"The United States is also a one-party state, but with typical American extravagance, they have two of them."Democrats vs. Republicans is just a performance, a facade. The US, like virtually every government out there, is made up of an oligarchic core of political and business elites organized into ever shifting factions, which do not reflect the binary split that they present to the dumb **** public who can only be trusted to ever think in binary terms.
The neo-conservatives, who comprise the most powerful faction in American politics today, cut across party lines. There's both Democrats and Republicans among them, and they have command of American policy regardless of which president is in power. The difference between Biden and Trump is that the former is totally and obviously a puppet of the "deep state"; while the latter, having come from an oligarchic family and been a high profile executive in his own right, is more likely to influence "deep state" policy through his own political power.
People here should know better than to fall for the "democracy" song and dance that serves as a front for the American oligarchy. If you want to understand American politics, pay attention to the factions.
I mean can people not obviously see that Europre really started taking off only after the 1400s where the age of exploration took place? What a coincidence huh?You list many reasons for why China and all other empires fell behind the west. But colonialism really is the primary reason. Modern capitalism and incorporated companies were invented in the Netherlands with the Dutch East India company. Later, the British East India company started conquering countries in India and collecting tax and it's more than just a coincidence that the industrial revolution started just after the battle of Plassey. This focused the wealth of around 30 million Bengalis on 10 million British (in around 1800) and importantly gave the British a captured market that could only import British products but wasn't allowed to compete with Britain.
Capitalism and the industrial revolution are both children of colonialism. The Spanish only gained silver and gold from America, but the surviving population under Spanish rule was fairly small compared to the population of Spain in Europe and they weren't forced to take Spanish products. Britain gained human resources in India. For most of the 19th century, India's total GDP was multiples of Britain.
Western countries like to pretend that it's something special about their system, the rule of law, "freedom", entrepreneurialism or inventors etc. But it's really based on oppression and the Dutch and British East India companies.
Other empires just never managed to exploit a much larger economy than their own and grow through exports. China or the other empires in Asia would have needed to take the resources from all the provinces and focus them only on the development of one province to achieve something similar.
Luckily, you can use capitalism without a colonial empire to fuel it. That's how the US, Germany and later China rose
At the same time we see the decline of European influence after it has no more colonies. Again what a coincidence huh?