A Major factor missing from the above interpretation of the EUs economic dilemma is China. China has outplayed the wests manufacturing heavy weights at their own game. China has the advantage of central planning largely free of high demands from an already wealthy and entitled population. Chinas autocracy enables and motivates a centrally planned economic growth program because without growth the CCP would risk being challenged and potentially replaced- and because autocracy enables a strategic approach.

The huge tragic irony of western democracies is that they have become less representative of the wishes and aspirations of citizens because politicians of almost all major parties are largely owned by corporate sponsors who direct strategy in the manner of crony capitalism. Chinas politburo in contrast can plan and execute a long term cohesive development strategy employing vast labour resources and mass scale efficiencies.

China has mastered the strategy of copying western developed production technology and undercutting it on price. This is gutting the EU and US manufacturing sectors. They only now hold advantage over some of the higher tech areas and China is again highly focused on catching up on those. Look in the high tech research and development and corporate sectors backrooms- they are dominated by Chinese faces.

The west is fat, complacent and divided. Europe simply cannot compete with China on cost and productivity. Japan and S.Korea struggle to compete and are increasingly locked into Chinese supply chains which may ultimately render them dependent upon China as they once were on the US. War via trade. Mercantile power. China is winning. Own it.

The west has lost the trade war and now the war for control of global institutional and protocols begins. The most important one is the monetary system. Chinas already operational CBDC Yuan is already operational and provides an alternative for international trade payments outside of SWIFT. The Euro and the dollar may be the last western strategic assets to be lost and replaced by the Chinese CBDC Yuan and a growing number of nations using it, not the dollar or the Euro for trade payments.