To get started, let’s look at how Wikipedia defines “a perfect storm”:
A “perfect storm” is an expression that describes an event where a rare combination of circumstances will aggravate a situation drastically.
I think the idea of a perfect storm is where we likely are in world events today. China is aching to take over as “the” world leader while at the same time the current US administration is shrinking into a protectionist mode and recklessly abandoning its responsibilities in that regard. We are headed for a perfect storm and much sooner than many might anticipate.
Let’s look at some of the circumstances that is making this change of leadership possible:
If you have had your head in the sand as far as China is concerned you need to look at it in the light of today. They are spending way more than the US when it comes to infrastructure. Their hydroelectric projects alone dwarf anything that we are doing. Their GDP growth makes our’s seem miniscule. In fact the coming year will see China’s GDP exceed ours and the trend is ever increasing after that. It is expected that China’s GDP will be double ours within four years.
China is pushing big time to be the world leader in electric cars, solar and wind power. They realize that is the future of our energy needs. Building the world’s largest hydroelectric dam was the beginning of this movement to a limitless clean energy source. Since things are moving at such a rapid pace in these technologies I fret to see the damage that the current federal administration will do in the 38 months they have left in office. I just hope that America’s private enterprise at least makes a meager attempt to keep up with China in this area. If they don’t we could be in serious trouble in the coming decades and maybe centuries.
In summary, maybe our time as world leaders has appropriately come to an end. Rome had their day, England had theirs, so maybe it is time for the mantel to pass. If China is to take over that role I hope the their leaders are up to the task. Obviously ours have not been lately.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since our American culture is now almost totally geared around consumer spending. We simply can’t keep the paradigm going if we spend less this year than we did last.
Now finally getting to the main point of this post and that is how China looks at things differently than we do, or at least as the Trump administration does. I would highly recommend a BBC-America TV series entitled “Tales from Modern China”. That series is an eye-opener for how China is doing almost everything right in order to become the next world leader. Their infrastructure improvements dwarfs our and a high percentage of it is in solar/wind/water renewable resources. Of course we know that at least the leadership of our country has decided that this approach is dead wrong.