We only have ourselves to blame for that. Had we actually created a federal Europe, we would have been the ones profiting off of this. Now, instead, it's China, and we're still not getting anywhere.
There is no end to Federalist greed for power, is there...
So you'd rather be subject to an autocratic Chinese world order than participate in a federalist Europe? Now that's an interesting view...
If you really object to a federal Europe that much, I suggest you offer a better solution for how Europe can compete on the world stage with China and the US in the future, and do so successfully.
I like Japan --I think for a mid-sized country they have done well for themselves... but their representation in foreign reserves is a bit outsized. The Yuan, given China's economic strength, has nowhere to go but up. We'll have to see how European Central banks like that in 10-20 years when they exert more influence on policy.
> I like Japan --I think for a mid-sized country they have done well for themselves
Japan is the third or fourth largest economy and the 11th most populous country in the world. Nothing middle about it.
Religious persecution doesn’t disappear just because of economic growth. Neither does discrimination against sexual preferences (+). That’s the fear expressed above. (+) unless you limit your knowledge of sexual preferences to just gay/straight — human sexuality is much more complicated than that.
Actually it does - history is full of examples of just that. As the middle class grows in economic terms, it grows in political influence and the overall values of the society changes to accommodate that class. Introduction of democracy and women’s rights in Europe are good examples.
China may be different. Their planned social credit reputation system, coupled with ubiquitous surveillance, may make it impossible for public opinion in China to force the Chinese government to liberalise.
In the past, the West has had a massive advantage because: (1) their econpomic system was better than everyone else's, and (2) in order to modernise, other cultures have had to adopt some of the West's characteristics, including a greater level of freedom of speech/thought than in other societies. The combination meant that the West had few serious ideological competitors.
But if China becomes the world's biggest economy, if it continues to increase its economy so its per capita GDP is the same as in the USA and western Europe, and it does this while still being an autocracy, things will get very very serious.
The future may well be a jackboot stamping on a human face forever.
>>In June, the European Central Bank announced that it had exchanged €500 million ($611 million) worth of US dollar reserves into yuan securities. This was a small shift—the ECB has €44 billion in foreign exchange reserves Before declaring fall of USA, blaming Trump for apocalypse and anointing Xi as the new Emperor, lets take step and really see the numbers. $611 million is a marginal amount when we are talking abou…
Europe can buy all the yuan in the world and it won’t have any effect. The exchange rate between the dollar and the yuan is set by the rate at which China is buying US debt not by the global markets. China prints money to buy US debt it allows China to devalue its own currency without devaluing its assets and this deal allowed the US to pretty much generate as much currency as they want through cheap debt without dev…
That's rude... Source? It's definitely not the CIA Factbook:
It's only a shame that it has to be a country like China that rises up at US' expense, rather than say Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, etc. What happens to global human rights when it's China that has an oversized influence on world politics and when countries start easily accepting extraditions to China (say for criticizing the Chinese leader, which could be a crime there), and many other outcomes like that? US' track…
We only have ourselves to blame for that. Had we actually created a federal Europe, we would have been the ones profiting off of this. Now, instead, it's China, and we're still not getting anywhere.
How would you propose this is done? A ballot across all countries would fail. No ballot would be undemocratic.
We’re not native English speakers, English is our second/third language. Chinese is also already available in our schools. It’s just not a high priority. It’s on par with Spanish, Greek, Russian, Japanese and some such. This doesn’t correlate to the importance Chinese has on our society these days though. English used to be the most important language, these days it’s German and Chinese and I see nothing on the horiz…
You've not mentioned where you're from. You're on an American site, and you talked about Brexit, so I assumed British or American. >English used to be the most important language, these days it’s German and Chinese I'm having a very hard time thinking of a country where both German and Chinese are more important than English. Where is this?
Religious persecution doesn’t disappear just because of economic growth. Neither does discrimination against sexual preferences (+). That’s the fear expressed above. (+) unless you limit your knowledge of sexual preferences to just gay/straight — human sexuality is much more complicated than that.
Actually it does - history is full of examples of just that. As the middle class grows in economic terms, it grows in political influence and the overall values of the society changes to accommodate that class. Introduction of democracy and women’s rights in Europe are good examples.
Europe had similar cultures to begin with, there's high correlation between European cultures such that you can't assume that i a universal norm.
We only have ourselves to blame for that. Had we actually created a federal Europe, we would have been the ones profiting off of this. Now, instead, it's China, and we're still not getting anywhere.
How would you propose this is done? A ballot across all countries would fail. No ballot would be undemocratic.
Start with informing the public, until a ballot would succeed?
Most of the people being against the EU are against it because they only ever hear the bad sides? They never realize that most of the bad things "the EU" did were actually things the council did. Which actually just means that the heads of states of all EU nations agreed on it. If you end the EU, all power goes to these negotiations, and you'll only see that bullshit.
In turn, almost all the advances in civil rights that the EU courts and parliament have given us is attributed by the media to the national governments.
Start off with replacing this propaganda, and you'll have broad support for the EU very soon.
We only have ourselves to blame for that. Had we actually created a federal Europe, we would have been the ones profiting off of this. Now, instead, it's China, and we're still not getting anywhere.
You cannot just "create" a federal Europe. This naive view is why the Middle East is in a constant state of looming (civil) war. British and French colonists drew state lines without considering tribes and cultures and now those tribes are fighting over control in countries they don't even want to be a part of.
To be fair, and without denying all the crimes and exploitation made by European countries in their colonies, we don't have to forget that a lot of those places had tribes/clans/countries that were waging wars again each others and the European countries profited of this by allying first with one side to defeat the other. When the colonies were disbanded, the tribes/clans/countries often resumed fights what were interrupted. When a country was really united, it had its chances to oppose an invader : look at Ethiopia who won against Italy in 1895/1896 and would have won again in 1935/1936 if Germany hadn't come to win for them.
So yes, the British and French mostly drew lines based on french/english negociation, sometimes based on the geography, sometimes just for geometrical and area reasons, and that played its part in the later wars once colonies were over, but that is hardly the only reason, and it is not even the main reason I think.
At the moment, in the Middle-East, the fight between people is either for religious reasons (Sunni vs Shia mostly), for clans supremacy and oil (look at the Qatar situation now), or for "I was there first"/"God is on my side" reasons (Israel vs Palestine). The borders created by the colonists played their part, but the mix of population in my opinion is such that those points above would have triggered wars wherever borders had been drawn.
So in the end, I agree with you: one cannot "create" a federal state. It is incredibly difficult with countries in peace and having strong relations (like Europe), and the other successful examples are based on war : the first emperor of China united through war by defeating the warring states (and China, even if an authoritarian state centralized for politics is quite federal regarding other aspects), the US created themselves by invading the native tribes state by state. Had Napoleon succeeded, maybe Europe would have been a federative state, at the cost of many wars and deaths also.