China and the U.S

Obama has a tricky hand to play. He must show his domestic audience that he is tough on human rights whilst depending on loans from China to stop America going bust.Some years back, approaching thirty, I wrote that China was the power of the future. People smirked, knowing they had read the ramblings of a fool.

Though a much older civilisation than our Western model with a quite different culture to our Hollywood inspired celebrity-worship, it is less advanced in modern technology and social structures. But it is catching up fast, as it is in military hardware. When its economic power and its military might reach a certain point, if America tries to throw its weight, China will challenge. Unlike the now defunct Soviet Union which was always an economic house of cards, China will be the world’s economic mega power.

The United States will then have this simple choice. Either accept gracefully its hour has passed and set to work sorting out its own consumption gluttony, debt and social issues and plan for the fact that when next Yosemite erupts it will wipe out half its population in a single bang, or opt for confrontation. This it will lose.