Alternative Ending

This story was inspired by the series on a possible ending of the American Empire in the Archdruid Report.
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/how-it-could-happen-part-one-hubris.html
 Mine is a darker and more jaundiced version. He ends it with a bang. I have followed the vision of T.S.Eliott that it will end in a whimper.

    Alternative Ending

It happened to the Red Indians, the Tibetans and the Highlanders. It almost happened to the Chinese and the Turks. It is now happening to the Americans and Europeans.


    'This is the way the world ends
    This is the way the world ends
    This is the way the world ends
    Not with a bang, but a whimper.'

    This, the great Anglo-American poet-prophet T.S.Eliott saw. That was how America ended anyway. There was no nuclear holocaust, no brave last stand, no Custer and certainly no Battle of Maldon. Not even a battle of Tsushima strait. Oh, yes! The Americans had at first talked a good fight, bestriding the world like a Colossus, but as the Chairman had said, they were merely paper tigers, afraid to use their nuclear teeth. When push had turned to shove, the dollar had turned to waste paper, American pretensions had turned to dust, and they had been revealed as the Hollow Men. As hollow and as broken as the Colossus of Rhodes, which likewise had been hauled off as scrap from the world stage. The More Equal Treaties, as the Chinese had called them, in allusion to  their 19th century history had formalised the Chinese colonisation and incremental takeover of sovereignty in what had been North America and was now the homeland of the second billion of overseas Chinese. The Animal Farm some Americans had sourly called the result, apparently in part an allusion to a book by an obscure English author, in a language which, once dominant had now been replaced by Mandarin. That had been while there had still been Americans capable of making and understanding literary allusions.

    The American decay and collapse was long drawn out, slow at first then rapid as it became irreversible. It was a matter of morals, and their surrogate, money, far more than a military affair. It was not the fault of a political miscalculation. It was not caused by any deficiency in information or any lack of cunning in devising subtle policies or in military strategy. Information and subtlety and skill abounded in the political and bureaucratic world, but were useless.The moral deficiency in self control and self respect which led to Americans being known as the grossest and greediest people in the world led to their rulers allowing, for reasons of personal expediency, the transfer of the productive economy to China and eastern Asia to enable those few who controlled it and who were already excessively wealthy but insatiably greedy and indifferent to the welfare of their fellow countrymen, in pursuit of still more money.This had left a mere shell, a casino economy of fraud and financial chicanery and statistical lies, through which those who really controlled things behind their political stooges had extracted any remaining wealth, leaving only false and dashed hopes, illusory dreams dispersing in a a new American
dawn of despair, disease and moral and physical decay.

    The correlate to this moral deficiency was financial deficits. Accustomed to excessive consumption Americans had bankrupted themselves by continuing to live at levels which were now beyond their individual and collective means. 'Your wages are set in Shanghai' was a saying in the globalised economy to which insufficient attention was paid. At first it was easy and apparently painless to live off accumulated wealth. The process was masked and made easy by mortgages when house prices were rising and it seemed the loans could always be repaid from eventual sale at much higher prices. The banks and the financial system had spread the virus of greed and folly which had shifted activity and attention from productive activity and sober lending, to a crazy chase after paper profits in a casino
of deceit, betting on indices which were rigged in any case, betting on irrelevant impossible absurdities packaged by mathematicians and sold by the slickest salesmen to greedy and gullible fools.

    The gravity of the situation had been masked for some time by the fact that the dollar was the reserve
currency of the world, used to finance trade between other countries, and especially, the international trade in oil. Thus there were far more dollars in circulation than were required by the domestic economy,so Americans could buy foreign goods by printing their own currency, and it was easy for the American government to raise cheap loans from the rest of the world to waste on it's corporate and political welfare programmes, sustaining it's corrupt political class for a while longer, and hiding the ultimate cost. As the relative and then the absolute share of America's participation in the world economy declined, and hysterical American bombast and bullying increased, the rest of the world slowly shifted their trade and their reserves away from the dollar. There were various economic shocks and cycles along the way, but economic political and cultural power inexorably flowed eastwards. Forced devaluations of the dollar made imports very expensive for the Americans, and interest rates had to rise despite the
manipulations of the American government and banks to suppress them. The cost of interest on government debts and the difficulty of rolling their repayment further into the future resulted in squeezing programmes with the least political support and the effective increase of taxes on an ever more impoverished population, partly by means of unjust regulations made to raise revenue, and  additions to the weight of bureaucratic costs on individuals and small businesses.

    Eventually even the monstrous expenditure on the military establishment, which had equaled that of the rest of the world put together, had to be scaled back, and  the network of military bases and spy centres around the world had to be reduced.Even the programmes to develop science fiction weapons at astronomical cost had to be trimmed.At first these cuts still left the American military in a far better state than their Soviet counterparts had been when the Soviet Union had collapsed and the Red Army and Fleet had rusted, and desperate soldiers and sailors had sold anything they could lay hands on to get a few sacks of potatoes to keep themselves alive. The cost of maintaining troops abroad became a much greater strain when they had to be paid in foreign currencies against which the dollar was devaluing.

