China Rising, America Declining

 CHINA, which was once the world's most powerful and wealthiest nation, is poised to become so again, despite the best efforts of the United States, which is in decline. Much has been made of late concerning China's intentions regarding both Taiwan and Hong Kong. The intentions are simple, and obvious; to control both of them, and to exploit their resources for inclusion in the greater Chinese economy as part of China's project to become the world's biggest economy and strongest military power. Both entities have historically been part of china, controlled by the central Chinese government. When Great Britain formally ceded independence to Hong Kong to Chinese suzerainty, it did so with a Chinese pledge that the end of Hong Kong's one hundred year inclusion in the British Empire would mean that Hong Kong would be integrated into Chinese control, but, economically and politically, would be a separate system, two systems within one country. That promise was from the beginning obviously hollow and pseudo, and any astute observer knew it. No power on earth will prevent China's eventual complete control and domination of Hong Kong and Taiwan. Even stranger than  this state of affairs is the history of western imperialism which precipitated it. In 1900 the western powers, including the United States and several European countries, essentially invaded china, carved out by mutual agreement spheres of influence in the "Open Door" system, and proceeded to engage in economic intercourse with China which exploited Chinese resources and impoverished many Chinese. For decades prior to this aggressive arrangement the British had used China as a dumping ground for opium grown in Britain's crown jewel subjugated colony, India. The British stifled India's previously strong industrial economy, fearing its competition, extracted resources from India by force, and made considerable profit by pushing opium in China, turning tens of thousands of Chinese into opium addicts, dependent upon their British suppliers. Queen Victoria has been correctly called the biggest drug dealer in human history. The long brutal history of western exploitation of China ended only with the communist revolution and takeover of 1949. Freed from western oppression, the Chinese are now rising, the United States and Europe powerless to prevent it. In this context constant complaints by the United States about human rights violations in china ring hollow, not only on account of America's history of mistreatment of china and Chinese, but also by virtue of its own poor record in this regard. China no longer has to beg its western exploiters for air, no longer has to whimper 'I can't breathe", but can with some credibility remind the Untied states that breathing is too often made difficult in the supposed self proclaimed land of the free.