this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2025
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sino
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So the way I see it is that the economic hegemony is threatened. This is not a problem because they see China as communist but because the economic hegemony will shift to a non western country. The economic hegemony moving from one economic center to another is not an issue for capitalists that can move their capital to the new center (assuming as I said they do not see China as communist threat, which again I don't believe they do). This makes me think that a big part of the western hysteria is racism driven. I don't think the falling profit margins at this time are enough to initiate the level of disruption a conflict with China would result in.
I also think the military hegemony isn't threatened right now but the US can no longer exert it's will entirely as it pleases. It sees the window of opportunity for it to reassert economic hegemony through its military rapidly closing.
Anyway that's a lot to type out to respond to one sentence but I'd need to read that paper before I can comment on the rest of what you said.
It's fine, I appreciate this conversation a lot.
I agree that racism plays an important part, but I think it's as usual the ideological superstructure to a mixture of material causes. Yes, China being non western is key, because of the global system of exploitation that's threatened. Not all capital can quickly be moved to a new center, because for a new center to emerge, capital already has to be concentrated there and many capitalist interests are tied up with the state and military of the empire.
Though I think you're right to doubt that the whole drive towards a conflict with China is just an effort to keep things as they are. Rather, it would be impossible to keep going, even without China, but the drive to conflict temporarily helps keep the system going. New economic center or not, there are contradictions within the West, that have gotten to a critical point. Preparing war is a typical way to attempted to shift the consequences of contradictions somewhere else. Currently a lot of the US made problems are being shifted to Europe, for example.
As for what kind of contradictions, it's not just the low profit rate, but the sheer amount of capital that's been accumulated and can't find profitable investment any more. War enables huge transfer of wealth from the people to private companies, without the negative side effect of building up anything that might cut into profits elsewhere. Funding housing would cut into landlords profits for example. Funding weapons transfers a lot of wealth, but just destroys all that accumulated value and helps to keep the profit cycle going a bit longer.
It's all good. I just needed to read that to understand your points here
Which I agree with. I just think that starting a war with China to reverse this trend is kind of insane right. And with other countries not being able to replace this its almost like the west would want China to willingly be the modern India to the British empire.
Your points about moving capital not being a simple thing and was functioning as a profit generator are true. No argument from me there. But there are so many factors at plwy and I can't prove it but I think the deciding factor is racism and the need for white western countries to maintain white privilege. There is a deep paranoia there and nothing is clearer than the treatment of African Americans by the fucking Americans. Like I know you know as much or more about slavery than me. But imagine that the current discourse in mainstream politics is not even about reparations but actually further emiseration of African Americans. This is a deeply racist and sick society. Europe too with their Arab migrants. Destroy the middle east and villify the people fleeing their homes because of your actions. Maybe im doing an Occam's razor meme here but I do think that western countries would rather die trying to maintain their superiority than being equals in a new system. And controlling the population seems way too easy for right wingers (eg hate migrants/LGBTQ as opposed to your landlord enslaving you). So even if the population of these countries is not that racist they can easily be made racist due to dog whistles and the emiseration caused by the ruling clas themselves. Anyway I'm starting to ramble. But this got me thinking