🇨🇳🇺🇸 Jeffrey Sachs: Chinese Statecraft & a New World Order
For most of the past 2,000 years, China was among the most advanced civilizations in the world—leading in science, technology, economics, and governance. As late as 1820, Asia still accounted for over 50% of global GDP, with China playing a central role.
But by 1950, after enduring more than a century of devastation—including the Opium Wars, the Taiping Rebellion, Western colonial carve-ups, the First Sino-Japanese War, Japan’s brutal 8-year invasion, and civil war—China had been reduced to just 2% of global GDP, despite holding 20% of the world’s population. This period, known in China as the “Century of Humiliation,” left a deep scar on the national psyche.
What we are witnessing today is not the emergence of a new superpower—it is the return of an ancient one. China’s reemergence is not a disruption of the world order, but the rebalancing of a deeply skewed system that has, for 200 years, been dominated by Western imperial and racial hierarchies.
Western discomfort stems from the mistaken belief that their global dominance is “natural” or “deserved.” But history tells a different story. Much of the Western-led world order was built through colonization, resource extraction, and ideologies of superiority—packaged as universal values.
As Professor Jeffrey Sachs rightly said, the fear of China is rooted not in objective facts, but in the West’s refusal to accept that the world is changing.
The era of Western exceptionalism is ending. And with it, the illusion that one part of the world should forever dictate the fate of the rest.
You can take a book (paper or screen) on a plane or train, to the beach or to a hospital appointment. Sitting alone in a cafe or restaurant becomes a less solitary experience if you are accompanied by a book.
No one knows what you are doing, no one can reach you, no one knows where you are. No one can cut you off from your own little world, from this intimate moment, from yourself. You are alone. You are okay. All you need to do in this moment is fill the time with what you like.