The rise of a great power: starting with military industry

The US election took everyone by surprise.

Many media outlets are not very optimistic about Barack, and Barack does not have an advantage in polls.

But when the election results were announced, Barack won 270 votes, defeating his competitors by a very narrow margin and was re-elected.

This result left everyone stunned.

Everyone was pessimistic about Barack, but Barack won anyway.

Barack was successfully re-elected, and he swept away the gloom, appeared in high spirits, and delivered a victory speech.

Various media outlets began to analyze why Barack was able to win the election under such circumstances.

But before long, something big happened.

Thousands of protesters gathered in Manhattan, New York, USA, trying to occupy Wall Street. Some even brought tents and threatened to persist for a long time. They organized through the Internet and wanted to turn Wall Street into the Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt.

The 'Occupy Wall Street' protests showed an escalating trend and became increasingly intense, with even thousands of demonstrators in Washington, and the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement quickly developed into a mass social movement sweeping across the United States.

In order to correspond to the 'Arab Spring' promoted by the United States, this movement is also called the 'American Autumn'.

There are many unemployed young people among them who have no jobs but have to pay high loan interest to go to school.

Many people choose to set up camp!

Faced with soaring housing, medical and education prices and high inflation, everyone's dissatisfaction is obvious as they see banks receiving massive bailouts and medical institutions and companies becoming the biggest beneficiaries of the past four years, while thousands of people have been fired or had their salaries stopped.

Most of the people here are under 26 years old, and there are university professors, engineers and even former traders at the exchange. Most of them are white and middle class.

In more than 50 major cities including New York, Washington, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Denver, hundreds of thousands or even millions of people held up a variety of signs with various demands. The slogans mainly included "protesting American politicians who only care about corporate interests", "condemning financial giants for using money to buy politics", "calling for regaining influence on American political and economic decision-making", etc. In addition, environmental protection, human rights, etc. also appeared.

Many Americans believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with the direction of social development and question whether the economic system is distributing the fruits equally to all social classes.

Since Wall Street’s irresponsible behavior caused the international financial crisis a few years ago, the criticism and condemnation of Wall Street in American society has never subsided. Many Americans believe that the government’s rescue has prevented Wall Street from being punished for its greed. Today, Wall Street has basically recovered, but it has failed to share the difficulties with ordinary people, and is instead keen on internal dividends.

The direct trigger of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement was that the big Wall Street banks wanted to charge consumers higher account fees, thereby passing on the cost burden brought to the banks by the financial regulatory reform law passed last year.

At the same time, the US economy continues to be weak, and the unemployment rate has remained above 10% for many years. The standard is revised every year, otherwise the unemployment rate will be even higher, which has led to a large increase in the number of poor people. Today, the poverty rate in the United States is 20.1%, and the number of poor people has reached 6150 million, the highest since the Great Depression in 1929. At the same time, social wealth is highly concentrated in a small number of wealthy Americans represented by Wall Street.

Under such a terrible situation, Barack won re-election with a narrow advantage thanks to the strong support of African Americans and Latino illegal immigrants, which directly angered a large number of Americans.

The arrogant attitude of the American elite is clearly revealed: "Don't complain about Wall Street, don't complain about the big banks. If you don't have a job and you are not rich, you can only blame yourself!"

There are even governors in the United States who openly stated that this is capitalism, and disaster relief and poverty alleviation are things that only socialism can do.

It has to be said that the two major parties in the United States still have a consensus at this time.

This storm of protests sweeping across the United States was "ignored" by the American media. Contrary to the American media's usual style of wanting to cause chaos in the world, they handled it in a low-key manner. Major American mainstream media either turned a blind eye or downplayed it, which was completely different from their performance when similar incidents occurred in other countries.

When the "Wall Street Revolution" broke out in America, where did America's so-called "freedom of the press" go?
The reality is that tens of thousands of Americans took to the streets, shouting slogans such as "We represent the 99%", "Wall Street is responsible for all crises", "Kick money out of elections", "Jobs, not wars", "Revolution now", and "Reshape America", targeting Wall Street's unbridled greed, the US government's irresponsible indulgence, and the depressed current situation in which people's lives are difficult.

