Chinese and American flags flying together
Saw this recently, from the University of Chicago:
And it begins. No music history and theory, comp lit, classics, and on and on. pic.twitter.com/e2JxrCbm1k
— Dialectical Zach-Zack Loeffler (@thezachloeffler) August 12, 2025
The commentary is a bit of an exaggeration. But not too much.
Now if this was just one data point, it wouldn’t matter, but the bottom line is that funding for universities, including university research, in being massively cut in America and the UK, with issues in most Western countries. It’s not just about the humanities, science is getting hit hard, as is engineering.
As best I can tell, China has opened about 1,700 new universities and colleges in the past 25 years. Those that existed have expanded enrollment. It’s very reminiscent of the post war period in America. And the best of universities are excellent.
Americans are ostensibly rich, yes, but the society is not. A lot of the apparent wealth is false: if it costs one fifth as much to get dental or health care or one tenth as much to buy a good pair of earphones; if it costs one-third as much to buy an electric car, well, all of the extra cost in America goes to GDP, and Americans have higher incomes, but who’s actually richer?
And when you look at Chinese cities and provinces they are building infrastructure massively. The cities are beautifully lit up at night. There is a huge space program, even as the American space program is cut, and cut and cut. There are dozens of EV companies and in general there is competition in most of the cutting edge parts of the society. Coffee is cheaper (which is why Starbucks is getting shellacked in China). Everything is cheaper, there’s more of it and the government and private actors spend money on huge new projects, on research and on infrastructure.
China is a rich society, because they can do things. America’s last real gasp as a rich society was the Apollo program, ever since then, it’s been in retreat. Europe, well, Europe had a good time in the post war period, but since then, despite some success in the 90s and early 2000’s, it’s been in retreat and it has recently chosen the path of de-industrialization and xenophobic isolationism, which is not going to serve it. University cuts in the UK, in particular, have been savage, but Europe, even taken as a whole is behind China, the US, Japan and South Korea in research and technological advancement.
The Chinese have built massive high speed rail, lead in civilians drones, in robotics and are competitive in AI, which is 20x cheaper to run (more importantly, it uses FAR less energy than American AI, which draws more energy than entire countries.) They are ahead in most material sciences, catching up in civilian aviation (soon they will be ahead), have vastly more shipbuilding capacity, are ahead in missile technology, will soon eat SpaceX’s lunch in launch costs (no, I will not be wrong about this.)
China does thing. The government is rich. Corporations are not spending all their money in stock buybacks and acquisitions, but are actually competing and trying to create new and better products than their competitors.
The best parallel is probably not post-war America, but pre-WWI America. China has taken the lead from America, there is zero chance of America catching up absent a large meteor hitting China, but they don’t actually spend much on their military. I was shocked to find out that the Chinese military has about 2.2 million soldiers out of a population of 1.4 billion. All of this with a sincere effort to provide a decent standard of living to everyone and a genuine attack on inequality. (Chinese inequality is very high, but it is concentrated in the top 10%, not the top .01%, which is being attacked by the government.)
China is a civilian society, with a civilian economy. It is in a vastly expansive phase, one which could last as much as sixty to eighty years, assuming environmental or international issues don’t derail it. (They will.)
China is where the future is. If you are younger, learn Mandarin. It will be as essential as English was for the past hundred and twenty years.
Hope for the future now rests in China. You may not like that, but it’s just a fact. They’re the country that can actually do things, and whether our problems are fixed, or mitigated (more likely) is up to them, just as for a long time it was up to the US (which failed almost completely, play “I see no evil, I hear no evil” every since 1980.
I don’t know if I for one welcome our Chinese overlords, but it doesn’t matter. They’re here. The West has already lost the race and is retreating into a poorer, more backwards second world situation, similar to the late USSR and Warsaw Pact.
It will end as well for the US and NATO as it did for the USSR and the Warsaw Pact.
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Schopenhauer
Dear Ian,
the picture of the “west” you painted is accurate; Europe, in particular the states of the European Union, is worse off than the USA. You offer two reasons for the european malaise: “it has recently chosen the path of de-industrialization and xenophobic isolationism”; the first one is evidently true, the second one is hard to comprehend. Germany for example destroyed its industrial base through a suicidal energy policy (wind and solar only as a goal without having cheap energy storage and a proper network system), through the silly “debt-brake” (Merkel and her minions put this idiotic “brake” even in the constitution), through pouring billions of Euros in “saving” Banks and Assurances during the financial crisis 2007/08 and the socalled “euro-crisis” 2011-15 and through the completely insane sanctions against Russia. The logical result of all this: the car industry is in a deep , maybe in a deadly crisis, even the legendary mechanical engineering sector is battered by the manufactured recession, the chemical industry is going to relocate business to East Asia and/or the United States; unemployment is on the rise, cities and municipalities are bankrupt, pension and healthcare system are short of failing and breaking down. Since 2015 (and Merkels fatal decision to open the borders) Germany took up roundabout 6 – 7 million people (the greatest part of them from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Maghreb region) when at the same time the german government decided to wreck its economic system. Please explain me: where do you see “xenophobic isolationism” and what is the logic behind simultaneously destroying deliberately the own economy and taking up 6 – 7 million mostly young and poorly educated men?
Ian Welsh
For xenophobic isolationism read,
1) Serious anti-Russian xeonophia; and,
2) an absolute compulsion to make almost everyone in Africa and Asia hate them with their lecturing, not realizing that with the rise of China (industry) and Russia (military security), that under-developed countries don’t need them any more.
They should shut up, be humble, make peace with Russia, kick out the eastern EU members who will never get over their hate and fear of Russia and buy Russian resources (much cheaper than American ones) again. Poland, without EU subsidies, is a joke and the Baltic Republics in particular need to shut the hell up. The US is not going to war with Russia to protect them if they overstep their bounds enough to provoke the Bear and even if it did, they’d still be conquered and whether they’d ever be free would be determined in the peace talks. Even if NATO won, they might not decide they’re worth negotiating for.
There’s nothing wrong with moving over to renewable energy, but the abandonment of nuclear and the move to more expensive fossil fuels is foolish. (Notice that the largest out building of renewable energy in the world is taking place in China and they’re no fools.)
Bob
Technological, industrial civilisation is not the future. It’s just humans destroying the natural world.
Schopenhauer
Dear Ian,
even if I would choose another term as “xenophobic isolationism” I agree with your description and your recommendations for the german led EU.
The only problem is: The ruling class and their political puppets (Merz, Macron, von der Liar and all the other crooks) are hellbent to proceed with this idiotic proxy war against Russia, they contemplate even to send troops to Ukraine; Mr. Merz (a former employee of BlackRock) is going to pour billions of Euros into weapons and other military gear (he got rid of the idiotic silly constitutional debt brake just for military expenditure). Simultaneously the ruling class is trying to undermine and stifle political opposition – the further prospects for Germany (and Europe) to get back to a rational policy is grim.
And yes: Chinese energy policy is – in stark contrast to the german “Energy Transition” – clever and sophisticated – the Chinese use and develop every possible energy source.