US-China Trade War

One of the unintended consequences of the US-China trade war launched by President Donald Trump is exposing the vulnerability of CCP's ruling legitimacy in Mainland China. If he can pull off the Soviet Union like regime downfall, he would position himself in the same league as other American greatest presidents, e.g., Ronald Reagan. But the trade war also forces China to accelerate the realization of its ambitious roadmap to decouple itself and its allies from US's financial, technological and geopolitical ecosystem. If China manages to survive and achieve sustainable socioeconomic growth over the years, it too could offer a role model framework for other Asia Pacific countries and European Union to follow suit and decouple themselves from the US centric global financial system and global geopolitical hegemony. This will lead to the dethrone of US from its helm as the sole post-coldwar era Superpower and result a multi-polar world.

While former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has predicted the the bifurcation of Internet into Chinese-led Internet and non-Chinese internet led by America in the near future in a private event hosted by Village Global VC; Sinovation Ventures CEO and former Google China president Kai Fu Lee foresees a future world that's dominated by China and the US with these two Superpowers become parallel universes thanks to their technology advancement driven by AI capability.

He pointed out that the trade war between US and China will not reverse this trend as the highly successful large scale urban and suburban development experiences in China have a lot to offer for countries that follow the same growth trajectory.

According to him, big cities in China are probably 5 to 10 years ahead of other cities in Asia and the tech business scene in different tiers of cities in China might offer an insightful window for the public and private sectors in different Asian countries to predict how digital ecosystem (including digital products and digital businesses) would evolve in the cities with similar characteristics in the upcoming years.

Besides, China also have a wide spectrum of rapid suburb development models that are driven by infrastructure development which could provide truly relevant guiding models as well as valuable lessons learned for African countries that are looking for foreign aids to lift the suburbs‘ living standard.

Reference:

[1] https://www.gvm.com.tw/article.html?id=55825

[2] https://www.cfr.org/event/artificial-intelligence-race-and-new-world-order

[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/20/eric-schmidt-ex-google-ceo-predicts-internet-split-china.html