Hong Kong people love to travel. They rack up frequent-flyer miles across the globe. Yet their grasp of history often stays shallow. Take Japan: many visit several times a year but have never heard of the "Black Ships" incident or the Meiji Restoration. Take the United States: tourists know Times Square by heart but draw a blank on the Mayflower or the War of Independence.
America just turned 250. The July 4 festivities lacked any of the heroic swagger of Born on the Fourth of July. Division and polarization filled the void instead. Trump's image appeared everywhere among the anniversary merchandise, including a limited-edition passport bearing his portrait. The first time a sitting president's face has appeared on an American travel document.
Issuance stays limited, one may argue, and applicants must show up in Washington in person. Still, the level of personal cult on display has reached a historic high. A proposed $250 commemorative banknote featuring Trump also awaits congressional approval.
Trump's populist theatrics have infuriated elites on both coasts. On June 14, his birthday, he staged a pre-Independence Day spectacle at the White House. Workers built an octagonal cage on the lawn so MMA fighters could brawl inside it.
The New York Times ran a scathing commentary from journalist Goldberg titled "A Spectacle of American Decline." Its opening line hits hard: "Only the hackiest screenwriter imaginable would script America’s decline this way."
"Think of it," Goldberg continued, "On the 250th anniversary of our country’s founding, America’s increasingly senescent president turned the White House lawn into a tacky, bloody gladiatorial arena while capitulating to Iran. Mike Judge came close to imagining some elements of our debasement in his 2006 satire “Idiocracy,” which depicts a United States led by a professional wrestler whose middle name is Mountain Dew. But if “Idiocracy” captured something of the vibe of Donald Trump’s reign, it was both too early and too lighthearted to nail the sordid specifics, which on Sunday included the fighter Josh Hokit, standing in an octagonal cage wrapped in crypto ads, calling the former first lady Michelle Obama a man."
Americans have long boasted that their strength flows from having the world's best democratic system. Japanese-American political scientist Francis Fukuyama famously predicted in 1989 that history would end with American democracy triumphant. Even Fukuyama now admits the US system has problems. He worries America may hand its leadership position to China.
Maybe it's time to dig back into the history books. Did America's rise stem from superior institutions, or from overwhelming resource advantages?
In 1620, the Mayflower carried 102 English Puritans, craftsmen, fishermen, and indentured servants from Plymouth to North America. They signed the Mayflower Compact, embodying a spirit of self-governance and laying an early political foundation. The Mayflower gets all the fame, but its passengers weren't actually the first settlers. Thirteen years earlier, in 1607, the English had already planted Jamestown, the true first permanent settlement in North America.
From 1607 to 1733, waves of English settlers crossed the ocean armed with guns. They displaced and killed Native Americans along the way. Thirteen colonies took shape, including Virginia and Massachusetts. By 1775, these colonies, crushed under British taxation, launched the War of Independence. They defeated Britain and declared independence in 1776. The 1783 Treaty of Paris formally sealed the separation.
At its 1776 founding, the United States held just 13 original states, including New York and Virginia. Its territory covered roughly 800,000 square kilometers, clustered along the Atlantic coast. Today, US territory spans about 9.37 million square kilometers across 50 states. That's more than ten times its original size.
War, annexation, and purchase built this map. The 1783 Treaty of Paris, signed after defeating Britain, granted the US sovereignty over 2.3 million square kilometers, covering six Midwest states including Michigan. In 1803, the US purchased Louisiana and surrounding central territories from France, gaining another 2.6 million square kilometers.
In 1848, victory over Mexico brought the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. This added 2.3 million square kilometers, including California and Nevada. In 1867, the US bought Alaska from Russia, adding another 1.5 million square kilometers. Then in 1898, it annexed Hawaii. The territorial map was essentially complete.
This rapid expansion was never peaceful. It was built on coercion, annexation, and war. Settlers carried guns far more advanced than anything indigenous peoples had. They rode across the land, seizing homes that were never theirs.
