January 21st, 2026
Every game needs strong, clear conflict. For this design, I had originally thought that this would be a straightforward matter of the USA trying its best to deter China from invading Taiwan; if it failed, and managed to avoid outright war, then it would have to somehow retain its alliances with Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines. The worst case scenario had China establishing suzereinty over all of East Asia, including India.
But now I realize that there’s a more complex, and more important issue to consider. The fundamental conflict of the 21st century arises from China’s desire to replace the existing world order with a new world order more consistent with its history.
The Imperial System
The Chinese System comes from China’s history as, essentially, a permanent empire. For four thousand years, China has alternated between good times when conditions were stable, the Emperor ruled with absolute power because he had “The Mandate of Heaven”. This was really an elaborate phrase for what we in the West call “legitimacy” — the common belief that the Emperor was indeed the proper leader for China. So long as the Emperor ruled with fairness and competence, he retained the Mandate of Heaven. However, if corruption became rampant, or the Emperor was incompetent or cruel, then he lost the Mandate of Heaven and the people were permitted to rise up and replace him with a new Emperor.
In practice it didn’t work out so cleanly. A dynasty would rule for a few hundred years, and would slowly decay until the Emperor was too weak or too corrupt or too incompetent, at which time various upstarts would rise in revolt. The Emperor would be overthrown and killed, and then China would suffer a complicated civil war in which various factions fought each other; whomever emerged victorious would become the new Emperor and establish a new dynasty.
The idea here was that China was a permanent society with permanent institutions. The bureaucracy was fundamental to the maintenance of the complex systems that kept the people fed, and was above the conflict; it would serve whomever was in charge, and so was not disturbed. The only change resulting from the civil wars was at the very top of society.
Thus, the sequence of dynasties starting around 2000 BCE was Xia, Shang, Zhou, Western Zhou, Eastern Zhou, Qin, Han, Western Han, Eastern Han, Six Dynasties, Sui, Tang, Five Dynasties, Song, Northern Song, Southern Song, Yuan, Ming, Qing. Between each dynasty was a period of civil war.
This system, it turns out, recurs in other societies. The Roman Empire went through a similar process of “punctuated stability”: periods of stability interrupted by violent struggles for the top position. It appears from what little we know that MesoAmerica underwent a similar process; the Aztecs just happened to be the top dogs when Cortes came on the scene. Similarly, the Inca Empire was the largest and most successful of a sequence of ruling groups, and it had just concluded its civil war when Pizarro arrived. The history of England shows some parallels with this basic system.
This is the kind of system the China wants to return to, with Xi Jingping acting as the Emperor, and China being the top dog on the planet, with all other nations accepting China as the leading government. China does not want an empire; it does not wish to try to control any countries outside of its traditional territory. It does expect them to kowtow to the Emperor as in days of yore. After all, China considers itself to be the most advanced nation, with the best of all cultures, and therefore has every right to expect other nations to defer to its intrinsic superiority. Compare this with the American notion that America is the greatest country in the world, the “city on a hill” that brings democracy and justice to the rest of the world.
The Westphalian System
Europe after the Roman Empire never united; it remained a squabbling collection of smaller and larger kings, dukes, and other royalty constantly at war with each other. There weren’t any nations in the sense we think of nations; just aristocrats, each with his own collection of territories, his own underling aristocrats, all vying with each other for control of ever-larger territories with ever-greater taxable property. This culminated in the Thirty Years’ War, a horrific period of near-anarchy, with ever-changing alliances and endless fighting. Civilians were fair game; about one-third of the people in Germany died during this war. The destruction was so great that it concentrated minds. The war was ended not by victory but by exhaustion; people just couldn’t continue fighting. Out of that nightmare emerged the Peace of Westphalia, which reorganized Europe along radically new lines.
Much of the fighting had been between Catholics and Protestants, with both sides slaughtering non-believers. But Catholics and Protestants were scattered all over Europe, and there simply wasn’t any way to sort them out cleanly. This led to the idea of sovereign nations inside which the leader could dictate the local religion, and anybody who didn’t like it would have to leave. This was a radical idea, but it appeared to be the only way that Europeans could live together in peace. Each such nation would be treated as fundamentally equal to every other nation at the international level. Nations might be bigger or smaller, richer or poorer, but they were, in effect, all “citizens”of a world order.
No single nation was big enough to conquer all the others. From this evolved the fundamental notion of ‘balance of power’: groups of nations would band together diplomatically and militarily to keep the bullies at bay. Usually this ended up with different groups of nations maneuvering around each other. The system was tricky but it did tend to reduce the frequency and bloodiness of warfare.
This basic system, which recognizes a large number of independent and sovereign nations with equal status and a balance of power, is sometimes called the Westphalian System, and it comprises the current world order. China seeks to replace this world order with its own imperial system. Guess who would be the dominant country in this imperial system?
The question
The question I face is, do I want this conflict over world order to be the fundamental conflict in my design? On the one hand, this would establish a strong, clear conflict, and would greatly help people understand the fundamental conflict of the 21st century. On the other hand, this is highly abstract stuff; the player would have to be dragged through a great deal of background material. I could do this with a lot of expository encounters, but if I do so, should it be done with a Merlin character or a medley of different situations?
Tomorrow I expand on this matter.