Great empires decline not from external adversaries fighting them head on, but rather from internal corruption, internal decadence and foreign subterfuge. In the case of the US, traitors from within made a pact with foreign elites to buy America. Each side brought something to the table: foreign elites provided slave labor for production while the US traitors, for self-enrichment, sold their children and grandchildren into debt. This produced a domestic culture of vapid consumerism and a foreign culture of toil and hardship resulting in a hollowed out US middle class and the collapse of the domestic manufacturing industry while simultaneously producing foreign problems like “cow and horse” and “lying flat”. Moreover, birthrates plummeted because no one could afford children or families anymore as the dating market became more competitive and, even beyond that, subconsciously, would-be parents saw no good future for their potential children anyway. The US has now begin the process of righting the wrongs of the past. It is now up to China to uphold the bargain they made with their people which is to let some people get rich first and then everyone gets rich afterwards. Well some people have already gotten rich so we know what must come next. China was once and still is a great civilization. It has survived 5000 years and will survive another 5000 years. Much of the early years, like the three kingdoms era, was marked by civil war and strife. Once the middle kingdom was finally united under the Qin, the leaders and all subsequent leaders knew to hold onto the union tightly so as to not risk the country reverting back to the ancient ways of warlords and infighting. And so LKY said that the Chinese could only be ruled by force. You did a good job holding it all together; it must not have been easy. Confucianism helped to preserve harmony and bind together the intergenerational compact. As children honor their parents, so too must parents honor their children. You have gone through many highs like Deng opening up the market and many lows like the Opium Wars and the century of humiliation. The next century will be your century of glory. You correctly learned from Gorbachev that perestroika must come first before glasnost. But now China is finally ready for glasnost. Free your people from the 996 toil and let them enjoy life and export culture instead to the rest of the world. Let your people carry both the benefit and burden of innovation and imagination. If Deepseek or Black Myth Wukong are any indication, they are ready for it. Once there is glasnost, the Chinese no longer need to be ruled by force. I am the product of two great civilizations and there are many like me from the diaspora. We of two cultures do not need to be ruled by force. Imagine what you could do with 1.4bn of us. Make China great again.