     The American president had bestrode the world like a Collossus, brandishing his nuclear club and protected by his dollar shield. As he became a more puny Hercules, 'wearing the lion's skin, but weighed down by the club', he attracted more derision than respect, and contempt rather than obedience. No major power believed that the American government would risk losing even a few of it's cities in retaliation, and American politicians were laughably easy to bribe.

    As the world's economic situation declined, countries found that gold was the most valued part of their reserves. The indifference verging on contempt with which America was viewed by the rest of the world changed to contempt verging on fury as it was revealed that the gold reserves of the United States and of other countries, particularly Germany, which had been deposited with American banks and institutions when the Americans had been able to bully them, had simply been stolen.The United States could not return the gold because it no longer had any gold. The more than 8,000 tons of American reserves, the largest hoard in the world, supposedly held in Fort Knox had been replaced by gold plated tungsten bars, worth very little in comparison to the missing gold. The over 2,000 tons of German gold and smaller but still substantial amounts belonging to other countries which had been deposited with
American banks had also vanished, leaving mere pieces of paper behind. American goldbugs who rushed to collect their gold from America's financial institutions found that they had also been cheated. There were more than a hundred times as many certificates of ownership in circulation than there was actual gold. Successive American governments had long resisted demands to audit the Federal Reserve and Fort Knox, and to account properly to foreign governments for their gold deposits. Now the reason became painfully clear to the whole world. Decades earlier the bankers who controlled American governments and the Federal Reserve had lent all this gold to their banks, in murky transactions, returning either counterfeit bars or mere promises to pay. The actual gold had been siphoned off abroad or used to manipulate the markets to keep the price of gold artificially low, in support of the corrupt financial system of fiat paper currencies and low interest rates to benefit government borrowing and it's corrupt political constituencies of cheap borrowers as well as banksters; at the expense of honest savers and the creation
of capital. Many foolish people, including the Maximum Imbecile, Gordon Brown, who had sold half of Britain's gold reserves at a particularly low price, actually believed that gold was a 'barbarous relic' which had been replaced by the 'good as gold' lies of governments and their fiat currencies. Wiser governments knew that the world could still be a barbarous place rather than the socialist utopia they promoted to the masses, so they steadily bought all the gold that appeared on the market, also having no motive to let it's price rise whilst doing so.

     When the proverbial rainy day arrived, and the people of America and Europe went to their gold cupboard, they found it was bare. There was a lot more gold in Israel, India and China than there had been, but they weren't publicising that. The outrage around the world and within America had resulted in people refusing to buy anything from America if they could avoid it, or to sell anything unless paid in full, upfront and in a stronger currency. No one was willing to have financial dealings with American banks, at home or abroad. Bank premises were set on fire and junior bank staff murdered. That hardly affected the senior bankers who had been responsible. Having 'spoiled the Egyptians', they had folded their tents, sold their investments, and followed their wealth and their dual citizenships abroad.Naturally, the same people who had stolen so much, through every form of deceit, and caused the problems which they then forced the American government to pay for by re-capitalising their banks at the expense of the taxpayers, did not fail to extract a last profit by selling America and the dollar short, all the way down. 'When we've sucked America dry, it can shrivel up and blow away' had been their attitude, and it was a programme
successfully followed. Around the world the word 'American' became a term of abuse, an insult indicating a completely immoral thief and utterly worthless person. Some American expatriates were lynched, and others became derisively known as 'St.Peters' because of the fervor and multiplicity of times with which they denied their identities and their previous loyalties.

     The Chinese had become the world's biggest producer of gold, but they sold none of it abroad, and bought all they could in the market. They did not allow the Americans to hold their gold on their behalf. They had a long racial memory for turbulent times in which gold would be the best store of value. They liked their gold; they did not like to be cheated; they had the power to take revenge. Hence it had been foolish of American officials to attempt to pass off on them some of their gold plated tungsten bars in settlement of a government debt for which they had refused to accept any more paper. They had quickly detected the fraud and insisted on the American government and it's crooked banker friends, if indeed the two entities were not one and the same, buying enough real gold to compensate them, under threat of worldwide financial scandal and other undesirable consequences. It may be no coincidence that it was soon after this event that the rumours and agitation began to grow which led to the eventual exposure of the American Gold Theft and the implosion of America.

