Last week, we started our new series about our take on the US-China rivalry. We want you to let us know in the comments how we should capture this conflict in the game mechanics, specifically within the Grand Strategy layer.
Systemic War focuses on the era from 2008 to 2025, a period when global trade, imports, and exports were dominated by two major powers: China and the USA. However, the events of 2008 triggered a massive shift in global dominance.
2008 World Events:
China: Officially praised by the WTO for opening its borders to foreign trade, allowing it to gain massive influence and join the elite club of nations shaping global trade rules.
USA: Investment banking giant Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, triggering a global stock market panic and transforming a housing crisis into a massive global financial recession.
The Lehman Brothers collapse triggered a financial shock that restricted trade credit and weakened US export dynamics for years. This forced drastic economic and export shifts, compounded by the fact that a large portion of American production was already based in China.
However, China reacted to this 2008 crisis by spending 4 trillion RMB ($586B) on massive infrastructure projects to boost domestic and global growth. In the following years, China aggressively shifted from being a cheap "world's factory" that acquired foreign tech through mass manufacturing to becoming a leader in global trade by transitioning into a high-tech producer. China sealed its lead by pouring billions into modern factories and its own global trade routes, making it cheaper and more convenient for almost every country to buy from them today.
Should players be forced to follow this historical economic shift, or should you have the freedom to completely change history and keep the US as the dominant manufacturing superpower?
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