OPINION: Here's why China is smarter than any Western democracy in existence.
While we squabble about how many houses haven't been built in the past three years, and how many light rail projects the Government's failed to deliver in a term, they're thinking between 100 and 150 years ahead of any of us.
They're looking far off into the distance at a world we can't yet comprehend - a world where today's so-called superpowers will crumble, a world where competition for increasingly scarce resources will see us cannibalise each other.
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And China will be there - prepared and ready for the fight. Their tentacles of influence are already spreading far and wide to all corners of the globe.
The consolidation of absolute power in the hands of a few allows for strategic advantage on a scale we just don't understand.
China was badly burnt by Japan during the Second Sino-Japanese War - they lost an estimated 20 million people.
Having lived there and learnt from them, they will never let themselves be raped and pillaged like that again.
They're not trying to be the bully, they're the kid at school who was bullied and then hits the gym hard; learns kick-boxing to protect themselves in the future.
In the West, we think we're superior because we have freedoms and votes and elections.
None of those things will matter as much in a world so far into the future, we just can't see it yet.
Ryan Bridge is a co-host of The AM Show.