By 1898, when US territorial expansion was essentially complete, China was living through the twilight of the Qing dynasty. The US held vast land but a thin population: 9.36 million square kilometers with only 74.4 million people. China controlled roughly similar land, around 9.6 million square kilometers, but packed in about 400 million people. Per capita arable land in the US reached about 30 mu. China's figure ranged from just 1.4 to 3.95 mu. American farmland per person outstripped China's by 7.6 to 21.4 times. Agriculture and mining alone could make settlers rich, especially with slavery driving labor costs to near zero.
At the time, Chinese people called America "Gold Mountain," largely a nod to California's gold rush, and the nickname wasn't far off the mark.
Institutions matter when comparing national development. But natural conditions matter just as much. The US enjoyed exceptional geography, sitting isolated overseas, far from the devastation both World Wars inflicted on other nations. That geographic edge fueled America's rapid rise.
China faced a starkly different hand. It lacked natural resources and sat surrounded by powerful neighbors, making development an uphill climb. The US took 250 years to reach its current scale. The People's Republic of China, founded in 1949, has taken just 77 years to reach about 70% of US GDP in nominal terms. Measured by purchasing power parity, it actually surpassed the US back in 2014. Pulling this off with far fewer resources shows just how steep China's climb really was.
The East is rising, the West declining. The United States, a nation built on colonialism and war, is sliding toward decline amid deep internal division. China, meanwhile, is rising fast. That contrast points to a clear institutional advantage on China's side.
Lo Wing-hung
Bastille Commentary
** 博客文章文責自負,不代表本公司立場 **
China's strategy is simple: throw one punch to avoid a hundred.
On Wednesday, August 5, China fired back with five consecutive moves to counter a string of recent US measures that Beijing sees as hostile. A spokesperson for China's Ministry of Commerce called the countermeasures "generally restrained." The message was clear: since the China-US presidential meeting in Busan, the US Federal Communications Commission has ignored China's strong opposition and industry appeals. It keeps stretching the concept of national security to roll out restrictions on China.
Meanwhile, the US has added over 40 Chinese entities to the so-called Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act entity list. China demands the US immediately revoke these measures. And if Washington insists on new restrictions, "China will further retaliate."
China's moves are a direct answer to a series of petty US actions that fall into two main areas.
First, the FCC. Before the government took action, the People's Daily fired a warning shot. Under the byline "Zhong Sheng," it blasted the FCC for hiding behind banners like "non-discrimination" and "national security" to discriminate against and suppress Chinese companies.
The FCC recently added foreign-made power inverters and advanced robotic equipment to its so-called "Covered List." That means new models can't get certification and are locked out of the US market. The paper called the tactic typical unilateral bullying.
This isn't new. Back in 2021, the FCC put telecom and video surveillance gear from five Chinese companies on the list. Since then, it has steadily widened the net. In April, it proposed revoking the qualifications of testing and certification bodies from countries that haven't signed a "Mutual Recognition Agreement" with the US. That artificially raises the compliance bar for Chinese products.
And now, Reuters reports the FCC is drafting a ban on imports of new Chinese-made optical communication transceivers for data centers.
Second, the Xinjiang sanctions. On July 30, the US Department of Homeland Security added over 40 Chinese entities to the entity list under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. The move, effective August 3, swells the list from 144 to 187, the biggest expansion since it was created. The new targets span food, clothing, and cotton. They include snack maker Qia Qia melon seeds, frozen food producer Zhengzhou Synear dumplings, and apparel brand Fujian Septwolves.
When the news hit the Chinese internet, netizens erupted in mockery. The joke going around teasing that "eating melon seeds can easily damage US soldiers' teeth."
China didn't waste a second. It fired back with five countermeasures, and the first one hits where it hurts: drones. Beijing is tightening export controls on drones and related technologies to the US. From now on, every shipment of drones, key components, and controlled technologies will face a strict case-by-case review.
And forget about any 'licensing facilitation' exemptions—those are off the table. Think about it: China is the world's drone superpower. The US wanted to block Chinese drones from coming in. Now China is flipping the script—it's restricting what goes out. The message is blunt: just because you want to buy doesn't mean we'll sell. Especially not advanced drones and components with military uses.
