The more countries trade with each other and depend on each other, the better things are for peace and human advancement.

The zero-sum mindset that's de rigueur at the moment needs to die soon or the world that we'll inhabit is gonna suck.

We've gathered decades of evidence in support of this, with commerce and trade supporting global peace.

Though, it's nice to see in this particular case that a near monopoly player gets unseated and creates room for innovation.

But it would seem there’s a certain balancing act. Because that kind of economic integration can also create pressure points for an autocrat to exploit in ways that are contrary to peace and human advancement.

This is why many Enlightenment thinkers didn’t just view monopolies as an economic problem; they viewed it as a direct threat to free and just society.

For this to work all participants need to play along, not throw a tantrum & actively trying to sabotage the system. In such cases, you need to cut out the faulty participant & continue without them.

The idea of "change through trade" mostly worked great (see most former socialist European countries), but sometimes not at all (see Russia and more recently the US), and China is kind of in the middle of both extremes and may swing to either side in the future.