TAs a result , the United States has influenced virtually every facet of modern 20th-century society , from politics and culture to science and technology . Despite the ideology of American exceptionalism , it would have been virtually impossible for the United States not to dominate world history , with all the deeds and misdeeds that have punctuated its rise . It would take a whole encyclopedia to write about the economic history of the 20th century and the original sins of previous centuries , based on free labor , colonialism and neo-colonialism , which promoted the shameless exploitation of the resources of militarily weaker peoples . A situation of chronic injustice that some have had the audacity to codify , by outright excluding countries like those in Africa from the United Nations Security Council and several other decision-making bodies on world a airs such as the G7 . As we try to understand what influence China will have as it takes over the leadership of the global economy , we can ' t help but make a comparative study of the foundations of the opulence of the two rival forces . Interestingly , when we compare the origins of economic wealth and growth in the two entities , the West and China , we find that there is opposition , even antagonism , in the path to the top . A kind of cross-conception is palpable from the outset . Firstly , while the West and the United States initially built their economic opulence on slave labor , China was built on the cheap labor of its people for Western multinationals . However , it was a labor that China , interestingly enough , transformed into a transfer of technology . On this primordial aspect of the origin of opulence , we realize that China and its economic conquest seem to have avenged the proletarians of the underworld , who for centuries worked to make the West an economic superpower , without ever having had the pleasure of being remunerated commensurate with their labor . The opulence acquired by a proletarian people thus takes on the appearance of a kind of natural justice against a brutal capitalist system that has exploited the weakest for centuries .
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Flashmag ! Issue 149 April 2024
But the story doesn ' t end there : despite everything , China has an interest in doing better in the way it collaborates with less a uent peoples such as those in Africa , where it sometimes seems to want to inherit the discriminatory reflex of the West towards the latter . The perpetuation of this contempt would not change the situation for others , who hope to have frank , bilateral business relations rather than relations between the dominant and the dominated .
e second notorious ambivalence in the materialization of the Chinese versus Western paradigm is the phenomenon of freedom . Whereas in the West we speak of democracy and freedom , in China we speak of oneparty rule and control of society , including with new technological tools . However , while civil society in the West is working hard to ensure that Western society does not end up in a hyper-controlled Orwellian world , governments and the technological elite in the West , for their part , are working to give citizens the illusion of freedom , while at the same time insidiously developing technology to control society . In contrast , China has not shied away from the complexities of libertarian morality or human rights to go further in adopting masscontrol technologies first conceived by Western technological elites .