U.S. economic, military and foreign policy blunders make China’s global dominance appear entirely realistic, and for many observers inevitable.

Last week the Nicaraguan congress approved a $40 billion project for a Chinese company to build an Isthmian canal parallel to Panama’s. For those of us prone to peering anxiously into the future, this gave a disquieting advance picture of the new world of Chinese hegemony into which we are probably entering, whether we like it or not. As President Reagan famously remarked, Nicaragua is only two days’ drive from Harlingen, Texas. And presumably we can rely on China to cut that down a bit by improving the road!

Historically we must remember that the natural position of China is hegemony, though for several hundred years it only achieved that position by being deliberately geographically obtuse. Nevertheless, like ancient Egypt, for all but about 200 years of her history China has been militarily dominant over all powers it felt it had to deal with.

We should also remember that the high point of Chinese civilization was not the early Ming period of exploration by Admiral Zheng He under the Yongle emperor, but the apogee of the Song dynasty some three centuries earlier.

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