It's normal to develop some black technology in the future, right?

Chapter 462 What kind of future

"Let's put it this way. If it's just a single energy advantage, it's not terrible." Lord Osborne said, "If the technological innovation of controlled nuclear fusion comes from Europe or America, it can put Europe or America back on the same starting line with China in the manufacturing field.

However, this technological change first occurred in China. China already has a clear advantage over other countries in the manufacturing field. If the energy advantage is added, as long as China does not export nuclear fusion technology, no country in the world can compete with China in manufacturing costs.

In the past, we placed our hopes on regions such as India, Southeast Asia, Mexico and Eastern Europe, hoping that they would be able to shoulder the responsibility of manufacturing security and take over production capacity transferred from China.

The reality is that these places have advantages over China in some single aspects. For example, in terms of logistics, importing from Mexico to America is definitely cheaper than importing from China to America.

The labor cost in Southeast Asia is definitely lower than that in China, and India has advantages in the field of biomedical research and development that are difficult to match by other countries or regions.

However, the advantages of these regions are single. After integration, when compared with China, even if their labor costs are only 70% of China's or even lower, they have no advantage in total costs.

China's manufacturing industry, which already has advantages, will see unparalleled upstream and downstream cost advantages after the breakthrough in controlled nuclear fusion technology.

In the past, the manufacturing cost of the same product in China was 10 pounds and in India it was 15 pounds. As time goes by, India's infrastructure has gradually improved and the quality of its population has improved, and India is rapidly approaching 10 pounds.

For America or Europe, if the cost in India is reduced to 12 pounds, we can relocate manufacturing to India through government guidance.

This is what has been happening in the past.

China is also happy to see this because their manufacturing industry has been upgraded and the loss of some low-end production capacity is acceptable to them.

It is different now. China can reduce the cost to 5 through controlled nuclear fusion, and it may be able to reduce it to 1 in the future, but India or other regions can never reach this level.

In this competition, America has completely failed.

Unless they can develop a controlled nuclear fusion device tomorrow.

Unfortunately, although they first claimed to have achieved a breakthrough in room-temperature superconducting materials, there is currently no sign of large-scale application of room-temperature superconducting materials.

Secondly, in the field of controlled nuclear fusion technology, America has always been following the route of inertial laser confinement, and it will take more time for them to switch the technology route to the tokamak device route.

Time is your biggest enemy.

China has quietly achieved great breakthroughs in the fields of energy and aerospace. The change of nuclear bomb trajectory is related to the safety of America, and controlled nuclear fusion is even more related to America's life and death.

What's worse is that they are going to have a general election this year. If there is a change of people in the election, the strategies they have adopted may be completely overturned and started over again.

Regardless of whether the Democratic presidential candidate has been in the White House for four or eight years, based on the most optimistic estimates, it is impossible for America to catch up with China in the field of controlled nuclear fusion in eight years.

So eight years later, America, facing an even worse situation, will see the Elephant Party come to power again and start all over again.

They have been trapped in such an endless vicious cycle, and the situation has continued to deteriorate until they can no longer compete with China.

This is also why, at present, all knowledgeable people from Asia-Pacific to Eastern Europe, from Central Asia to Africa, are not optimistic about America.

And why, even though controlled nuclear fusion is obviously bad news for the Central Asian countries, they have to choose China.

Because they know very well that in this competition, after China played the card of controlled nuclear fusion, America's chances of winning are less than 10%. "

After Lord Osborne finished speaking, all the past events came flooding back to Andrew Neil's mind.

As a veteran journalist, Andrew knows very well that although America and England belong to the same Anglo-Saxon system and their geopolitical interests are highly consistent, this consistency does not come out of thin air and is not caused by ethnicity.

From the birth of America to the transfer of power after World War II, there has been no shortage of open and covert struggles between the two sides, from the initial large-scale theft of England's industrial textile technology under the leadership of the American government, to England's funding of the South during the American Civil War. After the war, England was forced to pay 1500 million US dollars in compensation.

