China has won the trade war and now positions militarily to challenge US hegemony.
The wealth of nations is highly related to their ability to project power.
Thinks free markets are the be all and end all of wealth creation is simply dangerously naive.
WSJ-
'Xi positions Beijing as powerful center of new global order as security forum convenes in capital.
BEIJING—China played down its rapidly rising military might for years. In the past few weeks, Beijing has broadcast a steady drumbeat of firepower displays and muscular rhetoric, carrying an unmistakable warning for the U.S.
It began on Sept. 3, when Chinese leader Xi Jinping brandished his country’s full nuclear triad—the means to deliver nuclear weapons by land, sea and air—together for the first time at an extravagant parade of military hardware and personnel.
Defense Minister Dong Jun followed up six days later with a warning to U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that “acts of containment or deterrence against China will not succeed,” according to a Chinese account of a video call between the two men.
Then, on Friday, China’s navy went to the effort of announcing that its newest aircraft carrier, the Fujian, had sailed through the waters between China and Taiwan, the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own and has threatened to seize by force. The Fujian was on its way to the South China Sea, where Beijing has aggressively sought to enforce disputed territorial claims, risking conflict with the Philippines, a U.S. ally.
China’s military advancements were again in the spotlight this week at an international security conference in Beijing—where officials convened representatives from more than 100 countries to press their vision for a new international system in which China gets more say. '
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