Spread the love

Nirmal P. Acharya

Recently, I came across a video by the well-known American short-video blogger Jessica Burbank. She said that an increasing number of young Americans are pinning their hopes on China.

She began by discussing a very small aspect of daily life. In her social circle, more and more young people are spontaneously promoting the Chinese-style apple tea beverage, which involves slicing apples, adding goji berries and Chinese tea, and boiling them together to make a hot drink that is consumed daily. They believe this beverage is healthier and have thus abandoned their long-standing habit of drinking ice water.

If more and more Chinese-style living details are actively imitated by American young people and become part of American fashion, then China’s cultural soft power, following its industrial hard power, will surpass that of the United States. It can be said that as Chinese-style lifestyles such as apple tea are increasingly favored by American young people, the American hegemony will truly come to an end.

I can understand why young Americans are pinning their hopes on China. Just look at the actions and words of their own country – they are truly despicable.

Their president, Trump, actually said this publicly: What is international law? I don’t care about international law. There is only one thing that can stop me, and that is my own morality. The whole world knows what he calls “morality” is. This approach is very likely to cause the United States to fall from its self-proclaimed “lighthouse on the summit of the mountain” into the abyss of “the law of the jungle”.

More importantly, by resorting to aggressive wars, threats and bullying, plundering the assets of other countries, and seizing their territories to “solve problems”, it will only cause chaos all over the world.

Recently, the United States has actually issued “military action” threats to multiple countries simultaneously; on the one hand, it threatens to occupy Greenland, on the other hand, it claims that Canada should become part of the United States; it has also targeted Panama, and even proclaimed itself as the “acting president” of Venezuela, claiming that the United States is going to “manage Venezuela”, and further stating that the crude oil of Venezuela is the so-called “American crude oil”.

With its current debt of nearly 39 trillion US dollars, what else can be done besides robbery? Here, I would like to propose a solution for the United States: During World War II, Nazi Germany was at war with Britain, and Churchill’s Britain borrowed desperately to buy military supplies. Many military supplies were provided by the United States, but Britain didn’t have the money at that time. So the US and Britain came up with the Lend-Lease Act, also known as the “Loan and Lease Act”: The US first provided equipment to Britain, and Britain said, “I don’t have money now, but I’ll give it to you after the war.” The US said, “Then you have to ‘pledge something’.” What did the British Empire pledge? It used many islands, territories, etc. in the Pacific and elsewhere to mortgage to the US. Later, these things became the territory or dependencies of the United States. After the end of World War II, the US did not return these things to Britain either. This was an “unspoken understanding”. In essence, when the British Empire was on the verge of collapse and its finances were unsustainable, in order to obtain military support from the United States, it had to mortgage a large amount of “property”.

China has a saying: “Sell everything to break the pot.” The United States can also “sell everything to break the pot”, and it has many things that can be mortgaged or sold.

Therefore, the United States is not forced to go bankrupt when it is in a desperate situation, or to launch wars and plunder the assets of other countries to survive. That path is a dead end. The real way out is: How can the United States embark on a path of reindustrialization, and how can it restructure the US manufacturing industry? I believe that if the United States wants to reindustrialize and restructure its manufacturing industry, the best way is to carry out close cooperation with China.

In my opinion, it is high time for the United States to seriously consider the necessity of cooperating with China. Because the United States itself is in a highly unstable state in almost all key areas: immigration and illegal immigration issues, social insurance and medical services, the education system, federal debt, the relationship between the federal and state governments, and the drastic adjustments I just mentioned in the relationships between the government and the market, the government and enterprises, and the government and individuals. On top of these upheavals, add the structural impact brought by artificial intelligence, and I believe the United States is brewing a “mutation”, and this mutation is likely to bring disastrous consequences.

Therefore, I further believe that the “kill line” that has recently topped the trending list in the United States is not just one, but several layers overlapping: the kill line of the federal government system itself; the kill line between the federal and state governments; the kill line between the government and society, the market, and individuals; the kill line of the wealth gap; and the kill line of possible unemployment among blue-collar and white-collar workers under the impact of artificial intelligence.

In a society with numerous “killing lines”, more and more young Americans are spontaneously promoting Chinese-style apple tea. Personally, I believe that the popularity of apple tea in the United States indicates the systematic collapse of American hegemony. Nepalese young people might as well give Chinese-style apple tea a try.