In the show Firefly, the world superpowers, China and the U.S, joined with each other to form a Planetary Government. This government would go on to expand to numerous star systems, and would be the “Alliance” in the Core-Colony war. However, this article is about something else.

If China and U.S, form a singular united government, what would change in the world? Also what would the cause?  The first question depends when the union occurred and how it occurred. If it occurs in the near future, European Union, and Russia would have something to say, would gather their own allies. Another question would be the fate of Japan and Korea, who are defensively via U.S and China are provided for. However Japan is the traditional rival and natural check on China. With U.S. potential support for Japan removed, would this new government move onto Japan with godspeed? Second the fate of Korea, both North and South, would have their own qualms, potentially provoking war in South East Asia. Now Russia would dislike a growing power in form of China-U.S. Union becoming unprecedentedly powerful, would perhaps throw its military support behind Japan.

The question also moves to countries like Brazil, EU, United Kingdom, and the Arab League, all these nations would either consolidate their current holdings, or join a side in South East Asia. The United Kingdom would throw its back behind Sino-U.S. harking back to the special relationship U.K-U.S share. The Arab League would oppose the actions purely as means to either fight against the ‘West’ or as an excuse to attack Israel. However if the U.K. supports Sino-American forces, India would switch to side of Japan for regional reasons.

The key nations would be EU and Brazil who could go either way. The EU would support US-Sino for resources reason and as reason to launch an assault on Arab League supply of oil. Brazil could very well stay neutral, but it’ll back US for reasons of security.

In that sense if such a union occurred today, well it would be WWIII and the world will be sent back to the Stone Age. However why would such a Union occur, will the reasons could be economic, given how well linked both economies between U.S. and China are it could be perhaps reasonable to assume to offacialize the process, a desire to avert WWIII, or perhaps a way centralize resources allocation and make it enforceable.

The reasons are numerous and from a purely economic sense could be reasonable by the cultural void is simply too large, too big, to become visible surmountable in current life times. Thus, Firefly could not come true.