If China adopts this strategy I think they will bumping up India quite a bit. India has no global domination goals, but it does have economic/business goals and would be trying to move into some of the same space.

As far as Siberia, I always predicited that Russia and Japan would get together over Siberia (Russia is resource rich / cash poor; Japan is resource poor / cash rich), but it just doens't seem to that the Russian and Japanese leaders think the same way.

(also posted at the original blog)

A couple problems:

1. China is larger than Russia. America is larger than Mexico.

2 The Hispanic non-assimilation charge is false. Hispanics become English as first language speakers within three generations, same as other immigrants. They go up the home ownership ladder same as others.

3. What fraction of American hispanics want the South west returned to Mexico? My guess would be between 1%-5%, probably in line with the percent of Americans who wish a reversion to Great Britain.

Thanks for the link, Curtis.

Re Purple's comment: Russia doesn't get along with China or Japan because most Russians are racists.

Racial and cultural tensions are also strong in Southeast Asia, where a kind of Chinese diaspora has occurred for centuries. Local Chinese minorities have often become dominant in business and finance, exciting resentment. Race riots have been common in Malaysia and other places. Most Americans are unaware that racism comes in other colors besides black and white.

Dan,

My point with this was to consider the Russia-China dynamics in Siberia plus China in general. I did find the analogy between America and Russia interesting, if obviously flawed.

Incidentally, since "metaphor" is an idea both you and I like quite a bit (so it seems) I've been thinking this: If we required an exact correlation between two things in our metaphors, metaphors would never exist!

Also, I'm thinking that "metaphorizing" might be an example of one type of consilient thinking.

Purpleslog,

For some reason, I think of India's culture as being quite chaotic and China's as being less so. This might only be an illusion; but India certainly seems to have some democracy-inspired noise which might limit the type of expansion, or its effect, I've suggested in the above post.

Alan,

I think it was bilious young fogey who, not long back, accused the Chinese of being extremely racist in a post looking at China's future internal and external problems. And some others, the Japanese. And of course, on the issue of immigration, similar charges have been made against some Americans!