This is how it works in my opinion, which people rarely express, but they know. Since we are talking about it, will make a brief post.
1) The Americans have dollar hegemony. That gives them that exorbitant privilege. The best example of that, was when Biden gave out all those COVID cheques out, and that free money went to buy Chinese goods. They bought stuff for nothing, because that money came right off the printing press of Jerome. Normally, when a country runs the printing press like that, interest rates should go through the roof and the currency should collapse. That does not happen to the USD because it is the reserve currency of the world. That is the exorbitant privilege.
2) The Europeans always resented that, and they got clever and created the Euro currency, a common currency. The Germans thought that this would give them an export edge, because in the old days with the Duetsche Mark, that would go up and down affecting German exports. With the Euro, the game changed for the Germans, for the better. The Duetshce Mark used to go up, which lower German exports. However, the Euro does not go up, because of Club Med. Those countries in the south of Europe, drags down the value of the Euro. The wealthy European states, mostly in northwestern Europe like this arrangement, but the poorer Europeans states did not but were powerless to do anything about it, as they were poor. That was why that communist leader in Greece sold out his people. He wanted to be paid in Euros, and not Dinars. The common currency the Euro benefited greatly the rich industrialized northern Europe.
3) Now we come to China, who is a Marxist-Lennist state, who practice capitalism, so no one can trick them. They know you Westerners are running a scam operation, and rigged the game for yourselves. F U. Okay, this is what we are going to do. Number 1, open up the economy, somewhat. Number 2, pegged the RMB at a depressed rate. Even though the game is rigged by yous, you won't get the better of us.
So this game continued for decades, and everyone though they had a winning hand in the long run.
Then came the Beijing Winter Olympics of 2022 where Uncle Vlad declared an unlimited friendship with grandpa Xi. Then totally unexpectedly, the tanks roll! Holy shit!
Then subsequent events, made this current game, of US dollar hegemony, German industry taking advantage of the Euro exchange rate, and China with its market not fully open and the RMB pegged, this game probably cannot continue anymore.
That war in Europe was the catalyst for this game between the three to start unraveling.
But the reasons that this game is unraveling, can be traced to events going back decades.