After the end of World War II, the United States suddenly stopped the Lend-Lease Act and required England to purchase supplies and return leased supplies with cash. It also forced England to sign the England-America Government Fiscal Agreement and open up the free convertibility of the pound.

This series of combined blows directly led to a sharp drop in England's foreign exchange reserves, the collapse of the Empire's preferential system, the destruction of the foundations of all foreign trade-related industries, and the transfer of England's status as an international financial center to America.

The Chinese Internet likes to say that England is America's father. The two sides share the same language and culture and have highly consistent interests, so they cooperate tacitly on many things. In fact, England was defeated and had to become America's younger brother.

Andrew knew very well how America dismantled England's advantageous industries step by step after World War II. Later, when he was a reporter for the Times, he followed the news in Downing Street and established good relationships with the bureaucrats in Downing Street. He often heard their complaints about America.

This means that America has never suffered a major loss in geopolitics. They have always been the ones to take advantage and have been successful in everything they do.

This time, facing a completely different enemy like Lao Zhong, Lao Zhong has already raised his winning rate to 90%, which is a huge shock to Andrew.

America, whom I had admired when I was young, now looks like the mottled rust on a bronze object, overwhelming the entire hall with its majesty of time.

As we stand in the high-tech steel torrent built by China today, the heavyweight players of secular cognition have been crushed, and the so-called behemoths that were once worshipped have instantly turned into bubbling goldfish in a glass tank. The real monster is hanging over our heads, silent like a black hole swallowing up the galaxy.

This feeling of great changes made Andrew feel that he was really old.

It should be noted that it took America four hundred years from its founding to become a world power, whereas it took China only a hundred years from its founding to demonstrate its ability to compete for the world.

Andrew adjusted his tie, picked up a newspaper from the table, and recited in an aria:
"In the hourglass of history, America is like a calculating bricklayer who used four hundred years to build the thirteen colonies into a marble empire. Before the parchment of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 had dried, the horses' hooves of the westward movement had crushed the pottery jars of the Native Americans. As soon as the smoke of the Civil War dissipated, the gears on Ford's assembly line bit the throat of the industrial age. It was not until the bronze bull of Wall Street broke through the iron curtain of the Cold War that the United States took off the crown of "the only superpower" in 1991.

China, on the other hand, is like an alchemist who has mastered the art of folding time and space. When the country was founded in 1949, it was still in ruins and still had the afterglow of war. In 1978, the floodgates released the torrent of market economy. The high-speed rail network covers mountains and rivers at the speed of a spider weaving a web, and 5G base stations are breaking ground like bamboo shoots. When the trajectory of the nuclear bomb's change of track passed the monitoring of the NATO Air Defense Command, the West was shocked to realize that this country, which once used an abacus to calculate nuclear explosion data, had compressed a century of journey into the four-act play of "Swan Lake" in the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. The golden spikes of the transcontinental railway in North America are still sleeping in the museum, and the whistle of the China-Europe Express has long awakened the ancient Silk Road in Samarkand. This kind of pursuit of folding time and space is like a dialogue between quantum mechanics and the Tai Chi Yin-Yang diagram - one uses the patience of steampunk to forge hegemony, and the other uses the algorithms of the digital age to reconstruct the coordinate system of civilization. "

After reading it, Andrew put away the newspaper and said, "Lord Osborne, the argument just now came from the New York Times. In the eyes of the New York Times, this competition is no longer a foregone conclusion.

They believe that China has won the superpower crown and won the competition, and in a rare peaceful way.

Lord Osborne swallowed his saliva and said, "No, to use the Chinese words, The New York Times is unwilling to accept the news.

The purpose of his saying this is to demonstrate how badly the Elephant Party has done, to completely destroy the rednecks' fantasy of remaking the American dream from a psychological level, and to prevent the emergence of people like Donald who would destroy America's past order in the future."

