"China is the future, do you agree?"
How would you answer this, and how would you expect Chinese netizens on Xiaohongshu to answer?
I will link to the thread in the comments because I want you to take a moment and think about it first.
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For whatever it's worth, despite never formally studying Chinese, I managed to read both the Chinese sentences, albeit with the wrong tones. Like to be fair I have studied Japanese, and I am generally a bit of a weirdo with a knack for this sort of thing — but I do still have to wonder if more people are just going to start casually picking up hanzi just from exposure like I have, as China becomes more prominent. I could certainly see it happening.
"China is the future" is a bit of a vague question, though. Just from my interpretation of it...
I absolutely think that the USA is currently crumbling as the world's hegemon — interestingly enough, the USA's flag actually has stars on it to represent a "new constellation", using the constellations in the sky as an allegory for the rise and fall of nations; so it indeed seems like the fifty-star constellation is beginning to fall beyond the horizon, as a new five-star constellation rises.
This being said, I don't think China's behavior as future hegemon will be the same as the USA's current behavior as present hegemon. I don't necessarily know what to expect from the future, though, so it's probably best to prepare for all possibilities until we gain a clearer understanding of the situation.
Also, we can't really know and judge China as the world leader, as they're not yet.
As soon as you are on top, your behaviour might change. Both for the better, but most likely for the worse. (see US)
Also, we have to remember that China still needs all western partners to keep up their production. They are still a manufacturing country.
As soon as you are on top, your behaviour might change.
It might, it might not. America's behavior didn't change; from the start they've been aggressive and expansionist, the scope just grew as they became more powerful.
China's been growing rapidly for decades while very seldomly acting militarily outside their borders. They don't seem to have expansionist goals outside those declared over 70 years ago (ie Taiwan) and have even negotiated down on border conflicts. It's not impossible but it'd be strange for China to make a complete about-turn on their stated policy of non-intervention.