With global attention fixed on the US and Iranian shipping blockades in the Strait of Hormuz and how many vessels have traversed the critically important waterway, a leading Chinese investment bank has been calculating the long-term gains and losses and how they could rewrite the global economic order.<\/p>\n
The United States was on the horns of a dilemma over the strait that might herald an acceleration of Washington\u2019s strategic retreat and its increasingly transactional relationships with other powers, Beijing-headquartered Citic Securities said in a report.<\/p>\n
Comparing the situation to the \u201cSuez moment\u201d in the 1950s \u2013 when Britain lost control of the Suez Canal along with its global superpower status \u2013 Citic Securities analysts wrote on Saturday that a similarly consequential \u201cHormuz moment\u201d could be a watershed for America\u2019s global supremacy.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Suez moment marked the United Kingdom\u2019s relinquishing of global power,\u201d they said in the report published on Saturday, adding that the US was now \u201cwedged\u201d in the Strait of Hormuz, facing a challenge to its control of the waterway \u201cand in search of a way out or forward\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis may well be a Hormuz moment from which we can draw several inferences about the evolution of the global order,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n
Economic strength has long been a major realm of the wide-ranging rivalry between Beijing and Washington, with many scholars predicting that China could eclipse the US as the world\u2019s largest economy in a decade.<\/p>\n