Liu Tao looked at the relevant reports and shook his head.

It has to be said that the United States has its own national conditions.

Despite the fact that this seems to be a big and vigorous movement, there is actually no organization, let alone cohesion, and it is like a pile of loose sand.

The United States has accumulated rich experience during the Cold War and has been constantly dividing and splitting people.

These dissatisfied people can't cause any trouble at all.

The double standards shown by Americans are really unbearable to watch.

When similar movements occur in other countries, American politicians will inevitably use slogans such as democracy, freedom, and human rights, wave flags, make irresponsible remarks, and seek class profits. However, when it comes to the "Occupy Wall Street" movement of the American people, these politicians have a different face. In their mouths, the demonstrators are a group of "losers", "troublemakers", and "thugs".

Liu Tao took a helicopter to Sanya to attend a regional integrated military meeting.

The ASEAN coalition has now entered the mid-stage of integration.

Now it’s time to talk about the military expenditures of each member state!
The scale of the ASEAN coalition forces has been determined long before. The ASEAN coalition forces will be built into a rapid reaction force, which will be integrated into 42 combined brigades and 2 combined divisions, totaling 50 land rapid reaction forces. The rapid reaction forces will be mainly light combined brigades, supplemented by medium combined brigades, amphibious combined brigades, and air assault brigades!

The rapid reaction force is mainly responsible for ensuring the security of ASEAN!
As for the navy, there are four aircraft carrier formations composed of four Type 001 light aircraft carriers to ensure the safety of the sea.

The Air Force includes a large number of second-generation aircraft, second-generation and a half fighters and some third-generation aircraft.

The military expenditure of the ASEAN coalition forces will naturally need to be paid by ASEAN countries.

As for how much each member country will contribute, this needs to be resolved in a meeting.

The military expenditure here naturally also includes the costs of eliminating the elderly and the weak, resettling veterans, and purchasing weapons and equipment.

Without saying anything, the ASEAN Joint Air Force will gradually eliminate the second-generation aircraft, and by 2020 its entire fleet will consist of second-generation and a half fighters and third-generation aircraft.

The cost of purchasing advanced fighter jets and the cost of air force airports and air force construction is not a small amount.

It is generally believed in the international community that the ratio of military expenditure to GDP should be between 2% and 4%, which is a relatively reasonable and safe range.

Everyone knows that a high proportion of military expenditure has a great impact on the development of a country. An increase in military expenditure means that investment in other areas may decrease, such as education, medical care, infrastructure, etc. The development of these areas is crucial to the long-term development of the country and the improvement of people's livelihood. Therefore, a high proportion of military expenditure may lead to an imbalance in the country's economic structure and even cause social dissatisfaction and unrest.

After friendly consultations among all parties, the proportion of GDP that each country is to pay for military expenditure will not be 4% or 3%, but 2%!

That is to say, each ASEAN country sets aside 2% of its GDP each year as military expenditure for the ASEAN coalition forces.

This ratio is relatively low and friendly to ASEAN countries, and is acceptable to all countries.

You have to know that before the meeting, some countries thought the ratio would be 10%, and even the most optimistic people thought it would be 5%.

No one expected that the final figure would be 2%.

How could this make ASEAN countries unhappy!
This also means that the national defense and security in the region will be entirely handed over to the ASEAN coalition forces, and each country only needs to work hard to develop the economy and people's livelihood.

You know, not long ago, the European coalition set the ratio of military expenditure to GDP of each member country at 3.5%. As a coalition, the ASEAN coalition's military expenditure ratio is equivalent to half of that of the European coalition.

This makes ASEAN countries very unhappy.

As for the ASEAN Joint Forces Headquarters and various theater commands, this is not too important and there are naturally professional teams to handle it.

After the meeting, everyone happily attended the celebration banquet, which was held at the standard of a state banquet and entertained all parties.

At the end of the year, Liu Tao went to Hong Kong.

This annual regional integration conference was held in Hong Kong. The scope of the conference was very broad, including economy, politics, military, culture and so on.

