China definitely advances Europe in economic weight ... But it is not the only thing that stands out

China, known as "the red giant", once again honors his nickname. With the dictapitalism as a standard, it has long since entered the world economic podium according to capitalist standards, rising with an honorable silver medal as the second largest economy on the planet.

But it is no longer that China has exceeded the size of the main European economies, it has already surpassed the entire Eurozone as a bloc, establishing itself as a superpower in the heat of its particular conception of capitalism without freedoms. And this "sorpasso" is not limited to its macroeconomic figures in purely GDP terms: the Chinese begin to emerge in key indicators of progress and ... of the future. A future that they begin to build for themselves and in which they demonstrate being willing to unseat anyone.

From a low value-added production sink to an employer from other countries

A few days ago, we already analyzed them in the article "The offshoring of production does not stop but ... this time it affects China itself" how China has gone from playing in the league of labor economies low cost, to start playing in the league of powers that delocalize production to countries with lower labor costs (and rights) than their own.

It is Chinese employers who in Ethiopia organize, direct, send orders and work, and without compassion exercise the role of employer in one of the most hierarchical senses that can be found in the 21st century. As I already told you, if we already know how labor rights are treated in China towards Chinese nationals themselves, you can already imagine what those rights are like for third countries over which a power role is exercised.

A socio-economic leadership exempt from freedoms and ... democracy

But that socioeconomic leadership that China is reaching is dangerously accompanied, not only by an absence of democratic advances and the regime of liberties, but by an involution to the concept of country and state that the Chinese regime had in other times, and to which they only add the suffix "-pitalism" to try to preserve the formula of the success of its particular dictapitalism.

The fact is that, just a few days ago, we could read in El Español the news that "Xi Jinping becomes (officially) the 'Mao of the 21st century'". This headline relates a (already) worrisome reality in the communist giant: Jinping has seen his aspirations for power fulfilled without any time limit, managing to blow up the limitation that exists so far to hold executive power in China.

As El Español said, Xi Jinping has become a "president of everything", having under his direct personal control the main organs of power in the country: the Chinese Communist Party, the Central Military Commission, and several other strategic organs. Jinping ends abruptly with the opening era that came with the reforms that Deng Xiaoping introduced in the 80s, and that they tried not to be able to commit the excesses suffered in the time of Mao Zedong.

We see how, little by little, the future of China (and also in another way that of Russia and the USA) are shaping that political-economic reality of three great Orwellian socio-economic blocks. We already analyzed in the article "Orwell was right: accurate economic predictions of his book 1984" how these three blocks were Oceania, Eurasia and East Asia, and how the dystopian world described by the visionary author is unfortunately more and more like today's day.

And now, given the background, we have China making the "sorpasso" to Europe this year

As we already got ahead of Bloomberg, the fact is that the irremediable forecast is that, in the course of this same year, we will attend to how China is going to advance at full speed of GDP, not already to the major European economies, but to the bloc of the Euro as a whole. Something hardly imaginable just a few decades ago, but that is practically a fact confirmed in the absence of a slightly oscillating date.

The fact is that the rate of growth (official) of China systematically comes year after year tripling that of the 19 that make up the select club of the Euro. With this, the overtaking maneuver is a simple matter of time; at least on paper, because another thing is the great controversy surrounding the veracity of the Chinese macroeconomic figures. As I have already said on previous occasions, if in Europe and the US we already have a busy kitchen of macroeconomic figures, imagine what the thing can be in a dictapitalist regime like China.

By the end of the year, forecasts indicate that China's GDP will reach 13.2 billion dollars, while that of the Euro Zone will remain at 12.8. But this "sorpasso" also has other risks, and it is not precisely the evident loss of leadership of Europe against China just by being relegated to a bitter third position.

One of the other dangers is in China itself, whose growth has the feet of mud. And the million-dollar question is whether China will achieve leadership and exercise its hegemony in the world before its terrible debt bubble explodes. As we already analyzed in "Chinese debt continues to grow and we should worry, the Chinese debt bubble has been inflating for years without exploding, but the reality is that lately shows signs of going even more (much) worse.

But it is not just the GDP, there are other aspects of Chinese (even) more significant advancement

But do not think that a server sees a risk in a "sorpasso" merely in terms of GDP. The leadership of the GDP as a king economic indicator is very nuanced, and from these lines we give a relative weight, according to what it really means. We already wrote long and hard on this subject in "An index of socioeconomic progress is correlated with the economy and ... it is not GDP all that glitters.

For me personally, the GDP is just one more indicator, important, but one more after all. And as an example of this, the analyzes that we have written have shown us, demonstrating the intensive monitoring we follow of other very significant indicators, among which innovation and technology occupy a prominent place.

For example, we have analyzed from another perspective the great capacity and aspirations of global socioeconomic leadership that China has (ethical nuances aside, mainly because they do not have them). We did it no more or less in the plane of technologies such as genetics, which literally has the ability to change our world and ourselves to unsuspected extremes. We already explained to you in the article "China sees it clearly: genetics can make the socio-economic leader of the future world how to lead this field can mean to dominate the world socioeconomically.

But a very significant indicator, especially what innovation and socio-economic future is concerned, is that relating to patents. The Deutsche Welle already published how China has become a true leader in innovation, having already been in 2016 precisely a Chinese company, Huawei, the largest patent applicant before the European Patent Office (EPO or European Patent Office). In absolute numbers, China as a country climbed that same year to the fifth position for the first time in the history of the EPO.

Globally, China has been the undisputed leader in the number of patent applications worldwide since 2011, since it is in the Asian giant where more patent applications are made. No wonder, given the colossal size of its economy, but most important of all the meteoric progression: for the first time in 2016 China has received more patent applications than the combination of the USA, the European Union, Japan and Korea. South together.

And the data is reliable, since they come from the very same World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO for its acronym in English, World Intellectual Property Organization), depediente of the United Nations and based in Geneva. Behind these figures of overwhelming objectivity, the turn of that Chinese manufacturer that only copied, to the new Chinese corporations that innovate in abundance, seems more evident than ever before.

And when it comes to China, what should worry us most is ...

We see then how in China, where there used to be only rice fields, today there are skyscrapers. Where once there were crude copies of cheap Western products, today there is innovation and cutting-edge technology of its own. Where before there was only reverse engineering, today there are renowned researchers. Where before China competed in "patent jump", today the competition is in being a leader in patents.

This is just another confirmation of how the global economic axis is leaning towards a thriving and Orwellian East Asia. And political regimes aside, the truth is that, speaking of economy, the plutocracy in which the socioeconomic system in which we live has become in practice, makes a euro (or a yuan) a vote. If there is a dictatorial regime behind that yuan, the rise of China and its economic leadership entails other very important nuances.

The distribution of world power is decompensating, and you will end up finding a new balance point. It is fair that more powerful economies acquire greater weight globally, both in the markets and in the agencies that monopolize the most international power. But what is truly worrying is that the new de facto scenario implies that a greater portion of power, and all the influence that can be exercised with it, belongs to regimes without freedoms or democracy.

We must therefore admit that, with the new distribution of powers, at a global level, the regime of freedoms and democracy is in retreat. With all that implies, although we do not know (or do not want to) appreciate the dangers derived from it from the comfort of the (no longer so) impregnable democratic strength erected in Europe.

There is no fortress more vulnerable than one whose sense of security of battlements inside blinds him to the dangers that hover beyond the walls. And for the record that Europe as such was not one of the independent socio-economic zones in Orwell's visionary novel. If we want to oppose the writer and that is, we must strive to preserve what we have, starting by continuing to innovate without measure or compassion in a world with an obviously technological future.