I mean like:
- Chinese (Edit: Mandarin Chinese) will become the lingua franca of the world
- The Internation Aviation Language will (probably) become Chinese (replacing Aviation English)
- Lunar New year becomes a popular holiday (like Chrismas is currently popular worldwide)
- The Internet will use mostly Chinese Chracter
- And instead of 26 Latin based characters, you’ll have to learn thousands of characters, imagine that 😅 (or just use a translator tool 🤷♂️)
- There would be a China version of Hollywood, taking over the original Hollywood
- Fengshui becomes a thing that the world starts to care about
- UN Headquarters now located in Shanghai (I’m guessing this is the most “international” city in China, right?)
- Boeing is dead, some Chinese airplane manufacturer now dominates, competing with Airbus.
- Baidu is default search engine (now with less censorship due to democrarization)
- Harmony OS (Huawei’s Android fork) become the new “Apple”, iPhone is now insignificant, ranking below Motorola in terms of market share.
- Either Windows get brought by some Chinese Bussiness person, or there China makes a Linux distribution that starts off as Open Source with some proprietary components (like how Android is), then eventually becoming Closed Source once they overtake Windows. Lets call it PandaOS (I’m not creative with names 'mmkay)
- etc…
Sounds like an interesting world 🤔
What do you think?
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China already is a superpower
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There can be more than one superpower
Global Superpower
Like pervasive American influence into everything. Military bases everywhere. Hollywood everywhere. Internet is mostly American sites with American users, taking about American politics. But replace all that with China.
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I don’t think we have a choice, and the US having the largest military in the world doesn’t really mean anything unless we just want to kill everyone.
If China becomes democratic it is no longer China anywhere as we know it. The agenda is still, AFAIK, that the totalitarian regime is necessary for another undisclosed amount of time with the end goal to transition into full communism.
The problem is of course that the party elite quite enjoy this position they are in and are in no hurry for any societal transitions in any direction whatsoever.
So, in my mind, your question is at best some imaginary world building for a fictional scenario that has no connection with reality.
I think the point was to have it as a mental exercise. Personally I’d be fine with it. My main issue with China is the entire genocidal surveillance ethnostate with little to no civil liberties and full restricted speech. If it opened up to allow criticism of the government, protests, protection of LGBTQ folks and legal marriage, I’d be more on board.
But yes, that’s not the China we see today and likely never going to see in our lifetimes.
Depends on whether or not China shifts demographically as well. They’re currently too xenophobic and monocultural. Look at most western developed country and you’ll see quite a bit of diversity. I don’t think you’ll ever have a global superpower that is so set on race or where you were born.
China is definitely not immigration friendly.
No because we can and ought to have a world without global superpowers and states overall.
I don’t care which country is the global super power as long as it adhere to the liberal world order and all that comes with it.
I want to leave in peace, enjoy my human rights and not have to worry about other countries using arms to push their will.But also: a lot of those points have nothing to do with who the global super power is
A lot of people in the global south might say they don’t want it to adhere to the “liberal world order”
You’re speaking from a position of privilege, and suggesting that you should keep your privilege
But also: a lot of those points have nothing to do with who the global super power is
I mean, Americanization of the world was helped by the fact that US became a global superpower.
Absolutely, soft power is definitely relevant.
it’ll take a huge and lucky shift to have this happen, but still interesting on your choices of pop culture changes.
anyways, i believe a more short term thing is each region will have economic areas of influence and may or may not have bits and pieces of what you described here.
You are wildly overestimating what “democratic” means.
Or maybe you mean more, but the term “democratic” does not contain that. Think about Russia, India, Philippines… they are democratic too, but that has very different meanings there.
So, before I am OK with China, they would also need many other major changes besides a democracy.
While I’d support china going democratic 100% my experience of working and traveling in china makes me pretty certain it’s not happening in my lifetime. Obedience has been brutally beaten into Chinese citizens for so long it world take a long time to change that
I wouldn’t totally subscribe to that, having worked with Chinese allowed to travel. There’s acceptance to the rules active incountry, but very much subversive energy and sarcasm/cynicism abroad, and willingness to break the rules. If one manages to get them to open up a bit. I’ve worked with tech folks only, though.
break the rules
My mom once told me she bribed a government official to basically “turn a blind eye” to her second pregnancy during the One Child Policy. I was that second child.