    The collapse of America's financial system and the numerous frauds based on it,including the stock markets, had left many millions of Americans confused, angry, unemployed, riotous, homeless, starving, diseased, destitute - and eventually dead. Many of the States and municipalities were bankrupt, and hard pressed to collect enough revenue from angry and impoverished residents to pay for minimal public services. Public sector employment, pay and pensions were perforce reduced, despite the angry protests, go-slows and riots. The previously vociferous lefty intellectuals soon disappeared as their university and public sector bases were closed. Most of them turned from making trouble to seeking minor government handouts for spying on each other and everyone else. The fat-cats at the top of course suffered much less than they let on, being adept at deflecting attention and shedding crocodile tears. Their grip on
power was maintained because of the continued, but increasingly self-interested, loyalty of the men with guns and truncheons and much heavier weaponry, and the equally self-interested compliance of the media and the judiciary in obeying emergency legislation and not making much fuss about the suppression of widespread and bloody riots and arson. The much vaunted alternative media proved to be just another bunch of blowhards, easily closed down or shot. 'Enrich the troops, despise the rest', the deathbed advice of an Emperor when Rome was in trouble, became the effective motto of  the political class when America was in trouble. Important, or at least rich and self-important people with political connections, were able to hire guards, live in fortresses, gain legal exemption for crimes they committed or any deaths they caused, and move around comfortably if not freely. They were little affected by riots, town burnings, crime, starvation or disease epidemics amongst the ordinary people. If the common people were so stupid and feckless as to kill each other or destroy each others homes and property, what had that to do with the wealthy? Any threat to important people would be dealt with by their private guards and the remaining forces of the state.

    The legal system quickly adapted to the new situation. Troublesome lawyers and agitators complaining about 'human rights', 'democracy', 'the constitution' or 'legal norms and precedents' simply disappeared. Only a few had to be shot, most simply recognised that the situation had changed and sensible people would have to adapt themselves to it. The incipient trend dividing Americans into two classes, the rich and celebrated on one hand and the masses on the other, hardened into law. The former class, naturally including politicians and senior bureaucrats, could pretty much do as they liked. Their lawyers, their money and their political influence could find a way around anything.They retained all the old personal rights and legal protections. The more money they had, the less tax they paid. The poor however not only had to bear increased taxes, and other onerous regulations. They were subject to corporal punishment from which the rich were exempt.This was administered on the spot for a host of minor offences, by a host of petty officials, from whom there was no effective appeal. They were conscripted when the government needed troops. They had to provide their labour in lieu of monetary taxes to maintain roads and infrastructure - mainly for the rich, since there was little attention paid to the festering urban slums in which most of the population lived. If they traveled they were subject to demeaning searches, documentation checks and delays, from which the rich were exempt.

    This change was not as radical or as difficult to obtain as might be believed. Partly it was just the
recognition of a reality which had been obscured by general wealth and idealistic delusions, now make clear by poverty and a frightened ruling class. Democracy in America had long been a hypocritical delusion, maintained in appearance after the reality had changed to kleptocracy maintained by good public relations. There had been no difference between the two supposedly competing political parties, a two-headed one party system. 'Whoever you vote for, the government always wins'. It had been extremely difficult for third parties to meet a multitude of conditions, varying between states. Both parties were financed and their major figures vetted by the same interests, who also controlled the media, so only approved candidates could get publicity and money. These same interests ensured that elections required a great deal of money, most of which went back to them or their friends. They made sure that only interest groups of whom they approved got favourable access to the media and to politicians, so they
controlled legislation whoever was elected. There had been increasing popular disillusion with politics and politicians. but that did not matter. One party specialised in getting illegal aliens, the dead and the dregs of the population to vote. The other specialised in controlling the voting machines so that votes could be transferred from one candidate to the other. It did not matter. It was all political theatre. American politics was as corrupt and as fixed as American wrestling, to which it bore a strong resemblance as an entertainment for the masses, beyond which the real political decisions were made.The democratic form was maintained, giving a figleaf of cover to the kleptocracy manipulating their political stooges and giving the public distracting heroes and villains to cheer or boo.

    After the financial collapse the show became more obviously threadbare and absurd, but it continued.The politicians would not go away until they had made their fortunes. Politics had already been recognised as a prime route to wealth for those of a glib and unscrupulous disposition, willing and able to betray the interests of their country to the kleptocrats and serve as their frontmen. There was no risk of such rogues turning their coats and assuming some principles, they were too compromised, blackmailable and in fear of the kleptocrats to refuse to continue doing their bidding. The kleptocrats had sold the country and wanted it to hold together until the new owners took possession. Nor was it difficult to maintain control in a more or less normal manner. Most people wanted to continue a facsimile of a 'normal' life; there were few heroes. The government took control of the food supply and hunger reinforced their natural tendency towards docility in the face of an authority who could reward or punish
them.Rations were meagre and unreliable, except of course for the rich, but the obedient mostly hoped merely to avoid starvation. A job as a government thug was prized as it provided basic food and accommodation for the thug and his family. Little reluctance was shown in breaking the bones of troublemakers, or in killing on command. At a higher level, the generals were no more reluctant. They had been promoted because of their readiness to 'get with the program'. They were politicians in uniform and could see no better alternative. They were not willing to risk their comfortable lifestyles for windy abstractions or an attempt to revive the corpse of a dead past.       

