I remember how convinced people were that Japan was going to be the dominant economy and we were toast. But it was American's inventiveness that saved us — Japan was great at production, but we were the innovative nation. Goldman's essay mentions that same aspect of US-China relations.
China, however, has an even more troublesome aversion to "loss of face" than Japan, which has been graceful in its attempts to ally with us in the aftermath of its hideous cruelties of WW2. This article so ably points out the gaps in spiritual development of the inscrutable Chinese thought process. What is missing is any prognostication about the effects of underground Christianity in China that might mitigate China's typical "lovelessness" in future.
Goldman seems to think that government funding of cutting edge technologies is crucial. He cites goods examples, and of course the Internet itself grew out of a military program.
On the other hand, I remember Japan pouring a LOT of money into supercomputers in the ‘80s. Outside of laptops, the PC revolution didn’t really create computer dominant companies from Japan. NEC, Epson, Fujitsu weren’t the giants of the field, nor were they the innovators.
Anyway, by the time the supercomputers were ready, the technology had changed, and the U.S. companies (IBM, DEC, Sun, HP) had already leap-frogged whatever it was the Japanese were working on.
I don’t understand enough about quantum computing or 5g to know if that would play out the same way. It could well be that some projects (e.g. the Internet) can’t get started with private funding in exchage for a promise of big bucks VERY far down the road. Who really is going to invest in a hyperloop, except for those who don’t care whether it is a scam because the money will be made and lost before that gets figured out.
If Goldman is right about the Chinese as a people and as a government not having a deep, truly held underlying philosophy, that it is all raw power, then it will always be vulnerable to a REAL idea, whether that idea is International Communism, Islam, Christianity or Falun Gong.
I would also like to think that the 20 million+ Chinese who have embraced Christianity do have friends, because of the filial love that is essential to the Faith. I do know that the Faithful Chinese Bishops have been among the most amazing,strong Christians in modern times.