Soviet Union, Japan and China

Maybe Soviet Union (USSR) believed it was the only super power and it is its responsibility to compete with the US and its alliances. So it went head to head with the Westerns in almost every area except the practice of the social system. Too bad, the USSR didn’t provide enough cash flow to support many their super projects. They appeared to have super “hard” power but they had weak “soft” power under the steel surface. However, the Westerns have the upper hands in both “hard” and “soft” powers. If the USSR didn’t waste the time and energy to try to compete with the Westerns and spent the time to fix and improve their own problems, they might have better outcome right now rather than break up its empire. That’s what China has learned from and tried to prevent it from happening. Though China is as ambition as USSR, there is huge differences in culture between them. Chinese is not as aggressive as Russian who is more close to the Westerns in culture. Chinese has different thinking and strategy in competition. As long as Chinese keeps focusing on and strengthening Chinese culture, eventually Chinese has the upper hand in Chinese culture and the world would follow the Chinese footsteps when China becomes one of the world leaders one day.

After Japanese economic power ranked on the top of the world, they first shopped around Japan. One of their big contributions was bidding up the real estate’s prices and heightening the inflation. When the domestic market was saturation, they laid their eyes at oversee market, especially the US market. One of the famous event is Japanese company bided up the price of Rockefeller Center and bought it in the high price. Later, they sold it at the low. There are so many similar cases over the years when Japanese had a lot of cash in hands and tried to conquer the world with that. The outcome of their behavior is a good subject for Chinese to study and learn. At least, Chinese would not have as much motivation as Japanese to conquer the US with their cash and buy the face.