    Much of the food by means of which the American government retained control, was provided by their new best friends, the government of China. Naturally there was a price, but it was not in currency, and to the public the Chinese were presented as benefactors. The financial collapse had disrupted the great agribusinesses dependent on oil based chemical fertilisors, so from being cheap and plentiful food had become scarce and expensive. Naturally, after the rich had taken their pick, their senior servants the politicians and bureaucrats took charge of what was left and their bully-boys and lickspittles were the only ones amongst the ordinary people who could be reasonably sure of getting anything to eat. Most of the urban population had become 'useless mouths' unable to earn a living or to feed themselves. Even those who had 'collapsed early' and attempted self sufficiency found that most or all of their produce was stolen or requisitioned by government thugs. Government became an even more virulent cancer
consuming the still healthy tissues of the body politic. America could no longer feed itself, and could not afford to import food or the oil to transport it. The parasites at the top of society and their supporters the parasites at the bottom between them destroyed most of the useful people in the middle. Bad weather, crop failures and diseases made things even worse. It became difficult to seize and transport food from the agricultural regions to the hungry maw of the distant cities, all the more so as local elites insisted on taking precedence.Urban populations shrank noticeably. The Grim Reaper was harvesting the population although the government refused officially to admit to famine. Appeals to the charity of the 'international community' were predictably fruitless, considering the current reputation of Americans. Consequently after some years had passed, the American government was considerably relieved to receive the offer of food from the government of China. Although the American public was encouraged to see this
as humanitarian there were secret conditions.

Apart from obvious things like ceasing to oppose China's re-acquisition of Taiwan, disclaiming any interest in Japan or in Tibet or in 'human rights' in China and promising to accept China's lead in international relations, there were co-operation and disarmament provisions. The Americans were obliged to hand over any remaining technical or military secrets, to reduce their forces and keep them far from
China and to cease to target China. The fact that San Diego was to become a Chinese naval base, and the naval restrictions to parity with China might have been particularly galling, but they had a precedent in what America had done to Britain in the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, which had also opened a breach between Britain and it's former ally Japan. In any case, the Americans were no longer able to maintain or deploy massive forces, just keeping them fed was sufficient of a problem and they were rapidly following the precedent of the Soviets. Even more secret and humiliating were the provisions giving China supervision over American nuclear forces, to ensure that they would not threaten China, even though they were starting to crumble because maintenance was becoming too difficult and expensive. The Chinese promised to supply technicians and equipment to prevent the American bombs from leaking or blowing up unexpectedly and to ensure that mutinous or starving troops did not use or sell them.

    Year by year the increasingly insolvent and hungry Americans pleaded with the increasingly affluent and well fed Chinese to supply them with another shipment of food, although of course the actual Americans doing the pleading were not themselves starving. They were doing quite nicely. Year by year the Chinese received more concessions, and were even encouraged to increase their investments in America. Having removed America as a military and political threat the Chinese proceeded to take it over economically and demographically. Even before the financial collapse, in the early years of the 21st century, various American States had offered the Chinese special tax free terms to invest in their areas. The Chinese had bought up areas where they could establish businesses free of American laws and supervision. The Canadians had even given Chinese investors guarantees to compensate them for any losses arising from future legislation. The Chinese had already invested some of their dollar surplus in buying up American real estate and companies. These precedents were improved upon. China came to own large areas of America which were subject to Chinese rather than American law. They had 'extrarerritoriality' and could not be entered without Chinese consent, although their products were free of any taxation or restriction on entering the United States. Their citizens were free to live in these growing enclaves, including units of their armed forces. They were free to live and do business and move through American territory without being subject to American laws, and any disputes with Americans were adjudicated by Mixed Courts of Chinese and American officials. Just as European nations in the 19th century could not let their people in the Ottoman Empire be subject to Ottoman law, so in the 21st century citizens of the Middle Kingdom could not be expected to submit themselves to the vagaries of American justice. Soon there were more Chinese than American  settlers in large parts of what had been the United States, more Chinese than American warplanes in it's skies and more Chinese than American troops on the ground. Year by year the Chinese bought up more and more American territory and received political control over it in exchange for continued food doles to the increasingly squalid and debased inhabitants of the big American cities. Any reluctance to give the Chinese what they wanted was soon overcome by starvation in the cities and smoothed over by relatively small gifts to American politicians and bureaucrats. The Chinese joked among themselves about how like the Red Indians the Americans had become. A few bottles of booze, some blankets and trinkets for their squaws and they would put their marks on treaties ceding vast territories and powers. The main difference seemed to be that the Red Indian chiefs had not known about Swiss bank accounts!

    As the Chinese took over more and more American territory and assets many Americans became subject to Chinese control. They did not fit in or harmonise well with Chinese institutions and ways of doing things. Those that remained tended to be regarded as 'anti-social elements' who soon got into trouble and were executed or condemned to hard labour in the camps where mining or farming or simple manufacturing was carried on under extremely harsh conditions. The Chinese had assimilated Tibet by similar methods, sending Han Chinese to settle and take over all organisations, squeezing Tibetans out of jobs and opportinities for making a living, and sending native troublemakers or intellectuals to die in hard labour camps. Americans proved a lot less hardy than Tibetans, a less hardy lot in every way physically and spiritually, although initially they were more numerous. American slave labour was freely available and it was freely expended for Chinese purposes.