In addition to various politicians, there are also scholars, entrepreneurs, and so on.

For example, at this education conference, there was a proposal to focus on establishing several universities in Nanyang, and to include universities in the college entrance examination enrollment.

Regarding conferences on education, this topic has actually been around for several years.

In recent years, Nanyang has also been adjusting its education and has formed a similar education system, but in Nanyang, public education accounts for a smaller proportion, while private education accounts for a larger proportion.

There are universities in Nanyang, such as the Singapore Polytechnic, which are relatively good universities.

But it is obvious that the overall strength of Nanyang universities is relatively weak.

Whether to unify the college entrance examination and include it in college entrance examination admissions is something that must be considered carefully.

This also includes issues such as people of different places of origin going to school in different places.

Of course, there is also medical care. Medical care in Nanyang is mainly private, with public as a secondary source. Whether to increase investment in public hospitals is also worth discussing.

Integration may seem simple, but in fact it involves many aspects and there are countless problems that need to be solved.

Integration in the military field, for example, is actually relatively easy.

Of course, there are more subdivided areas, such as the film industry. Some filmmakers hope to break down restrictions and barriers in various places and completely form a unified large film market. Box office statistics are not counted separately, but together.

The entire integration forms a large market. Even though there is economic integration on the surface today, it is more of a formal integration, such as using a unified currency, abolishing internal tariff barriers to achieve zero tariffs within the region, implementing unified tariffs externally, no visas, and movement of people within the region, etc.

But there are also many problems that need to be solved.

Even the unification of laws requires time.

The week-long regional integration conference lasted a whole week and had a lot of hot topics, attracting a lot of attention.

For example, Singapore has been working hard in recent years to make itself the central city of Southeast Asia.

Once this goal is achieved, the benefits to Singapore will be self-evident. The profits brought by the financial services industry alone will be enough for Singaporeans to live a comfortable life.

In fact, Singapore does have this opportunity, as it is located in an important strategic location in Malacca. It can become the central city of Southeast Asia.

Moreover, the proportion of Chinese in Singapore now is absolutely the majority, and the language is Mandarin, but the writing uses traditional Chinese characters just like Hong Kong.

In the whole of Southeast Asia, Singapore has the highest proportion of Chinese, far ahead of others.

This meeting finally passed, establishing Singapore as the central city of the Nanyang region, with a multifunctional center positioning as the regional economic center, high-level scientific and technological innovation center, trade and logistics center and international exchange center.

This is definitely great news for Singapore.

Today, the Strait of Malacca carries a quarter of global trade. As Singapore is the crossroads of the Strait of Malacca, all major banks need to set up branches in Singapore, which has led to a large number of financial services. Singapore has become an important financial center in the world.

However, there is an important uncertainty in Singapore, and it is this uncertainty that causes great uncertainty in development here.

Now, as Singapore has been identified as the central city of the Nanyang region, its functional positioning has become clear. This means that Singapore has gone from uncertainty to certainty, which has given everyone reassurance and also means that it has a bright future.

And it's not just the financial industry. With the supporting policies, it is foreseeable that Singapore will usher in great development in biomedicine, refining and chemical industries, electronics industry, etc.

Before this, Singapore's original intention to build an oil refining center had already failed and was unable to continue. Now, this oil refining center will no longer be a dream.

As long as Singapore undertakes a part of the refining business in the region, it will be enough to become a major refining center in the world.

As for the shipbuilding industry, as long as it receives support, Singapore can easily become one of the largest shipbuilding bases in Southeast Asia.

As for the electronics industry, China is strong in this area. As long as it gets support, one can imagine how big the market here is.

It can be said that Singapore is the country that benefits the most from this conference!

Of course, all ASEAN countries will benefit greatly from this meeting. It can be expected that more capital will flow into the ASEAN region.

The market here will become bigger and bigger and full of vitality.

However, experts and enthusiasts in the military field are more concerned about the ASEAN coalition forces.

And they were not disappointed, the ASEAN coalition forces development blueprint was officially announced. (End of this chapter)