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8mo ago

If China becomes democratic, would you be okay with China replacing the US as a global superpower?

I mean like:

Chinese (Edit: Mandarin Chinese) will become the lingua franca of the world
The Internation Aviation Language will (probably) become Chinese (replacing Aviation English)
Lunar New year becomes a popular holiday (like Chrismas is currently popular worldwide)
The Internet will use mostly Chinese Chracter
And instead of 26 Latin based characters, you'll have to learn thousands of characters, imagine that 😅 (or just use a translator tool 🤷‍♂️)
There would be a China version of Hollywood, taking over the original Hollywood
Fengshui becomes a thing that the world starts to care about
UN Headquarters now located in Shanghai (I'm guessing this is the most "international" city in China, right?)
Boeing is dead, some Chinese airplane manufacturer now dominates, competing with Airbus.
Baidu is default search engine (now with less censorship due to democrarization)
Harmony OS (Huawei's Android fork) become the new "Apple", iPhone is now insignificant, ranking below Motorola in terms of market share.
Either Windows get brought by some Chinese Bussiness person, or there China makes a Linux distribution that starts off as Open Source with some proprietary components (like how Android is), then eventually becoming Closed Source once they overtake Windows. Lets call it PandaOS (I'm not creative with names 'mmkay)
etc...

Sounds like an interesting world 🤔

What do you think?

94 comments

I don't care which country is the global super power as long as it adhere to the liberal world order and all that comes with it.
I want to leave in peace, enjoy my human rights and not have to worry about other countries using arms to push their will.
But also: a lot of those points have nothing to do with who the global super power is
Appendix: maybe I was vague but my answer is that as long as the super power follows the rule-based order (as it is supposed to be obviously) it doesn't matter who that super power is. China, Russia, USA, Albania, the Vatican, Congo, w/e.
Understand that might does not make right and follow the same rules as the lesser states and I'm happy.
- A lot of people in the global south might say they don't want it to adhere to the "liberal world order"
  You're speaking from a position of privilege, and suggesting that you should keep your privilege
  
  I don't care. The question was if I was okay with China as the super power and my answer is that it don't matter as long as it adheres to the liberal world order.
  Get off your high horse.
- Hummm the “liberal world order” is 100% “countries” using arms to push their will. Countries being “the west”.
  And YOU having “human rights” is not really dependent on the “liberal world order”. Most of your rights were won by blood and tears during the late 1800s and early 1900s, through popular movements mostly ideologically aligned first with anarchism then with communism.
  Also, the vast majority of the world not having human rights and being colonized and exploited IS your “liberal world order”.
  So not really sure how you specifically benefit from western imperialism, unless you are a billionaire ofc. Which I highly doubt.
  
  adhere to the liberal world order
  And YOU having “human rights” is not really dependent on the “liberal world order”. Most of your rights were won by blood and tears during the late 1800s and early 1900s, through popular movements mostly ideologically aligned first with anarchism then with communism.
  You are correct in that the liberal world order is an effect of previous hardwon freedoms. What is your point? The LIO makes sure that if my government tries to take these freedoms from me it invokes international support. So a malicious government will not only have to deal with domestic pushback, but international as well.
  Also, the vast majority of the world not having human rights and being colonized and exploited IS your “liberal world order”.
  ..which is why these countries are under sanctions for example. Take Venezuela as a case. But yes, the postcolonial debate is ongoing.

Depends on whether or not China shifts demographically as well. They’re currently too xenophobic and monocultural. Look at most western developed country and you’ll see quite a bit of diversity. I don’t think you’ll ever have a global superpower that is so set on race or where you were born.
China is definitely not immigration friendly.
- China is not easy to immigrate to, true. But saying they are monocultures or xenophobic is CRAZY.
  China has way more peoples and cultures than most countries. It has waaaay more languages officially spoken and taught in school than the US. It’s more comparable to the EU, if it had formed like a thousand years earlier.
  Just search a couple of random Chinese provinces or autonomous regions (places where minorities self-govern 😲) in like the north and the south, or the west and the east, and read on the culture and ethnicities there.
  Seriously Americans insist they have such vast cultural differences within the US, because “here we say pop and there they say soda; most people here are anabaptist, but there they are Methodists”.
  Bro in China they speak languages that are not even related. They follow religions that are separated by thousands of years. They have cultural practices that are unique to their region that developed for thousands and thousands of years.
  China is infinitely more diverse than 90% of countries in the world.
  
  Not for long if the han Chinese policy is kept going 😄

You are wildly overestimating what "democratic" means.
Or maybe you mean more, but the term "democratic" does not contain that. Think about Russia, India, Philippines... they are democratic too, but that has very different meanings there.
So, before I am OK with China, they would also need many other major changes besides a democracy.

There should never be a global super power. Ever.