(I mean, these are just anecdotes she told me, I have no idea if she’s just exaggerating to make herself seem like a “great mother”.)
In an alternate universe where Britain didn’t went and colonise countries, US is so weak they got wrecked and conquered by Japan in ww2, and China become a democratic country at the end of ww2, then yeah i guess i wouldn’t mind because it didn’t matter.
In current universe? None of that will happen, even if a political party suddenly campaign against CCP and CCP suddenly got voted out next election. English doesn’t became a lingua franca overnight.
Democracy without the rest of Enlightenment Liberalism is just another kind of of tyranny.
E: typo
South Korea President Yoon has joined the chat
Former you mean. Well he might technically be president, I don’t follow close enough to know the exact status, but he is politically dead in the country and there is just process left to formalize it.
Which is how it should work. People abusing power is a given. If it isn’t happening where you live than either you are ignorant of the truth (perhaps because you overall support what the abuser is doing and so choose to ignore small signs); or you are afraid of what would happen if you talked about abuse.
I mean having to learn Chinese would be pain in the ass but probably good for me and my country’s main character syndrome is annoying as hell so sure
That depends on how they act. China right now is on a path where I’d oppose them replacing the US. However the EU has the ability to replace the US as the global superpower - they don’t because despite some significant differences overall the US and EU get along well and so they don’t see any point. By cooperating the EU gains the things they want from being a global superpower without the disadvantages. Part of that cooperation is the EU is in NATO (mostly?) and so they are paying some of the military costs of the US being a global super power.
The US isn’t perfect by any means, but we have done much better in many ways vs previous global superpowers. Right now I’d predict China would be worse so I oppose it. However who knows how things will change in the future.
When you say “Chinese” becomes lingua franca, do you mean Mandarin? Cantonese? Yue? Hakka? Other? If Mandarin, do you mean Jilu? Jiaolio? Other?
I don’t think “Chinese” or any sinitic language ever becomes the global language. Translation is becoming so simple, I would expect any new global initiative can work in 3-4 languages simultaneously.
UN headquarters relocating - I think it would be more likely the UN collapses and is replaced by something else with China leading.
The Chinese movie industry is already huge, we just don’t see much of it in the US.
Lots of Chinese people aren’t into fengshui. That’s kind of a bizarre stereotype for you to pick out of everything mentioned.
The aerospace industry in China has a ways to go before they can be classified in the same tier as Airbus. They are getting better, but still heavily rely on borrowing designs instead of creating their own.
Baidu, HarmonyOS, a computer OS - fine by me to add more options.
What I actually hope is the idea of a single global superpower dies completely. It’s not even the current reality for the US; it’s just propaganda.
When you say “Chinese” becomes lingua franca, do you mean Mandarin? Cantonese? Yue? Hakka? Other? If Mandarin, do you mean Jilu? Jiaolio? Other?
Mandarin Chinese. (I had this in mind when I was typing it, but then forgot to type it 😅)
Lots of Chinese people aren’t into fengshui. That’s kind of a bizarre stereotype for you to pick out of everything mentioned.
Idk, my parents are very into it, so I just assumed its a standard thing. The friends that my mom talk to seems to discuss superstitions a lot. My parents wouldn’t buy a house with the number 4 on the street address.
(For Context: My family and I were born in PRC)
I meant more like “Chinese Superstition” rather than just “fengshui”, but the “fengshui” term was more widespread so I just used that instead.
What I actually hope is the idea of a single global superpower dies completely. It’s not even the current reality for the US; it’s just propaganda.
Yea I don’t like superpowers either, but this is more like a “If you had to pick” type of question.
The only issue I see with your plan is keeping the Chinese writing system. Alphabets are superior, even if you write Chinese with them.
Otherwise as long as my ideas about how the world should function get put into practice, I don’t care who does it. By chance of history US was the one who brought quite a few good ideas into the world, mostly in the second half of the 20th century. But there’s nothing fundamentally American about having good ideas.