    There was very little resistance to the Chinese. Americans were conspicuous and the Chinese had no
hesitation about shooting, beating or enslaving any whom they suspected might cause trouble. American politicians were too deeply corrupt to even protest about such treatment of their fellow Americans whom they had abandoned to Chinese rule. In fact the Washington and big city politicians cared very little for such Americans since they tended to be the more civilised type of Americans who were less likely to be natural supporters of the trash who had risen to the top in what was left of American politics. Hence they were glad to be rid of them.

    Urban protests and violent resistance were futile because the Chinese had no reluctance to raze whole towns, slaughtering their inhabitants, before founding a new town for Chinese nearby. They did not want to mix with Americans in any case, and had no intention of allowing their society to be corrupted and polluted by their presence. Chinese-Americans fared little better. They were regarded as the descendents of traitors, hereditary class enemies, who might infiltrate Chinese society and pollute it with American ideas. Those who knew enough Chinese had a small and temporary role as interpreters of Chinese orders to Americans. There were a few Americans who were able to flee to the wilderness and attempt to survive there and even to attempt occasional pinpricks against the Chinese. They did not last long. They merely provided training for the Chinese forces who now had all the drone and electronic surveillance technology in which Americans had previously gloried. In any case, despite the outdoorsman/minuteman posturing in which some Americans had indulged, the truth was that such ruggedly independent 18th century figures were long since extinct. America had become a highly urban society, where even rural dwellers had become dependent on urban products and subject to a degree of social control quite beyond the imagination of their 18th century forebears. Beyond that, the economic collapse and social disintegration had left nearly all the population passively dependent on the power of the state for orders and food, to a degree which would have delighted Stalin. They were no more likely to rebel than were the Babylonians when occupied by the forces of Alexander the Great after the defeat of their previous ruler, the Persian Darius.

    Where was the once mighty American military whilst all this was going on? They were obeying orders to do nothing. Some people were under the illusion that the armed forces of the state existed to protect the population of that state. In fact, as this made clear, they existed to protect the persons who controlled the apparatus of the state and to advance their foreign policy objectives. Any tendency to sympathise with and protect the population at the expense of their rulers was selected against in employing and promoting people within the military. Politically correct careerists predominated as they did in all other institutions.

    Although many Americans had worried about a military threat from China, this fear had been both exaggerated and misdirected. The Chinese leadership had never envisaged a military assault on America. Of course, as they grew richer and stronger they had increased their armed forces to 'keep up with the Joneses' and to satisfy ambitious generals.They knew that time was on their side, as the rising power they would become relatively and absolutely stronger year by year while the Americans declined. In fact the Chinese were concerned that the Americans, who were already poised like a hulking Goliath about to attack China, would realise this and attack whilst they still could 'bomb China back to the stone age' at relatively little cost to themselves. Thus, they carefully avoided provoking the giant whilst rapidly building the nuclear capacity to reach at least some of America's cities in order to achieve deterrence. They did not want a nuclear exchange, although some wondered why the Americans did not iniate one to cripple China whilst they could. After all, especially since the transfer of America's manufacturing economy to
China, America's cities were no longer sources of power and wealth so much as sinks of squalor, crime, and demoralization, so that losing some of them could be considered beneficial to America! It was considered amazing and disgusting that American politicians allowed the long term interests of their people to be subordinated to the preservation of the worst elements that were actually parasites on the worthwhile elements of their society, whose interests were consistently subordinated to those of the less worthwhile elements. Not that the Chinese were complaining, they were happy to benefit from such folly.

    China's actual strategy was quite different. As keen students of Sun Tsu they knew that the best generals achieve victory without fighting a battle. It would be wasteful to destroy what they hoped to occupy; as foolish as burning down a house before moving into it. China had a high population density, it was short of arable land and it envied the space and productive capacity available to the Americans. In the view of the Chinese leadership it was their Manifest Destiny to occupy these lands and incorporate them into the Middle Kingdom, freeing them from misuse by a few foreign devils.Much as the Americans had taken these lands from a rabble of Red Indian savages and put them to better use, the time would come for the Chinese to displace the Americans and relegate any survivors to reservations. Some thought had been given to 'ethnic-specific bio-weapons', a more sophisticated version of smallpox infected blankets, but this was too uncertain and too vulnerable to retaliation since the Han Chinese were far more
racially homogeneous than the American mongrels.

    America was set like a fortress in the midst of the oceans. It was strongly defended and difficult to
attack. Nevertheless, impregnable fortresses seldom justify their titles. European historians could mention Chateau Gaillard or Eben Emael, or how the Spartan defence of Thermopylae had been outflanked through treachery. Indeed treachery had always been a surer method of taking a fortress than siege or assault, and so it proved in the case of America.