China already is a superpower
There can be more than one superpower
- They mean global hegemon. China isn't that.

If China becomes democratic it is no longer China anywhere as we know it. The agenda is still, AFAIK, that the totalitarian regime is necessary for another undisclosed amount of time with the end goal to transition into full communism.
The problem is of course that the party elite quite enjoy this position they are in and are in no hurry for any societal transitions in any direction whatsoever.
So, in my mind, your question is at best some imaginary world building for a fictional scenario that has no connection with reality.
- I think the point was to have it as a mental exercise. Personally I'd be fine with it. My main issue with China is the entire genocidal surveillance ethnostate with little to no civil liberties and full restricted speech. If it opened up to allow criticism of the government, protests, protection of LGBTQ folks and legal marriage, I'd be more on board.
  But yes, that's not the China we see today and likely never going to see in our lifetimes.
- The alternative reality you live in is fascinating.
  
  Would you mind elaborating?
  Edit; I got curious and checked out some post history. It's a tankie. No need to bother then. It will just be arrogance and smug insults and world history that strangely nobody except other tankies find truthful.

No. Even if they dramatically changed on all fronts, became a democracy, promoted LGBT+ and racial civil rights, broke up their concentration camps, stopped surveiling citizens, gave people true elections, and stopped cracking down on political opponents, their nation is facing an extremely serious gender and population imbalance, one that will have drastic impacts on their society and stability in the next 30 years. A large portion of their workforce is going to retire and cannot be sustained by the smaller population that are kids and teens now. There's also a severe gender imbalance from the One Child Policy favoring boys over girls. There's no getting off that train, and shit like incel culture and a ton of retirees causes bad political instability. Or wars, to distract from problems at home, like what Russia is doing.
It's going to be a massive problem since they don't have much in the way of immigration, and even if they got a ton of people pregnant now, they are still facing down a 10+ year deficit of people.
Hell, the only reason why we aren't in the same boat is that we didn't implement boneheaded policies like that, and immigration helps offset our birthrate being below the replacement rate of people. We depend on immigrants as much as they depend on us.

When you say "Chinese" becomes lingua franca, do you mean Mandarin? Cantonese? Yue? Hakka? Other? If Mandarin, do you mean Jilu? Jiaolio? Other?
I don't think "Chinese" or any sinitic language ever becomes the global language. Translation is becoming so simple, I would expect any new global initiative can work in 3-4 languages simultaneously.
UN headquarters relocating - I think it would be more likely the UN collapses and is replaced by something else with China leading.
The Chinese movie industry is already huge, we just don't see much of it in the US.
Lots of Chinese people aren't into fengshui. That's kind of a bizarre stereotype for you to pick out of everything mentioned.
The aerospace industry in China has a ways to go before they can be classified in the same tier as Airbus. They are getting better, but still heavily rely on borrowing designs instead of creating their own.
Baidu, HarmonyOS, a computer OS - fine by me to add more options.
What I actually hope is the idea of a single global superpower dies completely. It's not even the current reality for the US; it's just propaganda.

While I’d support china going democratic 100% my experience of working and traveling in china makes me pretty certain it’s not happening in my lifetime. Obedience has been brutally beaten into Chinese citizens for so long it would take a long time to change that
- I wouldn't totally subscribe to that, having worked with Chinese allowed to travel. There's acceptance to the rules active incountry, but very much subversive energy and sarcasm/cynicism abroad, and willingness to break the rules. If one manages to get them to open up a bit. I've worked with tech folks only, though.

No because we can and ought to have a world without global superpowers and states overall.

This reads more like "do you care if Chinese culture becomes popular and dominant" and I am not sure. Except for the language (which I don't think I could learn before I die) I don't care, the music is good, movies, dance. And China and India are both so populous it would make logical sense to me that one might be the trend-setting culture.
But politically I think it more likely that the US finds its way back to democracy, than China finding its way there.

I'd rather have multipolarity.
- Even if multipolarity means more war?
  
  I think it means less war. Unfun Fact: Most of the major wars since 1990 wouldn't have happened if the USSR still existed as a rival to the USA; the latter wouldn't have dared to intervene in Iraq or Afghanistan, no wars between Azeris and Armenians, or Ukrainians and Russians, since they all would be part of the same country.

The only issue I see with your plan is keeping the Chinese writing system. Alphabets are superior, even if you write Chinese with them.
Otherwise as long as my ideas about how the world should function get put into practice, I don't care who does it. By chance of history US was the one who brought quite a few good ideas into the world, mostly in the second half of the 20th century. But there's nothing fundamentally American about having good ideas.
- You can't write Chinese languages with alphabets, even using tone markers there are too many homophones.
  There's a reason Chinese hasn't switched to a new writing system the way that Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Hmong, and I'm sure other languages, have.

