This scenario illustrates plausible futures for 2040 and includes the second widest range of conceivable events. From Humanity’s point of view, this would be a slightly better future than in scenario 2, although I suspect for most of us not that much welcome. There are two crucial assumptions in this scenario. The first one is that China has become the unquestionable world leader that has taken the future of humanity entirely under its control. The second one is the invention by the Chinese of a new style of a non-destructive weapon – a kind of a near Superintelligence, which has been used to control all military equipment and weapons that must have a digital interface by disabling them all in just a few minutes. Please remember that this scenario refers to 2040.
In 2018 Xi JI Peng became China’s President for life. After his death, his successor became Liu-Sin Piao who has continued China’s most secret plan to run the world. It all started in 2015 when China launched its biggest ever project ‘The Belt and Road Action Plan’ costing nearly $1 trillion. It included land routes (the “Belt”) and maritime routes (the “Road”) with the goal of improving trade relationships in the region primarily through infrastructure investments. It was completed in 2028 and as it turned out, became a Trojan horse. It paralysed investment from other countries and established strong political influence in many countries that were part of the Belt.
But the real start for the Chinese hegemony of the world started 5 years later when China delivered the first near superintelligent agent. China already had supremacy in quantum computing and quantum encryption (successfully delivered first such a long-distance encryption in January 2018). These inventions enabled China to make a sudden super cyber-attack, which within 3 minutes disabled all digital systems in the world, including of course all military installations, giving China an absolute control of Cyberspace, Internet, GPS etc. The US, Russia, France, the UK and India had, however, nuclear submarines, and some of them fired dozens of nuclear rockets on China, but all except one were disabled in flight by manipulating their computer systems.
Immediately after China had disabled all digital systems worldwide, all nuclear sites, planes, most tanks, mobile networks etc., it threatened to invade countries, which would not allow Chinese scientists to dismantle all significant military sites and equipment, including planes, nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers etc. The world agreed.
From now on, no country in the world could have any significant military power, apart from China. Any violation was punished by restricting food supplies, switching off power networks and ultimately bombing the military sites. Bombardment, or significant Chinese military force presence on a non-Chinese territory, was avoided as much as possible, for the countries that co-operated with China.
It was the state of submission rather than a stalemate between China and the rest of the World. All countries became vassal states. China conquered the world without firing any nuclear or other significant weapons. China said it did not want war. However, it announced that to save Humanity the world needed to move forward according to a Chinese directive. All other countries are welcome to become members of the Chinese-run ‘Peace for the World’ organization. All countries had to contribute a proportion of their GDP to “Save the World Fund”.
At that time it was difficult to tell, what China’s long-term objectives were. However, after a few years since conquering the world, China suggested a joint Chinese-led massive expedition to Mars, where each nation would send at least one delegate to Mars, proportionally to the population, but not more than 10 delegates from a single nation. There was no Chinese indoctrination in other countries and basic freedoms outside China and self-governance were maintained.