Keeping an Eye on the Long Game: Part XC

Are you numb when it comes to news of the maritime power growing on the other side of the Pacific?

I hope not, but if you are the numbers are such that it should burn through to what few nerves you have left.

We have been at this here for what; Long Game is this ... #90 (and that isn't even the number of China posts we've done over the years) a decade and a half or so?

Well, no rest folks. We are well inside the quickening.

Don't avert your eyes from the numbers. Let them soak in. Hoist them aboard. Ponder. Plan. Prepare.

I'll let our friend The Other Sal warm things up for you; 

China’s new shipbuilding orders up 182.1% in first four months

"China’s newly received shipbuilding order volume for the period of January-April was 27.87m dwt, a 182.1% surge year-on-year."

This is more tonnage than the US built in 1942 & 43, combined.

They are flooding the seas with numbers. Numbers matter. 

They are running all over the field while we sit in the coach's conference room watching best-of reels from last season's playoffs.

As at end of April, China’s shipbuilding output, newly received orders and orders on hand accounted for 41.1%, 53.3% and 46.8% respectively of the global shipbuilding market share.

The game is afoot people. 

Our passive, pampered, and entitled elites make their excuses, deposit their divided checks, reinforce their gated estates, and continue to lead the nation towards a reckoning with a serious power west of Wake. 

We need a new elite with different priorities, or the planet will have a new superpower.