Parallels between China and Britain

<Random musings alert>

Recent news got me thinking. There was once a nation that owned a very significant chunk of the world. The control came from a combination of finance and military power. If that nation wanted something, it got it. It was a world leader in all forms of science and engineering and was not afraid to take on massive projects at considerable risk and expense. The dark side of all this was that a powerful minority achieved all this by using the skint and powerless majority, giving them little or nothing in the way of rights or reward, and without regard for long term environmental impact. The legacy of that nation's exploits are still visible today, all around us, pretty much everywhere, in terms of language, technology, transport, commerce etc.

Like all great empires do, this nation's one eventually started to disintegrate.

That might not be entirely accurate, I'm not that up on history, but its something like that.

Nowadays another nation is doing exactly the same. In my lifetime alone, they've taken control of more resources and land, or fiercely resisted any attempt by any faction to break off. They've rose from being skint to being possibly the most powerful nation in the world, they're not scared of taking on projects at great expense and risk, and they're not afraid of using people as the state sees fit in order to achieve state goals.

So ok, we did magnificent engineering compared to China's plastic tat, but whereas we took control via the sea using the navy, in order to take what we wanted, which was monumental at the time, its the 21st century now so you have to aim bigger. China has outlined its planned for the moon (and beyond) and personally I believe they'll achieve it. If/when they achieve what they are planning to achieve, they will have the upper hand, financially and almost certainly militarily, over everyone else.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/25141597