There are so many factors in place already, that this seems a natural escalation.
You have civil discontentment/unrest in China, a power structure having trouble uniting a populace getting accustomed to higher living standards, a splintered and war-taxed US also fighting civil unrest and also with a troubled power structure.
If any of them were threatened by famine, they’d basically have to go to war to keep the populace under control.
Also, China has been jockeying to assert their global power and haven’t had a better position in modern times.
Xi pushed away from Deng’s more passive strategy, he went too hard and gave the US to align everyone else defensively, Ukraine was a lucky break for that too.
This is geopolitical musical chairs and the music has mostly stopped, Xi needed 10 more years to get his navy in the position it needed to be, now he’s caught with 1 broken ally and the rest of his region not looking that friendly. And his economy is collapsing.
This was a very lucky break for the west all-told, I get Chinese engineers looking back with rose-colored glasses but I suspect they’ll regret that soon, China now isn’t Hu’s China of the early 2010s, things are going to get extremely ugly over the next 5 years. The west will have it rough too, but shouldn’t be nearly as bad, Chinese real estate is… truly incomprehensible.
There are so many factors in place already, that this seems a natural escalation.
You have civil discontentment/unrest in China, a power structure having trouble uniting a populace getting accustomed to higher living standards, a splintered and war-taxed US also fighting civil unrest and also with a troubled power structure.
If any of them were threatened by famine, they’d basically have to go to war to keep the populace under control.
Also, China has been jockeying to assert their global power and haven’t had a better position in modern times.
Xi pushed away from Deng’s more passive strategy, he went too hard and gave the US to align everyone else defensively, Ukraine was a lucky break for that too.
This is geopolitical musical chairs and the music has mostly stopped, Xi needed 10 more years to get his navy in the position it needed to be, now he’s caught with 1 broken ally and the rest of his region not looking that friendly. And his economy is collapsing.
This was a very lucky break for the west all-told, I get Chinese engineers looking back with rose-colored glasses but I suspect they’ll regret that soon, China now isn’t Hu’s China of the early 2010s, things are going to get extremely ugly over the next 5 years. The west will have it rough too, but shouldn’t be nearly as bad, Chinese real estate is… truly incomprehensible.