A Chinese vase and the decline of empires

There's big news now about a Chinese vase sold in England at auction:

"When the intricately painted 18th-century piece went on the block at Bainbridges, a small suburban London auction house, it sold for a record $83 million Thursday, scooped up by a Chinese buyer."

Family's old vase fetches $83 million

This reminded me of when the Yasuda Fire and Marine Insurance Company of Japan bought a Van Gogh back in 1987 for almost forty million U.S. dollars. All of the talk back then was about how Japan was eclipsing the U.S.A. The experts all said that soon, Japan would overtake the U.S.A. as the world's superpower. Japan was buying up real estate and businesses in the United States of America, and people were afraid that Japan would soon own the U.S.A. The purchase of the Van Gogh by the Japanese, which at that time was the most ever paid for a painting, was offered as proof that Japan was cooking America's goose.

What happened?

The real estate which Japan bought in the U.S.A. during a real estate bubble, went down in value, and Japan suffered a cash shortage. In just a very few years after the purchase of the Van Gogh, Japan went into a recession, from which they have never recovered to this day. And now they are suffering even more, along with the rest of the global economy. Plus, now they have been toppled from their number two spot in the global economic ladder by China.

Now China is being promoted as the next new superpower. China, they say, is eclipsing the U.S.A. and America is in decline. 

If you've ever read that novel by Pearl Buck called The Good Earth you might see that she makes the point that after people attain positions of power and wealth, they tend to get careless with their money, and waste it on frivolous things, like prostitutes and art work. They tend to forget, and especially the following generations tend to forget, how is was that they came about acquiring that wealth.

So, beware when someone creates a new record bid at an auction for a work of art. It's a sign of an empire in decline.