On the bridge: I spoke recently to an Italian friend who runs a media and consultancy firm that for the last decade has helped Chinese planners and futurists to better understand what’s ahead for Europe, not next year but a century from now. China, he says, believes in proven longevity, and many European states have millennial legacies, not China’s 12,000 years, to be sure, but sufficient to be considered battle-tested entities. But that is not the case for politically and culturally fractured America, still an infant in national terms. Some Chinese insiders say America is headed for a civil war, though not necessarily a military one, that may lead to the secession of states, a red-blue snap they call it. The United States may well be divided by coasts, with the populous eastern states grouped on one end and the western on the other, in effect dissolving the Union. This scenario is now easier to contemplate as American far-right chieftains decimate Washington while challenging federal governance. The future may bring a return to something akin to the self-governing 13 colonies, no national presidentialism required. Instead, governors would run independent states and their economies, using militias for protection. Such ideological combat may place celebrating a 500th birthday out of reach. And what nation, you ask, will profit most from an undone United States? China of course.
Remain long enough on a bridge and your rivals may someday float beneath you in bloated plain sight, and no country is better at playing waiting games than homogeneous China.