China Is A Dying Paper Dragon

The global order is ending and is being replaced by an accelerating disorder obvious to any observer of international affairs. The old order of warring empires was destroyed by World War II, so the United States and its allies met in 1944 at Bretton Woods to decide what would replace it. There, the victorious Americans laid the foundations of today’s order, a system that would contain the Soviet Union’s empire in a Cold War, initiate globalization, and bring us 75 years of prosperity and growth unmatched in human history. That globalization is now giving way to a disorder that will change the world and end the Communist Peoples Republic of China.

The Bretton Woods deal that America made with its allies was simple. First, the American market would be open to all its allies. Second, the United States and its navy, the most powerful fleet the world had ever known, would guarantee the safety of all ocean supply chains. And third, in exchange for that largesse the allies would side with us against the Soviet Union. China joined that system in 1980 and together with cheap labor, industrial espionage, and intellectual property theft rapidly became the workshop of the world. Not only was China the most populous country in the world, it promised to overtake the United States economy, become the world’s leader in technology, and dominate the emergent global world order. Those dreams are now being terminated by the impacts of demographics, geography, and “Xi Jinping thought.”