The second measure is a highly targeted strike: China has added six US entities to its Countermeasures List, all of which it says assisted US sanctions on Xinjiang-related companies.
Applied DNA Sciences, Inc. is believed to provide DNA-based traceability and verification services for relevant products.
Stratum Reservoir, LLC is believed to conduct stable-isotope testing and related analysis to determine the origin of Xinjiang-linked materials.
Altana Technologies, Inc., which operates a global supply-chain mapping and management platform, is believed to help the US government trace supply chains involving Xinjiang-linked products.
The Responsible Business Alliance, which promotes responsible business conduct in global supply chains and operates assessment programmes for member companies, is believed to help companies exclude Xinjiang-linked products from their supply chains.
Verité Group, Inc., a nonprofit focused on labour rights and human rights, examines alleged forced labour in global supply chains.
Human Rights in China, a New York-based human-rights organization, advocates sanctions related to Xinjiang.
China’s countermeasures against these six entities are therefore highly targeted.
The third measure targets a US compliance testing company that helped the FCC impose China-related sanctions. That company will now be locked out of the compliance testing business in the Chinese market. The ripple effect: it could drive up compliance costs for US products trying to enter China.
The fourth measure hits at the heart of product certification. China is suspending the entrustment of US agencies to conduct factory follow-up inspections for CCC certification. Remember, CCC certification is a must-have for US products to enter the Chinese market. By pulling the plug on US inspectors, China shifts the review work to its own agencies. That spells more time and more uncertainty for American exporters.
The fifth measure, a national security investigation into imported US printing and copying office equipment. On the surface, this one looks like a light tap.
China imported about $2.08 billion worth of such equipment in 2025, mostly from Japan ($1.72 billion). The US slice was small. But this is just the opening move.
The US has banned Chinese software and hardware from connected and autonomous vehicles on American roads—and until now, China held its fire.
Now Beijing is investigating US printers and copiers on national security grounds. The message is unmistakable: if Washington plays the national security card at every turn, Beijing can just as easily slap an 'unsafe' label on American phones and EVs running US software.
But that's not the main battlefield. Artificial intelligence is the real arena. Over the past month, Chinese companies have rolled out one high-performance, low-cost AI model after another, sending US AI giants reeling. When Anthropic released a new model in June, the US government demanded it be kept out of non-American hands. The clash forced Anthropic to pull the model. Trump signed an executive order in June setting up an AI safety framework, including a voluntary program for companies to submit cutting-edge models for government review.
Then Chinese developers like Moonshot AI and DeepSeek unleashed open-source systems that rival top-tier US models, fueling a fierce debate in Washington over how to regulate open-weight models. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei pushed for mandatory government safety reviews for both open and proprietary models, taking direct aim at Chinese open-source systems. He won backing from Treasury Secretary Bessent and others, but ran into a wall of opposition from US tech giants, including Nvidia.
On August 4, the Trump administration delivered its verdict. In a meeting led by the Office of the National Cyber Director, top US AI companies were told that under the new AI safety framework, open-source models from Chinese rivals would not face US government safety testing.
For Anthropic, it was a crushing defeat. US National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross later spelled out the thinking at a cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas: the US government wants to back the American open-source AI ecosystem. He called such models 'tremendously valuable' and insisted the regulatory framework must stay 'flexible.'
Otherwise, he warned, 'it would not only stifle growth, development, and innovation, but the regulatory regime would become obsolete within 48 hours of completing its process.'
The bottom line: Washington keeps chipping away at China with petty moves. But when the pile gets high enough, Beijing punches back hard—and signals it has heavier blows ready.
President Xi is due to visit the US in September, and Trump will be in Shenzhen in mid-November for the APEC summit. Trump doesn't want things to spiral out of control; at crunch time, he'll yank the leash on his officials.
The real battlefield is artificial intelligence. It was almost certain that the White House's decision to leave Chinese open-source models alone came after fierce pushback from China.
Lo Wing-hung
