samfieldhouse wrote:
Jonathan wrote:
The Chinese make crap because that is what the West expects/asks for. The day the Chinese decide to change that the West is finished. Remember this... The nineteenth century was Britain's century, the twentieth century was America's century, we're now firmly in China's century and they will be increasingly calling the shots.
I think it was Germany and latterly Russia that were 'calling the shots' in the 20th Century. America was initially isolationist and latterly reactive.
The early 20th century was a conflict between the declining European empires (British, Austro-Hungarian etc) and those that wanted to supplant them (nationalists, ideology-inspired new empire builders (Nazis, Italian and Japanese fascists, Russian-backed communists, USA). The 2nd half of the century was a bipolar "cold war" between the USA and its allies and the Soviet Union and its allies (often with localised "hot wars" fought with, or between, proxies). The 21st century will see privatised wars between corporate-sponsored capitalist armies who seeking to make large amounts of money out of conflict (Central-African Republic, Congo, now) or to create new markets (eg Bush and Blair's war in Iraq). All of which will eventually become irrelevant because humankind will, through technology, invent a world without shortage.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24331106
concise but detailed and quite high browed for i2f. 