[WOSG]

I find the article mostly correct. The most wise observation was this: As a European editor wrote apropos the flow of scientists from Europe to America: “What’s most sad is that Europeans still believe that their society represents the epitome of civilisation, while the US is on its way to downfall. What if the reality is the reverse?” Every European should contemplate that possibility, at least for a moment, before resuming their current aversion to all things American.

The key European flaw in my view is arrogance. Even though America is the real superpower, there is an arrogance about the European governing elite (not its peoples and cultures). Europe does indeed represent an apex of civilization, but one that bad leadership (EU-centric sclerotic statists) and poor ideas (socialism) is frittering away. Europe is too arrogant to notice nor correct its key faults.

This was the same error btw of the once great Chinese civilization. In the Ming dynasty, they were so arrogant they decided no other civilization could teach them anything, so they hibernated for 600 years, then woke up to find British guns on the Yalu could beat them to a pulp. Europe wont have so long to see their own fall from grace and power.

[swilhelm73]

This was the same error btw of the once great Chinese civilization. In the Ming dynasty, they were so arrogant they decided no other civilization could teach them anything, so they hibernated for 600 years, then woke up to find British guns on the Yalu could beat them to a pulp. Europe wont have so long to see their own fall from grace and power.

Actually, and I think this is an important point, the Ming dynasty was destroyed by Manchu barbarians long before the Brits got there. Likewise, I think, Europe faces not some great world power - but a group of barbarians seeing weakness in the form of militant Islam.

China was the most powerful state in the world in the early 1400s, and the explorations by Zheng He were impressive and opened by the option of an Empire of the sort the world would not see until the Spanish Empire of the 1500s.

But as you note they decided they had achieved perfection and had nothing to learn from the outside world. Records of China's explorations were erased, and the great navy destroyed.

China coasted on its previous power and slowly rotted from the inside. A couple of hundred years later a tribe of (basically) Mongols and internal dissention was all it took to leave the once great Empire in ruin.

China would not become a great power again until Mao in the 1950s.