    At a military level the Chinese had already obtained most of America's secrets even before the financial collapse. Back in Clinton's time it had been rumoured that in return for modest financial contributions they had been granted restricted military technology. It had also been rumoured that the plans for American helicopters distributed over several Asian companies for security, had been obtained by the Chinese because their secret service controlled all those companies. The secret of silent submarine propellers had been sold to them by a Japanese shipyard executive. Pollard the Israeli spy had obtained most of America's secrets, including how to locate and communicate with it's submarines, and these had been sold on to the Chinese. When an American spy plane full of the fanciest electronics had been forced down and handed over intact to the Chinese, it had been rumoured that this had been arranged by American corporate interests who wanted to press the Congress into spending more billions with them
to develop something even fancier. So the Americans had the ideas, did the work and paid vast sums to implement them, whilst the Chinese reaped the benefit and caught up with them. The Americans also foolishly trusted Chinese scientists and technicians to work in their universities and laboratories and seemed surprised to find them spying!These things were useful in strengthening Chinese forces and providing a more credible deterrent, but they did not affect China's strategy.

    Economically their strategy had been advanced by the chimaera of 'Chimerica' which had bamboozled the Americans into accepting the transfer of their manufacturing capacity to China in return for the Chinese supplying them with cheap plastic rubbish and making cheap loans to the government to finance their political profligacy and debauchery, well knowing that the Americans would never be able to repay those loans and that it would be possible to exact a 'pound of flesh' in return. Greedy and foolish Americans had supposed that they could just default on their debts and that their power would continue forever allowing them to cheat and bully the rest of the world indefinitely, or definately until those particular people had made their fortunes and left the scene of their crimes, leaving someone else to cope with the consequences as best they could.

    To a considerable extent the Chinese takeover of America was just a series of commercial transactions. They simply bought it. They had not initiated the 'Chimerica' strategy. That had come from the previous owners of America, but they had quickly appreciated it's possibilities, and followed them through. First they made a lot of money with exports, which enabled them to buy property in the United States and to gain influence over the American government by financing their debts.Then they bought the politicians. Their previous owners had their own reasons for selling them. There was no bidding contest. The previously most dominant groups sold America as a going concern just like a corporate transaction, both assets and management changing hands. The Chinese knew that the banksters had stripped America's assets, made every corrupt profit they could out of it and charged too much for a population
which would be of minimal value as slaves because they were no longer productive. The Chinese, however had their own rather different business plan, and they expected history would give them a later chance to get their own back on the fraudsters who were selling them a collapsing shell as a going concern. The previous owners of America had been parasites with a determination to extract the maximum short term gain from the creativity and effort of Americans. This had allowed them to treat Americans worse than cattle, spreading disease with their corporate products, and useless but expensive drugs through their pharmaceutical companies, excessively expensive medical care through their
medical and insurance companies, irrelevant but expensive educations through their colleges and failure of regulation and absence of justice through their control of bureaucrats and politicians. Some thought that their media deliberately debased and 'dumbed down' the population and their promotion of every form of evil was to weaken and confuse and divide Americans who might otherwise notice what was being done to them and rise up against it - as well as for a sheer love of evil.The Chinese business model had no need to exploit Americans. They would make it their business to dispense with Americans, who between the blood-suckers and the blood-letters would find no salvation.

    The real weaknesses of the Americans had been moral. The Chinese had not originated these, but they
recognised America's vices and slowly exploited them. Long before America existed the Chinese had an ancient history of familiarity with the underworld formed by the overlapping of politics, business and crime, and they were better able to navigate such murky waters and survive as a culture. It should not be thought that the destruction of America was their only concern or top priority. It would be accomplished eventually, but often there were more immediate claims on their attention. Just as the moral decay which had rotted the Chinese empire and enabled American and other opium dealers to profit at their expense in the 19th century had been endogenous; so the moral decay of America had not been caused by the Chinese, and they were not the first or only people to take advantage and worsen it, although they were it's ultimate beneficiaries. Even the rampant problem of drug addiction, although the Chinese eventually promoted it, had developed independently and been pushed by other callous groups, including the American secret services, to gain unaccountable funds to finance various self defeating machinations. One measure of America's moral collapse was provided by an ex-housing bureaucrat who had addressed a group of supposedly socially enlightened and concerned individuals. She had found that none of them would support any proposal to ameliorate the spread of drug addiction and it's social effects which would cost them anything. They would be willing for their own children and grandchildren to become drug addicts rather than to reduce their own incomes. Such a people stood condemned perpetually. Their own extreme greed and selfishness destroyed them. They did not deserve to be called a people, they lost their identity and soon lost their possessions and their existence. 

