Academics have long been lecturing Americans that the era of U.S. dominance on the global stage is over.
The future, we’re told by analysts and the talking heads on cable news, belongs to China. Perhaps worst of all, many of our elected representatives and appointed policymakers believe that, too.
They couldn’t be more wrong.
A Creation of the West
The singular reason China is where it is today: the United States and the West handed over hundreds of billions of dollars of technology—know-how, intellectual property, even whole factories—throughout the course of four decades. That transformed China from one of the world’s poorest countries to one of the richest. It certainly wasn’t the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that did that; they had 30 years to do so, but only brought the country to the brink of ruin.
From the revolution in 1949 onward, the CCP presided over one disaster after another.
The Chinese people suffered horribly under the failures of successive “five-year plans” that led to devastating famines, mass persecutions, prison camps for millions, executions, cultural and social destruction, and the massacre of thousands of students in Tiananmen Square in 1989. And let’s not forget the worst air, water, and ground pollution on the planet.
The key point to remember is that the CCP hasn’t changed; it couldn’t manage China when it was a poor country, and it’s mismanaging China’s wealth today, which is putting it mildly.
The evidence is everywhere.