In an alternate universe where Britain didn't went and colonise countries, US is so weak they got wrecked and conquered by Japan in ww2, and China become a democratic country at the end of ww2, then yeah i guess i wouldn't mind because it didn't matter.
In current universe? None of that will happen, even if a political party suddenly campaign against CCP and CCP suddenly got voted out next election. English doesn't became a lingua franca overnight.

Democracy without the rest of Enlightenment Liberalism is just another kind of of tyranny.
E: typo

I think your premise - If China becomes democratic - is a really, really big IF.
But hey if they can show us a better way and use their resources to help the world, go nuts. A true 1:1 democracy would be fascinating to see implemented.

I think the main thing which I would have problems with would be the collectivism and confucionism which I really can't stand. I don't think it's necessary to replace English, it's not American anyway. The rest sounds ok to me, as long as they don't kill my normal Linux.
- What do you dislike about collectivism?
  
  I can't stand that everyone is forced by sociaty to be the same.
  I'm not like you, I have my own thinking, my own style, by own taste in music, my own taste in food, etc. etc.
  I really like diversity. Let's look at the music from mainly collectivist countries like China or Korea. There is K-pop and uhm I guess that's all I know (and I live in Korea). Then let's compare it to the a individualistic country I lived before like Sweden:
  Electronic Body Music
  Metal (with all it's subgenres)
  Rock
  Pop
  Electronic Dance Music
  And each of them have their own subculture. Yeah you get the point.

Linguistically, I want neither English but Chinese, but an auxiliary language to be the lingua franca. I already know Esperanto, so this would be a good candidate as far as I'm concerned. There's no way I'm learning Chinese.
I want to see as much nonfree closed source software replaced by FOSS as possible, no matter who makes it.
The others (pop culture, companies) wouldn't bother me much at all. But I don't think Christmas would stop being popular at least in Europe.

Considering they use Uyghur slave labour for Xinjiang cotton, the answer is a no from me.
- Man cotton just attracts slaves across every part of the globe. Good thing america diddnt have slaves picking cotton at any point in history /s
  But seriously ukraine used slave child labour. Cotton for some reason requires slaves I have no idea why.
  
  The cotton is awkward to pick.
  It requires careful, dextrous removal from the bush that even modern day robots can't do well.
  More difficult than picking raspberries, apparently.
  And I hope we'd not endorse the US's wet dream of human rights abuse being justification for war.

Not really, the same issues that plague the world right now will still exist, just stemming from a different entity

To be fair, Chinese is only slightly harder to learn than English
- That depends on where you are coming from. English has enough German and Latin roots that most of Europe has a head start when learning English. (linguists will define roots different from what I'm using and say English doesn't have Latin roots, but there is still significant influence)
  If you are coming from an African language though it probably won't make much difference. Though in Africa there is a good chance your nation was controlled by Europe over the years and so you might know enough of some European language to make English easier.
  
  Basic Mandarin is actually pretty easy.
  Becoming even day to day fine doesn't take long and has fewer tricks.
  Getting good enough to read literate classics, or use 成语 in your speech though takes a long time and effort.
  That reading and speaking are basically independent skills though is odd to folks used to Alphabetic languages.

Is hexbear leaking or something?
Yeah, no, the Chinese government should not be in charge of China, less so of the world.
I don't want to have a camera tracking my every movement and lose social points every time I make a misstep. I don't want to just disappear when I say something the government doesn't agree with.
Having said that, Fuck pooh bear

I mean having to learn Chinese would be pain in the ass but probably good for me and my country's main character syndrome is annoying as hell so sure

I'd be too worried about the CCP backsliding, but if it theoritycally collapsed, and the ROC swooped in to take its place, then yeah I'd be fine with it. Better than Trump's america

I wouldn't be okay with any country being global super power except maybe Albania.

That depends on how they act. China right now is on a path where I'd oppose them replacing the US. However the EU has the ability to replace the US as the global superpower - they don't because despite some significant differences overall the US and EU get along well and so they don't see any point. By cooperating the EU gains the things they want from being a global superpower without the disadvantages. Part of that cooperation is the EU is in NATO (mostly?) and so they are paying some of the military costs of the US being a global super power.
The US isn't perfect by any means, but we have done much better in many ways vs previous global superpowers. Right now I'd predict China would be worse so I oppose it. However who knows how things will change in the future.

deleted by creator
- Yeah I've grown pretty dissillusioned in democracy. Seems like a system where the loudest, richest, and most obnoxious rule.

it'll take a huge and lucky shift to have this happen, but still interesting on your choices of pop culture changes.
anyways, i believe a more short term thing is each region will have economic areas of influence and may or may not have bits and pieces of what you described here.