After the show was recorded that day, Baron Osborne invited Andrew Neil to dinner in a private room of an old pub in London in the evening to express his gratitude for his care over the years.

"George, congratulations. This return to Downing Street will be a new starting point in your life. Next time I invite you to the Andrew Neil Show, your title will become Prime Minister." Andrew was very happy. This proved that he had vision.

Given his age, qualifications and status, George Osborne would not gain much from becoming prime minister, except for the emotional satisfaction of having his vision proven.

Baron Osborne did not object because he knew that the House of Lords had agreed to his request.

Although Baron McFall did not contact him or tell him, the House of Lords accepted his conditions.

But just from the overwhelming coverage of his foresight in the English media, you can get a clue.

In addition to expressing admiration for China's achievements and China's surpassing America, the English media also said that he was foresighted and his past diplomatic strategy of choosing to be friendly with China was correct. It was just that subsequent prime ministers lacked vision, which led to his failure to stick to his diplomatic strategy.

The fact that such content could be widely reported showed that the nobles in the House of Lords, who controlled a lot of resources, were already preparing public opinion for him to become the Prime Minister of England.

However, such a future did not make Baron Osborne feel very happy. Apart from the brief happiness that his life goals were about to be fulfilled, he was filled with endless worries about how he could get this broken ship of Britain back on track.

Lord Osborne sincerely didn't know.

Unlike France and Germany, England really has no manufacturing industry. The few manufacturing industries that existed in the past have been almost destroyed by globalization.

England is also known for its finance, education and sports. Can Chinese people come to watch the Premier League? Is it possible that every Premier League club is associated with a first- and second-tier city in China? Similar to Yanjing Chelsea and Shenhai Manchester United?
Build the Premier League into a super aircraft carrier based on the Chinese market?
But this is not enough.

To save England, relying solely on the sports industry is not enough.

In his view, there is only one way, and that is to allow London to play the role of a financial center in a world dominated by China.

The financial center here is not just about positioning, but also involves a large number of "special powers". For example, Chinese companies must go public on the London market on a large scale, and China's local currency settlement, government bond issuance, and corporate fundraising must all be conducted in London.

This is the financial support.

From a practical perspective, with the existence of space shuttles, it only takes two and a half hours to travel from London to any first-tier city in China, so distance is not a problem.

But why?
China is dominating the world, why is it that Shenhai is not playing this role, but rather handing it over to London?
Baron Osborne really couldn't imagine what bargaining chips England could offer in exchange for the position of the future world financial center.

"Actually, what I just said on the show is not the scariest thing." Baron Osborne had a sad look on his face, and the glasses collided in the air. The one in Andrew's glass was pale ale from the Boddington Brewery, and the one in Osborne's glass was stout from Ireland.

"Isn't this the most terrifying thing?" Andrew asked back.

In his opinion, China's manufacturing costs are low, so all global manufacturing will move to China, which is scary enough.

Historically, the highest share of a single country in the manufacturing sector was only 40%. During World War II, America accounted for 40%. This was due to a special historical period when everything from Europe to Asia was devastated.

And now China can take up the entire global manufacturing share by leveraging its energy advantages. How exaggerated it is.

What America hopes is to reduce China's share of manufacturing. To be precise, all countries in the world, except China itself, hope to achieve this goal.

Developing countries hope to have a piece of the pie, and developed countries hope not to be dominated by China alone.

The result is that after fighting for a long time and using all kinds of tricks, you tell me that not only did you not win the chips from the opponent, but the opponent won all our chips instead.

And this is not the scariest thing.

Andrew was in a trance for a moment. He really couldn't stand the shock at his old age.

This is a bit too scary.

"Yes, the future of the world now depends entirely on what China wants to do.

If China's top leaders are like those in Washington, then the future will surely be a gradual erosion, taking decades or even hundreds of years to achieve global unification.

But if it is China, I don’t know what future they will choose.”

(End of this chapter)