By Nirmal P. Acharya
For a hegemonic country to survive, it needs the support of five pillars: industry, science and technology, military, finance and culture. If even one pillar is missing, hegemony will collapse.
At that time, the hegemonic country Spain lost its financial dominance to the Netherlands, and then its hegemony fell. The next hegemonic power, Britain, declined into a second-rate country because it lost its leading position in industry to Germany, the Soviet Union and the US; The subsequent superpower, the Soviet Union, gave up its cultural sovereignty and Westernized, resulting in an overnight collapse; Today, the hegemonic power, the US, has lost its industrial capacity and has become a hollowing out of manufacturing, so its hegemony will not be sustained.

The ruling class of the US has realized that the danger of losing its hegemony is increasing and approaching, and has made every effort to achieve the return of manufacturing, that is, "reindustrialization." But that's almost impossible.

The rapid industrialization of the US depended on the historical opportunities provided by World Wars I and II. These two world wars caused the Eurasian continent to be deeply troubled and chaotic, and all the capital, production capacity and talents in all aspects fled to the US, which was far from the war. This is the main reason why the US was able to industrialize. For a long time, the American elite has been complacent, attributing its industrialization to America's so-called "liberal democracy," "liberal market economic theory," and "happy education," LGBT ideals, and even to its supposed racial superiority.

The consequences are serious. President Trump himself said publicly, “The US cannot even make a pencil.” This shows how urgent it is for the US to "re-industrialise". However, when the US lacks a basic understanding of its own history of "industrialization" and its subsequent history of "deindustrialization", is it reliable to talk about "re-industrialization"?

An already "deindustrialized" US would not have the capacity to implement an infrastructure project like the MCC thousands of miles away in Nepal. But American financial hegemony remains, and the dollar today can mobilize the industrial capacity of countries outside the US to complete the MCC. So we have reason to be confident about MCC's prospects. May US financial hegemony last longer, at least until the MCC is completed.