Michelangelo, a young apprentice, is assigned menial tasks such as grinding pigments and preparing plaster. Yet, in silence, he observes every movement of his master’s hand, absorbing the craft stroke by stroke. One day, he secretly paints a copy of one of Ghirlandaio’s works, most often described as the head of a female figure or an angel. In The Agony and the Ecstasy, Irving Stone writes that Michelangelo worked feverishly and obsessively on this copy, striving to reproduce every line and shade with absolute fidelity — not to deceive, but to learn. When he presents the painting, Ghirlandaio cannot at first tell it apart from the original. Astonished by the precision and sensitivity of his pupil’s hand, he later confides, on his deathbed, that he had long known of the copy and that it was magnificent.

Now, think of this story in the context of the United States and China today. Does the United States have the humility, or the audacity, to acknowledge that China has surpassed the master in technological mastery?

Regardless of the outcome of the Trump–Xi meeting at the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur, scheduled for Thursday (I write this on Wednesday), one thing remains certain: as long as the United States controls the global financial system, its status as the leading superpower will remain unchallenged. China understands this well. It shows little appetite for dismantling that financial order, despite BRICS’ efforts to build a parallel system of trade less dependent on the US dollar, a framework that, for now, remains largely confined to the so-called Global South.

Ironically, however, the very global financial system that the United States built to serve its hegemonic ambitions has begun to turn against it.

Advancements in artificial........

© The Friday Times