    This extreme greed, selfishness and egotism severing the most basic of social ties did not exist in
isolation. It was promoted and exploited not only by the banksters and their media and academic associates but also by the evil and deranged creed of political correctness which overthrew everything normal and decent in a deliberate subversion of culture and civilisation designed to rot America and western countries. It was very successful. All the institutions of society were infiltrated and subverted and turned against their proper purposes.The public was made to pay for their own subversion. Everything debased, evil, immoral and perverted was flaunted and promoted at the expense of everything that was better. This in concert with the extreme financial greed and desperate materialism made a moral solvent which soon dissolved American and European societies. Corruption and evil of every kind seemed to gravitate to the head of affairs, a necessity for social advancement. It was therefore not surprising
that corruption and treachery was rife and resistance rare.These countries, previously the most civilised and cultured and advanced in every way, were made the sump of the planet where all it's human rubbish was encouraged to accumulate at the expense of the natives. By the time America ended it had become an inverted parody of what it had been, populated largely by the sort of riff-raff who would have made the Founding Fathers forego their project had they been able to foresee what would become of it and of their descendents. Much the same fate befell Europe, although in that case the beneficiaries were the Muslims rather than the Chinese.

    The tough minded might argue that the Chinese had done the world a favour by eliminating the source of decadence and corruption that had been America. That was pretty much the view of the Chinese leadership and it was the view which they intended their subjects to have of the matter.

    There was one outstanding matter.Traitors and spies are used but never trusted. What goes around comes around. One morning the skies of central Asia were lit by the launching of multiple atomic tipped rockets, and slightly later similar plumes arose from Chinese ships and submarines in the Mediterranean and in the Arabian sea. As dawn rose over Israel it suddenly became 'brighter than a thousand suns' and the country fulfilled it's destiny by turning into the apocryphal 'glass carpark that glows in the dark'. The subsequent rejoicing in the Middle East and Muslim Europe was undiminished by regret for the loss of the Palestinians. Thereafter the Muslim world became much more friendly towards China and their remaining oil flowed much more cheerfully to Old and New China.   

    Well before the end of the 21st century the Chinese leadership was able to survey the state of the world and find that it was good. The acquisition of North America or New China as it was now known, had opened tremendous possibilities for expansion. The old 'one child' policy had long since been reversed and the Chinese were breeding more rapidly than ever before. From one person in five on earth being Chinese at beginning of the century the figure was approaching two, and before long more than half of humanity was expected to be Chinese. The vast and sparsely settled regions of Africa and South America were supplying not only resources but also space for further settlement under almost total Chinese influence. Australia and New Zealand were obedient client states with unrestricted Chinese immigration already starting to assimilate them, or at any rate their social institutions and resources to
Chinese needs. The Russians still had a lot of nuclear bombs, but by now the Chinese were in effective occupation of much of Siberia and the balance was tipping their way. The Indians and the Japanese were increasingly respectful. The successor to the United Nations was established in Beijing where the diplomats and their families could shop and socialise in between sessions arranging tributes of their native products to the rulers of China and praising them for their great humanity and magnificence. China was truly the central , most important country and culture , the Middle Kingdom on which others depended. The Americans had thought that they were exceptional and indispensable to the world. Now those that survived were merely performing animals in zoos where Chinese visitors gawped at them and threw them an occasional peanut.

After the End

Summer in Washington 2112 A.D.

    Chin-ki-wan enjoyed his outing to Washington. The visit to the American Reserve had been amusing and instructive. He had had his photograph taken shaking the hand of the American President, Michael Jackson XVII. The President and his cabinet had greeted the party of Chinese visitors in the Oval Office of the White House, recited the Gettysburg Address, given them cheap copies of the Declaration of Independence, received their gifts of food and small change respectfully, and entertained them with a song and dance routine, before bowing them out to make way for the next party of tourists.

    Then the party had gone to the Capitol, to watch another scripted performance of another quaint folk
activity, 'democratic' politics.This had featured more singing and dancing by politicians and lobbyists, loud and tearful expressions of love for the 'People' and zealous desire to improve their lot, whilst transferring bags of cash and whispered stock tips from lobbyists to legislators, accompanied by draft laws favouring the clients of the lobbyists, which the legislators then passed into law without bothering to read. In the second scene the politicians had hounded the lobbyists for campaign funds to ensure their re-election, in return for promises of future legislative favours. In the third scene the political pimps and whores changed places, the lobbyists becoming politicians and the politicians becoming lobbyists. So the merry dance continued, with a gleeful chorus laughing about how easy it was to make money in politics. 'It's a revolving door', they sang as if in front of the American voters, 'We come out rich, you come out poor!'

