Two centuries ago, Napoleon warned, “Let China sleep; when she wakes, she will shake the world.” Today China has awakened, and the world is beginning to shiver.
The earth has invariably seen China go against the United States to emerge as a ‘Super Power.’ China summoning America’s predominance makes the two nations vulnerable to a deadly trap first identified by an ancient Greek historian Thucydides. He wrote about a two millennia-old war that ravaged the two leading cities of classical Greece, the Peloponnesian War, where Sparta feared the growing power and influence of the Athenian Empire.
All this while America seemed to deny China’s transformation until the Coronavirus pandemic in 2019. The tranquility of the world has started to descend again on the environment wrestling with Covid-19. The Covid-19 outbreak will serve as a casus-belli for Cold War 2.0 built up in the last few years since Xi Jinping rose to power in 2013 and has since become its most powerful leader. The novel ‘2034’ by James Stavridis rightly mentions how China and the States will wage War in 2034; China acting in an alliance with Iran and Russia against America with both the country’s nuclear bombed and neutral India becoming the dominant world power in the end.
Covid 19 is pretty thriving in changing the world order significantly. China used the World Health Organization (WHO) to screen their lies and prevent a discussion on the pandemic during their reign as the Security Council. So, America stopped funding to the WHO, leading to the breakdown of global entities. China started condemning the US Army for the origin of the virus, which prompted Trump to identify Covid as the ‘Chinese Virus.’ Massive economic losses of various nations will lead to claims of compensations. Failure on China’s part to compensate for the claims against it will worsen the overall global harmony.
China is a true competitor in the technological, military, and economic spheres except for microprocessors’ design and manufacture. These logic memory chips are the base for high-level computing, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and likewise, shaping the digital economy. The biggest chipmakers sit few miles away from China, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Samsung and Intel. The companies that make the most advanced tools, machinery and software used by TSMC and others to make the microchips are based in America. The States often suspends orders of the Chinese government believed to assist in the country’s weapon development. China is doubling up on research in nanotechnology, and the day they do it, the first step they take is to seize Taiwan.
China has rebelliously promoted its governance model superior to the democratic system, which they think has failed considerably in controlling the pandemic. Their usage of the English language and Twitter platform projects its authoritarian model. China has also exercised its control over the manufacturing of medical supplies.
Apart from America, many other countries like India and Japan have stepped forward and imputed China for the virus, thus banning China and all their products. President Trump also signed a treaty that requires the US to support Taiwan and take actions that undermine Taiwan’s security which begot an angry response from China.
