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The Chinese president Xi Jinping usually reminds other heads of state who visit him that his country has been the world’s economic and cultural center for 18 of the last 20 centuries of history of humanity. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel came to ask her advisor Lars-Hendrik Röller to verify such statements. Confirmed the XI version
he recounts in his biography.
For China, Merkel continues, becoming a world power is nothing but return to normal. Remember Lucian Pye’s canonical definition: China is a civilization that pretends to be a nation
. What does this suppose? Thinking from Europe, which despite its decline continues to place itself in the center of the Mapamundi, is complex.
That China returns to stay already knew. That Trump was going to put on a red carpet was more difficult to foresee. The United States dominates 15 percent of world trade, which gives it an important participation in global shareholders, but the rest of the world retains a vast majority in which China has preferred actions. Not imported to your enemy when it is wrong.
Because the Asian giant has long since ceased to be that country that copied products at a lower price and quality. China is already the great producer of fundamental subjects for the economy, such as steel (1,19 tons in 2024, 71st American front), cement (9 thousand 456, compared to 4,520 US) or electricity (2 thousand 100 twh front 91 twh).
But he doesn’t stay there either. The country, which has recently left the Global Audience Ojiplática with the launch of the Open -Edepseek open source intelligence chat, is already, here and now, the main scientific power of the world.
Thomas L. Friedman, columnist of the New York Times He has just visited Huawei facilities in Shanghai, and has told him in an article entitled with a mastery. I just saw the future. I wasn’t in America
. In 2019, the technology company received a tremendous sake when the United States imposed sanctions and vetoed access to semiconductors. In any other case, it would have been a death sentence. Huawei’s response tells us about what China is today: with the active support of the State, in three years the Lianqiu Lake R&D campus has raised, with 104 buildings united by Monorraíl and space and laboratories for 35 thousand scientists and engineers.
Huawei is much more than a company that produces mobile phones. Artificial intelligence, electric mobility, automated mining … there is no stick that does not touch. Only in 2024 he installed 100,000 fast loaders for electric vehicles. In contrast, explains Friedman, the 7,500 million dollars committed by the US Congress in 2021 to create a network of load stations have resulted, until November 2024, in just 214 operational loaders.
All this technological development does not drink only from a spectacular manufacturing capacity. It is also the result of several strategic decisions taken in the long term. The first is to ensure crucial resources for the economy of the 21st century, such as rare earths or other critical raw materials, from cobalt to lithium.
The second is to bet on large -scale research, folding the budget in higher education in just a decade, focusing mainly on STEM (sciences, technologies, engineering and mathematics).
From the shortcomings of this Stem approach it can be discussed, but the result is now the so -called talent dividend. The country has more than 60 million highly qualified professionals. One in two researchers in the artificial intelligence of the world is graduated from a Chinese university. Imran Khalid remembers that in 2014 only eight Chinese universities were in the top 100 of Nature Index Global, which measures the level of research of academic institutions around the world. Ten years later there are 42, compared to 36 Americans. The trend is evident and will only expand with a Trump that, which Millán Astray of the 21st century, has declared war on the academy, knowledge and intelligence.
There was a time when people came to the United States to see the future, now come here
a American businessman told Friedman in Beijing. Thus, it would be stupid not to look at China. Pedro Sánchez, who has among his gifts with those of the opportunity and the good ventura, was gathered with Xi Jinping in China when the president responded to Trump’s tariffs on April 11. Beijing’s response was illustrated in half the world with the photo of Xi and Sánchez.
No one protested for the visit in Brussels, where they have also cared for the visit of the Italian Giorgia Meloni to Washington. Europe aspires to negotiate with Trump while preparing a top at the highest level with China for June. Even at the risk of being cake, the road seems unavoidable, for Europe and also for Latin America. Of course, it would be convenient to take precautions to prevent the end of the US protection from becoming all of Chinese colonies.
