I think that will all depend on the state of the US in the next few years. If US crashes economically, they might not be in a position to do anything about it.

If the regime collapses, the north might move in.

The way things are going in SK, it might just implode politically at some point.

Indeed, it’s gonna be a long road before anything substantial happens.

gonna be hilarious if the peacekeeping force ends up being China and DPRK

I agree these statements alone aren’t really worth much, it’s going to be interesting to see if there’s going to be a general political shift to improve relations with China going forward though. The US economy isn’t exactly in a great shape right now, and they’re fighting a tariff war with everyone. This will further erode relations with the vassals going forward.

Indeed, the oligarchs don’t want to rock the boat and they will fight any attempts to redirect trade because that would negatively affect them.

The US has a huge amount of economic leverage over them by design, so they can’t just openly go against the US demands. It’s going to be a process from realizing they need to wean themselves off the US market to actually making it happen.

That was definitely the mood during the first Trump term, but it does seem that the realization is slowly sinking in that the nature of the relationship between the US and the vassals is changing.

The obliteration of Ukraine in NATO’s proxy war and Europe’s self-inflicted economic collapse are making US vassals in Asia nervous. Japan and South Korea are waking up to the fact that their prosperity and security are just as negotiable. As Europe’s industries flee to America and Ukraine lies in ruins, Tokyo and Seoul are quietly recalculating their futures, realizing loyalty to a declining hegemon buys only a front-row seat to their own demise.

Critical support for the US destroying its scientific and technology base.

That’s going to accelerate the process for sure. Also worth noting that the US education system has been terrible for decades, and they’ve relied on poaching talent around the world to stay at the top.

It looks like China has just reached parity with the west this decade, and now it’s starting to visibly pull ahead. I think we’ll see the pace of that accelerate over time as well given that the very act of catching up requires faster rate of development.

Seems like this is a shocking development for a lot of people who bought into China collapse narratives floating in the west.

a good explanation of why that is https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/08/the-value-of-nothing-capital-versus-growth/

The reality is that capitalism is already visibly failing today, and we see mass civil unrest growing across the western world as a result. It’s possible that bandaid solutions like UBI may be attempted, but it’s pretty clear that there would need to be major restructuring of economic fundamentals going forward.

I find this is a great visual illustration of how easily the media is able to manipulate public opinion. You can see how the views on China just flip in realtime once the propaganda campaign starts

https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2022/09/28/how-global-public-opinion-of-china-has-shifted-in-the-xi-era/

My point is that rapid explosion of automation ushered by robotics as we’re seeing happening in China will make capitalism an unviable economic system.

There’s also a second aspect to this as well. Capitalism is built on consumerism which requires people to work to earn disposable income that they spend on goods and services.

Seems like that would have to be the inevitable result of all this. When machines can do most jobs better than humans, then the whole idea of working for a living stops making sense.