"Notorious China doomsayer Gordon Chang on Tuesday wrote on Twitter, "Americans, for the first time in their lives, are seeing empty shelves in the stores. This isn't right. We need to cut #China out of our supply chains by producing locally." Indeed, this isn't right: While people living in the strongest economy in the world have to face empty shelves in the stores, some so-called "China hands" are still trying to blame China for it. Some joke if Chang has any interest in predicting whether these empty shelves epitomize the coming collapse of the West.
....

Less than 20 years ago, political economist Benjamin Friedman compared modern Western society to a stable bicycle whose wheels are kept spinning by economic growth. But he argues as long as the wheels stop or slow down, the pillars that define the Western society - democracy, individual liberties, social tolerance and more - would begin to teeter. He believes should the West find no way to get the wheels back in motion, the Western society would eventually face a collapse.

The pillars described by Friedman are undoubtedly teetering. Take the US. Various domestic problems have put the country in division with widening gaps between the elites and ordinary people. This antagonism was sharpened when Donald Trump was in office, and is still being escalated under the Biden administration. As the pandemic has brought to light issues related to racism, human rights and so on that shame Western-style democracy, divisions in the US and other Western countries are intensifying.

Gordon Chang declared that China accumulated too many deep-rooted economic, social, and political ills in the past 50 years. He believes China's unemployment rate was high, government corruption caused widespread anger and resentment among people, and the then economic boom was a sham.

But each of Chang's so-called analysis and prediction for China is now happening in the Western countries represented by the US: extremely high debt, economic decline, uneven distribution of wealth, the class antagonisms, high unemployment rates, and rising public discontent. At the same time, the leadership does not have tools to deal with the series of continuous deteriorating political, economic, and social problems.

Now that the West is undergoing similar symptoms, should the scholars who predicted China's crackup turn to studying the coming collapse of the West?"

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202110/1236355.shtml

On Tuesday, October 19, 2021 at 10:57:35 AM UTC-5, ltlee1 wrote:
> "Notorious China doomsayer Gordon Chang on Tuesday wrote on Twitter, "Americans, for the first time in their lives, are seeing empty shelves in the stores. This isn't right. We need to cut #China out of our supply chains by producing locally." Indeed, this isn't right: While people living in the strongest economy in the world have to face empty shelves in the stores, some so-called "China hands" are still trying to blame China for it. Some joke if Chang has any interest in predicting whether these empty shelves epitomize the coming collapse of the West.
> ...
>
> Less than 20 years ago, political economist Benjamin Friedman compared modern Western society to a stable bicycle whose wheels are kept spinning by economic growth. But he argues as long as the wheels stop or slow down, the pillars that define the Western society - democracy, individual liberties, social tolerance and more - would begin to teeter. He believes should the West find no way to get the wheels back in motion, the Western society would eventually face a collapse.
>
> The pillars described by Friedman are undoubtedly teetering. Take the US. Various domestic problems have put the country in division with widening gaps between the elites and ordinary people. This antagonism was sharpened when Donald Trump was in office, and is still being escalated under the Biden administration. As the pandemic has brought to light issues related to racism, human rights and so on that shame Western-style democracy, divisions in the US and other Western countries are intensifying.
>
> Gordon Chang declared that China accumulated too many deep-rooted economic, social, and political ills in the past 50 years. He believes China's unemployment rate was high, government corruption caused widespread anger and resentment among people, and the then economic boom was a sham.
>
> But each of Chang's so-called analysis and prediction for China is now happening in the Western countries represented by the US: extremely high debt, economic decline, uneven distribution of wealth, the class antagonisms, high unemployment rates, and rising public discontent. At the same time, the leadership does not have tools to deal with the series of continuous deteriorating political, economic, and social problems.
>
> Now that the West is undergoing similar symptoms, should the scholars who predicted China's crackup turn to studying the coming collapse of the West?"
>
> https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202110/1236355.shtml

The US is not face a looming risk of collapse.
Rather it has a dependency problem which has been developing slowly over decades. And the US does like a third world country from time to time.

"China’s exports rose 28% in September from the year-earlier level, more than the analyst consensus had forecast. More important is that China’s exports to the United States have risen by 31% since January 2018, when President Trump imposed tariffs on a wide range of US imports from China. At a seasonally adjusted annual rate, the US is buying $635 billion of Chinese goods, equal to a staggering 27% of US manufacturing Gross Domestic Product.

That’s the sort of import dependency economists associate with Third World countries dependent on former colonial powers. US exports to China during the past 12 months were only 30% of China’s exports to the US."

https://asiatimes.com/2021/10/gobbling-chinas-exports-us-sinks-into-dependency/