Every empire eventually discovers the same inconvenient truth: It is mortal. The Americans are discovering it now. The Chinese, to their credit, discovered it long ago. They know there will be no Chinese century in the way there was an American one because the age of world order is finished. What we have now is ordering, world-building, a process without end.
This is a problem for Washington, which prefers finality. The prevailing strategy, pioneered by former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, is to “slow down” Chinese innovation, a phrase that should be embroidered on a cushion in the museum of imperial decline, somewhere between “the Boxers will disperse by Tuesday” and “Suez will be over by lunch.” One struggles to think of a great power that successfully preserved its primacy by asking its rival, very firmly, to please stop being clever. The Qing tried a version of it against European technology. It did not end well for the Qing.
Every empire eventually discovers the same inconvenient truth: It is mortal. The Americans are discovering it now. The Chinese, to their credit, discovered it long ago. They know there will be no Chinese century in the way there was an American one because the age of world order is finished. What we have now is ordering, world-building, a process without end.
