Changes of the magnitude of the rise of the Asian consumer and of Asia, including China as a superpower, involve significant wildcards and unanswered questions.
First and foremost, of course, is Plan A. What was the Western Plan A in moving forward with globalization and kick-starting China as a superpower? Does Plan A have a secret hand? Has Plan A failed, or does the Anglo-American alliance still have the capacity to deliver a successful Plan A? If they don’t have a secret hand to play in support of Plan A, what is Plan B? How are the United States and the G7 going to adapt to China as a rising superpower and Asian markets as the dominant markets of the world? How—as per capita income convergence happens—is the West going to succeed and thrive?
Question #1: Does Plan A have a secret hand? If not, what is Plan B?
Question #2: What will the impact of robotics be, including in agriculture and manufacturing? One McKinsey study said that by 2030, automation would replace 236 million workers in China, 120 million in India, 73 million in the U.S., 30 million in Japan, 18 million in Mexico, and 17 million in Germany.
So, if China has 36% of its people working in agriculture and has the capability with robotics to bring that down to 1%, what will happen to those people as the same degree of automation occurs in manufacturing and other industries as well?
Given the importance in China of keeping people working and fed, I think that the biggest wildcard question is automation. How does the middle class survive and grow in the face of significant automation? It’s going to be a similar question in the United States and G7. Automation has the potential to exacerbate inequality throughout Asia and Europe and the United States.
Question #3: How does the truth of exopolitics and secret space programs relate to what is happening? Is my theory correct—that our secret governance system needed to turbocharge Asian engineering and professional brainpower and energy to build a multiplanetary civilization?
Question #4: Is breakthrough energy an important wildcard? Breakthrough energy does exist. It has not been adopted—presumably for concerns related to population control and weaponry that could go out of control if the technology became available. However, if you look at the kind of inflation that could occur from the rise of the Asian middle class, one way to deal with that is to deflate energy costs. It gets you back to this issue of control, and it may be one of the reasons we are seeing such a significant move into highly centralized digital control.
Question #5: Is Asia adapting technology to effectively implement police-state totalitarianism? We have it in the West, but it’s behind the one-way mirror of “friendly fascism.” We try to keep it invisible as it conflicts with our Constitution and laws. Asia has less need to do so.
Question #6: How will organized crime evolve as Asia rises? Remember that governments and pirates have always had a backdoor alliance. Organized crime has the possibility of thriving in a multipolar world, along with private mercenary armies and private intelligence capabilities.
Question #7: What about the environment? The Western world exported its pollution to Asia when it outsourced manufacturing. Now parts of Asia are struggling with that pollution. Explosive growth in the Asian middle class could add further environmental stress. It is an opportunity for reengineering how we do things.
Question #8: Will the West go to war? Traditionally, when the West can’t get its way through economic or covert means, it goes to war. Clearly, Russia and China are preparing for this possibility. While war may be lucrative for weapon manufacturers, one has to be struck by the inhumanity and insanity of having so much money globally going into defense and warfare—whether it’s cyberwar, covert war, physical war, or secret space programs. It’s the biggest economic issue for the planet. Can we find a way, economically and politically, to convert to peace?
One of the critical pathways to find pathways to peace is transparency, which is why we spend so much time at The Solari Report talking about the cost and mechanics of secrecy and what we can do about them.
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