Chinese Pres Xi is Correct: Rules-Based Order Is In Decay, But We Once Looked to the Stars | Africa and the World

President Xi Jinping is widely reported to have told Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez that the international order is crumbling into disarray, during their meeting last month in Beijing. Both leaders have condemned President Trump’s unprovoked war against the nation of Iran and rejected the desperate pleas by President Trump for support of his reckless military actions. Their discussion on April 14, at the Great Hall of the People, acknowledged the conditions of the world are fraught with danger, and pledged increased cooperation between the two nations. Keep in mind that President Trump was to meet President Xi for a summit on March 31, before he postponed it due to his self-imposed quagmire in Iran. That summit has been rescheduled for May 14-15, which appears will occur.

President Xi’s description of the crumbling and disarray of the Western orchestrated rules-based international order goes beyond previous statements by the Chinese President, regarding the failure of Western policies. The Chinese translation of this phrase reveals that President Xi’s remarks were more perceptive and discerning than one might think. The literal translation is an idiom: the rites have crumbled and the music is ruined, which conveys moral decay.

This astute observation is absolutely correct. The decadence of the West, with its moral, cultural, and economic rot is there for all to witness, if they desire. One has to look no further than the contorted responses by western leaders for their involvement with the morally depraved Jeffrey Epstein. Or what passes for political (un)thinking in the United States. It is absolutely clear to any astute and honest thinker that survival of humanity requires an escape from the rules-based morally decayed order to a more advanced set of principles (not rules) guiding relations among nations.

China will undoubtedly be a leading nation in creating a new paradigm. U.S. officials and poorly informed Americans have little to no understanding of China’s history, culture, or the thinking propelling their unparalleled economic growth over the last forty-five years. The U.S. government and its citizens have been conditioned to think of “politics” in terms of what provides immediate gratification in the seconds, hours, or days ahead. By contrast, the Chinese think of what policies today, will result in benefits to society, decades, and centuries into the future. For example, President Trump is obsessed in securing supply chains for critical and rare earth minerals, with China controlling the refinement of 90% of these resources. Should China be accused of nefariously controlling these precious resources needed for computer chips, AI, and military munitions, because they understood their importance a generation before the West? Should we discriminate against China because they are smarter than us?

Society’s culture should emphasize nurturing a child’s creative potential to discover the laws of the universe. (Courtesy of communityplaythings.com)

The clearest evidence for the indictment of the crumbling and disarray of the Western orchestrated rules-based order is their lack of vision for the future of humanity. Their gross failure to recognize that human creativity, the uniquely human creative imagination, is the single most powerful resource in our universe. Not money, not power, not military might, not the glitz and glitter of opulent wealth: but the human mind housed inside the human body. A nation should not be governed on a “business model.” It should be led by a statesman, who is guided by a vision for the advancement of humankind.

Thus, the physical development of human beings and the nurturing of their creative powers should become the principle of a new paradigm replacing the morally and culturally doomed rules-based order.

The U.S. Economy Is Bankrupt
The U.S. federal debt has surpassed 100% of GDP, marking a significant fiscal milestone. As of March 31, the debt reached $31.265 trillion, slightly exceeding the GDP of $31.216 trillion. It is now official, the U.S. owes more in federal debt than our GDP, which itself is terribly flawed, because it does not accurately measure the real physical wealth of an economy. We should also acknowledge that total U.S. federal and private debt exceeds $100 trillion, once we include consumer credit debt, mortgage debt, school debt, state debt, and corporate debt. And all of this debt exists within a financial system loaded with two quadrillion dollars of speculative derivatives.

The U.S. economy exists on increasing amounts of debt that will never, ever be repaid. Without this almost tenfold increase of debt during the last quarter of a century, the U.S. economy would not exist in its present state. It would not be able to pursue its goal of dictating policy to the rest of the world as the super hegemon. The U.S. economy exists on a mountains of debt at the expense of an increasing number of Americans struggling to survive.

While all categories of U.S. debt have been growing exponentially, the goods producing sector, i.e., productive component of the U.S. economy, has been shrinking since the end of World War II. Simultaneously, employment has increased in the service sector, which employs five times as many workers. This trajectory, which has existed for generations is destroying the U.S. economy and is one of the primary causes of economic suffering by the vast majority of Americans. Service sector jobs do not produce wealth, they consume wealth

Manufacturing jobs are the most essential category of employment for every economy. The manufacturing sector, which produces the physical wealth of the economy, is the pillar that sustains real economic growth and provides for the material standard of living of citizens. Not only has the U.S. employment in the manufacturing sector collapsed precipitously in this century, from 17.32 million in 2,000 to 12.69 million today, but in the last 16 months, the U.S. has lost upwards of an additional 100,000 manufacturing jobs.

For 100 years, the US led the world in manufacturing. Then, in 2010, China surpassed the U.S. And the lead has kept increasing.

The most resounding indictment confirming the crumbling and disarray of the rules-based order is the failure of the U.S. to continue the cultural and economically uplifting determination to explore space, led by President John Kennedy. While I am happy to see the success of the Artemis 2 mission in April 2026, the last moon landing mission was Apollo 17 in 1972. That was over a half-century ago, and astronauts may not land again on the moon for several more years. During this same period, U.S. culture has suffered greatly, absent a true leader over the last fifty-four years, who would lift the minds of the population upwards towards the stars.

The proposed White House budget for NASA in 2026 represents a 24% cut. This would be the lowest amount of money for NASA since 1961, when President launched his “Man on the Moon” program.

Humankind was created to colonize space, and in the process master the laws of the universe. A robust space program emphasizes the importance of nurturing human creativity, by focusing the minds of our citizens on the discovery of new physical principles, which govern the universe. Our young adults and children have been denied the excitement of watching human beings land on an object in space, 250,000 miles from earth.

The collapse of our space program from over 4% of the U.S. budget to approximately .5%, is criminal, and beyond economic stupidity. It demonstrates the utter lack of any understanding of physical economics. Investments in space explorations upgrade scientific research, and lead to new technologies and materials that propel an economy forward. It is estimated that there was a fourteen cent returned to the economy for every one cent spent on Kennedy’s space program, producing a giant leap in productivity.

President John F Kennedy visits Cape Canaveral, Fla. on Nov. 16, 1963.

(Courtesy of stateline.org)
The source of wealth is the creative human mind. Over thousands of years, humans have contributed to the development of our planet through our creative-noetic intervention into the universe. All so-called natural resources are made useful by human discoveries and deployed to benefit the propagation of the human race. There is no independent source of wealth. New technologies, discoveries, the by-products of space exploration, are the drivers of a successful economy.

Continuous scientific discovery is responsible for producing robust economic growth, unlike stock trading or monetary gains from speculative financial bubbles. By its practice over recent decades, the U.S. and the rules-based order, have condemned themselves to crumbling and disarray, as President Xi has stated.

Lawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in economic development policies for Africa for over 35 years. He is a teacher, writer, public speaker, consultant on Africa, and an analyst of global strategic relations. Mr. Freeman strongly believes that economic development is an essential human right. He is the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com, also publishes on: lawrencefreeman.substack.com, “Freeman’s Africa and the World, and on X @lkfreemansafrica

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