I wouldn't have a problem with any actually democratic country being a superpower since I've always lived in a democratic superpower. Though it's flawed and not the greatest, it sure as Hell would beat growing up in an authoritarian superpower.
As for the things listed, I wouldn't mind the whole Chinese becoming the defacto world language considering I could probably learn it and if not, translation tools are better than ever before in most cases. I wouldn't mind Chinese Hollywood so long as they were making quality animated films (which is way more than possible for them currently, just look at films like Legend of Hei and Big Fish and Begonia). Fengshui as a spiritual practice I can't get behind personally, but have no problems with.
Got no complaints about where UN headquarters would be moved to in this hypothetical so long as it's not an authoritarian country. I don't mind Lunar New Year becoming a major holiday since it's fairly harmless as a concept (just don't go blowing yourself up with firecrackers somehow). So long as the safety and privacy measures are roughly the same and I'm not being uber spied on, don't really care who has control of business manufacturing, no authoritarian country though.
Knowing Baidu, without the government requirement to censor, they'd become the new gøøgle in this hypothetical world, so you wouldn't catch me directly using it. Don't have enough info on harmony to make a statement about it since I usually just use budget samsun phones with their android tweaks. As for windows/Linux, there are already whole entire Linux distros (like Deepin) that may be forks of one of the big distros but are their own thing. But knowing me, I'd still stick with whatever Linux I am using at the time, so little to no impact for me there.
All in all, I don't have a problem in this hypothetical. But that's something we're pretty far away from ever becoming a reality, though.
- since I've always lived in a democratic superpower. Though it's flawed and not the greatest, it sure as Hell would beat growing up in an authoritarian superpower.
  Hold onto that thought for the next four years. I suspect this statement is going to age like milk before the next “election”.

Sure why not?

I don’t think we have a choice, and the US having the largest military in the world doesn’t really mean anything unless we just want to kill everyone.

I don't understand why you would connect these two things. Since when does any power's foreign policy treat those in the rest of the world as if they have any of the rights afforded to their own citizens? The US certainly doesn't.

There has to be more than one superpower. Humanity is too immature to behave itself without the threat of mutually assured destruction.
Most of the bullshit American hegemony really started to ramp up after the fall of the USSR when the US found itself unchecked. It could basically go in and fuck up whatever country they felt like. At least during the cold war, they had to consider the possibility of a power equal to their own countering them. Without a check and balance on the world stage, the U.S. has proven itself repeatedly to be without a doubt, the villain of the story.
- Most of the bullshit American hegemony really started to ramp up after the fall of the USSR when the US found itself unchecked.
  Every single U.S. president since WWII - except for maybe Carter, who had his hand forced - is fully deserving of being brought up for war crimes. American imperialism never really intensified after 1991, it just stepped out from the shadows and became more overt.
  
  Yeah. I worded that wrong for sure.
  The policy of American intervention began in South America going as far back as the early 1900s, followed by the middle east after WW1 and Asia-Pacific after WW2.
  "Ramp up" was the wrong choice of words, for sure. "Emboldened" to not try to hide it anymore would be more accurate.
  My apologies. Thanks for clarifying.

It wouldn't be any different, the US is NOT a democracy either and is a global superpower 🤷‍♂️

Russia is technically a democracy. So no. That would not be enough.

Me being OK with a specific nation as superpower had zero impact on weather or not that nation becomes a superpower or not.

China will never be democratic. English is there because it's easy. There is no default search engine (but there would be one if "democratic" China controlled everything...), same for your Linux crap, who would install this without being forced when there are already a thousand better alternatives.
Sounds boring, you described what would happen if a dictatorship ruled the world (and no whataboutism with the USA, I'm also immune to what they are doing).

When you refer to becoming democratic, you mean like how it has been until a couple of years ago? Or, are you referring to China suddenly becoming Capitalist instead of Communist?

Can it become a global superpower without becoming “democratic”?
Because that means a liberal western style democracy right? Where policies enacted by representatives only benefit 1% of the people? Like scientific research has shown that like 10% of laws passed actually represent the will of the vast majority of people. And 50% represent the will of the 1%.
While in China people are constantly polled (like monthly or weekly sometimes) about their opinions, situations, desires, and then laws are formed from that. They participate in local government in councils, and directly decide how their immediate community lives.
What even is democracy? To me it’s to have the will of the people represented in our states.
This doesn’t happen anywhere in the west. When was the last time a government in any major western country was POPULAR. And did what people actually wanted?
How is THAT democracy?

They’ve had a bunch of mass attacks by knife and vehicles. Guess what the CCP does?
Improve quality of life? No. Make chef knives harder to obtain? Yes Profile childless men and monitor them? Yes
- Are you familiar with gun violence in the US?
- You confused China with the UK. There are no such restrictions on chefs knives.

Nah democracy doesn't work, I would rather it stay the vanguard system and rule the world

94 comments