    The visit to the Financial Center with it's banks, brokers, hedge funds and stock exchanges had been more confusing. Their guide explained that it was meant to be confusing; that was how the sharpies wanted the sheeple to feel as it made it easier to fleece them. This was a representation, simulation or even replication of the Temples of Avarice wherein Americans had drugged and dazed themselves with fantasies of easy riches; the moral equivalents of 19th century Chinese opium dens, and as deeply immersed in the overlapping underworlds of crime, politics, degeneracy and corrupt influence. Their guide had explained the main activities; market rigging, rate fixing, leveraged buy-outs, asset stripping, naked short selling, algorithmic high frequency trading, front running, liar lending, false certification, robo-signing, foreclosure on improperly seized real estate, false accounting, forgery and misrepresentation. There seemed to be an endless list of deceits. Chin-ki was sure that there was no means of theft which had not been fully exploited by the Priests of Finance. These games had gone far beyond dealing in actual income producing assets. It had become mere gambling, reaching desperate depths of depravity and frenzied heights of delirious activity as the real economy crumbled but ill-gotten winnings in such crooked casinos had been allowed to masquerade as money which was used to buy actual goods and services, thus further debasing a currency which the government was in any case rapidly depreciating to pay for it's own grotesquely inflated programmes of graft and corruption. There was a strong gambling streak in the Chinese character, so Chin-ki and his party soon gained the impression that these reprehended old practices had not entirely ceased. They sensed that under the cover of the 'genuine reconstruction', for their entertainment and instruction, of the financial vices which had done so much to destroy America, was a continuing current of gambling.Their guide made sure that none of the party stayed long enough to become ensnared. Reading the old American slogans on the walls, 'Never give a sucker an even break', 'there's one born every minute', 'Too big to fail', 'Fraud is the business model', they moved on. Outside, they paused to view another 'genuine reconstruction' of native American culture, a 'protest demonstration'. A listless band of unkempt layabouts shuffled around muttering and holding placards distributed to them by a few organisers. Seeing the tourists approaching, they perked up and began to shout the slogans in which they had been instructed, with more enthusiasm. 'Occupy Wall Street!', 'Down with Capitalism!', 'The 99% not the 1%!'. Pausing only briefly to take photographs and disburse small change to the malodorous and malnourished demonstrators, the visitors moved on, followed by only a few low voiced whines or imprecations.
 
    Well aware of the uncertain but predatory temper of the natives, keen to avoid close encounters of the
unpleasantly unscripted kind, the nervous guides and their heavily armed guards bustled the tourists into their coach, which proceeded on their tour of the less dangerous parts of the city. Crumbling walls and decaying buildings were quite normal, and the authorities kept at least the centers of the main highways relatively free of potholes and obstructions, so the tourists were able to enjoy a spontaneous and relatively safe view of life in the American capital. They passed a few chaingangs of citizens under the supervision of armed guards, performing their labour taxes to keep the city at least minimally functional. Corpses, drunks and drug addicts lying in the street were so common that they scarcely merited a glance, and the positive air pressure in the coach prevented the stink outside from disturbing them. Only brief comment was excited by passing an occasional mugging or murder in progress. Crime and begging seemed to be the only economic activities. Whenever the coach stopped, in heavily guarded locations,
there was always an infestation of pleading, and sometimes bleeding, beggars, held back by the guards. There was not much to encourage visitors to linger. The river was an open sewer. The museums and monuments and libraries of old were long gone; destroyed, not by the Chinese, who still respected antiquity and culture despite the Maoist aberrations, but by the plague of political correctness which had torn down all such manifestations and memorials of 'racism', 'elitism', 'capitalism', 'fascism', 'imperialism', 'dead white males', and in a word, 'civilisation'.   

    After their sanitised but sobering exposure to the current state of American culture, the tourists were
pleased to get back to the entrance gate, set in the heavily mined and fortified Iron Curtain around the District of Columbia, glad to note the strong security precautions taken to prevent an outbreak of Americanism. The silent tourists were pleased to see the thoroughness with which the guards searched the coach, inside and out, above and below, checking it's weight in and out and carefully scrutinising the passengers and matching their descriptions and photographs against those taken on their entry, and examining their small purchases of tourist memorabilia. Foregoing the opportunity  to buy more American flags on sticks, postcards, George Washington dolls or models of the White House, from a group of dispirited vendors, the party was happy to make their return to their familiar world, noting as they left the arrival of a convoy of trucks bearing the treaty supplies of rations, booze and blankets
for the natives.

    Tomorrow it would be back to work in the paddy fields of Virginia, or in the waterpowered manufactories of what had been New England but was now of course part of New China, where schools and universities such as the famous Charvard, wasted no time on irrelevancies such as the alleged voyages of Christopher Columbus. Now teaching was devoted to the voyages of Zheng He and his much earlier precursors who had voyaged to and settled in the Americas in the mists of forgotten time. There was no need to study the inventions and discoveries of Europeans or Americans since everything important had been invented or discovered by Chinese. Chin-ki and his fellows would return to work
refreshed and with much to show and tell their co-workers and friends about their experiences, reinforcing their pride in being Chinese and both amazed and disgusted that such creatures as the Americans could ever have dominated the world at the expense of the Chinese, as legend asserted. Regardless of any facts it was obviously better that people should be encouraged to support and believe in civilisation rather than the demons and foreign barbarians on the fringes of the Middle Kingdom who threatened it's harmony. He felt no sympathy for such degraded beings. It was obviously proper that foreign devils such as they should be kept from influencing the people and affairs of the Middle Kingdom. Seeing them in their native environment was a salutary correction to any trace of sympathy with them and a warning not to follow similar vices to a similar fate.             
 

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