon '75 finish to the war launched by George W. Bush 20 years ago. Pressed by reporters on the grim situation in Afghanistan, President Joe Biden did not want to reflect on or talk about what might be coming.

"I want to talk about happy things, man," Biden told reporters. "Look, it's Fourth of July ... it's the holiday weekend. I'm going to celebrate it. There's great things happening."

In that same edition, the Journal reported that China has moved 50,000 troops to the border region with India where forces of the two nations, in June 2020, had their bloodiest skirmish in decades.

Other reports suggest that China intends to fill the vacuum left by the departure of America's power and provide billions from its Belt and Road Initiative to build a highway from Kabul, Afghanistan, to Peshawar, Pakistan.
But they can't make a vaccine for their own virus. Which leads me to a speculation that the rest of their high-tech abilities are a bluff as well.
..."China's emergence over the past four decades ranks as the biggest and longest-run economic boom in history. Its annual gross domestic product rose from a mere $191bn, or $195 per capita, in 1980 to $14.3tn, or $10,261 per capita, in 2019. It has raised more than 770m people from poverty and transformed the Chinese economy into a high-tech powerhouse that is on course to eclipse America's in size. This transformation is the landmark achievement of the Chinese Communist party, which celebrates its 100th anniversary on Thursday."

China's growth could not have been achieved had it not been for the U.S. decision to throw open the world's largest consumer market to Chinese-made goods, to bring Beijing into the World Trade Organization, and to sit idly by as a huge slice of U.S. industry and manufacturing was transshipped to China for production there and not here.

...In the Cold War with the USSR, time, it turned out, was on our side. But in the last decade, Xi Jinping might fairly see time as having switched sides. Either way, we are surely better off relying upon our abilities rather than our weapons to win the competition and settle the rivalry that may settle the future of mankind.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2021-07-07
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=606585