Kishore Mahbubani

Americans fundamentally believe that they should stand for universal values and sincerely believe that the world would be a better place if the rest of humanity absorbed and implemented American values.

It was an Indian political scientist, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, who alerted me to a significant difference between the democratic Indian society and communist Chinese society. He shrewdly observed that India was an open society with a closed mind, whereas China was a closed society with an open mind.

If exposure to Japanese democracy could persuade thoughtful Chinese to consider the virtues of democracy, exposure to Indian democracy would have exactly the opposite effect. Whereas Japanese democracy is reassuringly calm and stable (reflecting the Japanese emphasis on harmony in interpersonal relations and its Confucian heritage), Indian democracy is loud and rambunctious, reflecting the spirit of the argumentative Indian. I know this spirit well as I was born an argumentative Indian.

And these people—most of them have no access to education,” he said. “So how can you imagine that these people are in a position to talk about democracy when they are simply illiterate?”

“There is a special tone of voice that the Chinese now only reserve for the Americans.” For all China’s continuing insistence that it was still a developing nation, the government in Beijing was increasingly behaving like a superpower in the making—and the only country that it still seemed to regard as a true equal was the United States.

In short, even though many American businesses continue to prosper in China, a growing number of firms have given up hope that the playing field will ever be level. Some have accepted the Faustian bargain of maximizing today’s earnings per share while operating under restrictions that jeopardize their future competitiveness. But that doesn’t mean they’re happy about it.

Domestically, the US government spends more than it collects in income. This creates a fiscal deficit. Internationally, America imports more goods than it exports. This creates a trade deficit. How does America pay for these twin deficits? It borrows money

This creates an obvious incentive to reduce dependence on the US dollar, which could eventually precipitate a fall in global demand for US dollars, crippling the United States’ ability to finance its twin deficits

Americans should be grateful that the rest of the world is funding this exorbitant privilege

the weaponizing of the US dollar has created a powerful global incentive to create an alternative currency for global trading purposes