America on the Rise?

While a few provinces are doing well (Guangdong most prominently), inland China is still very backwards -- and, reportedly, increasingly disgusted with the government. The one-child policy is still enforced there, brutally; despite the almost complete lack of journalists' access to mainland China, I've heard reports of spontaneous, armed "mutinies" among the populace -- attacks on government officials, on account of the one-child policy, or over taxes, or for whatever reason.

China is less politically stable than it looks; for all we know, the next Liu Bang or Zhu Yuanzhang may have already taken to the hills. And if you think that the Chinese government can't possibly collapse _now_, that we'll never see a period of good old-fashioned Chinese interregnal warlordism in the 21st century, I remind you that we saw one in the 20th, when it was equally anachronistic and inconceivable -- the most chaotic period of the Five Races Under One Union was the 1920s, contemporary with the Wiemar Republic and _The Great Gatsby_.

Of course, China eventually becoming powerful is almost inevitable; sailormoon points out that their sheer numbers argue for that, especially when combined with a culture which, though nominally Confucian-Legalist, has a very real "go-getting" idiom. This is the other side of China: the brash, independent style of the world of mountain and river, ultimately tracing back to the xiá (侠), the knights of the feudal Zhou dynasty. It may be some time before this happens -- their current postmodern authoritarian government has to either reform or be overthrown first, I think -- but it will arrive.

For further reading, look up Boye de Mente's _The Chinese Have a Word for It_.

I loved this article, thanks for sharing.

Why is this obviously wrong assumption about the stability of democracy vs. autocracy so pervasive? Stable democracies (USG) are stable, unstable democracies (Weimar) are unstable; stable autocracies (Louis XIV) are stable, unstable autocracies (Louis XVI) are unstable. As a criterion for good government, stability simply doesn't give you a clear reason to choose one form over the other.

Phelps and Tilman finger several culprits: a patent system that’s become stifling; an increasingly myopic focus among public companies on quarterly results, rather than long-term value creation; and, not least, a financial industry that for a generation has focused its talent and resources not on funding business innovation, but on proprietary trading, regulatory arbitrage, and arcane financial engineering. None of these problems is likely to disappear quickly.

America sucks sometimes. We've got deficits, health care problems, and a hijacked government. And yet with all this going around, immigrants are still begging to be let in.

One of the main advantages over China is that we own shit. We have material reserves in lumber, coal, natgas, etc. So when you hear that China's SWF just bought out another mining operation in Africa, it's not because their looking to difersify, it's that they don't have any decent natural resources of their own.

If you need to feel happy, don't read reddit or watch the stock market for a month.

China seems to put so much emphasis on their being a '3000 year old country' so I think we should take them up on that and stop calling them 'young.'

The core macroeconomic trend is that communications is getting cheaper. We can talk to people around the world essentially for free. We can ship things pretty darned cheap. Right now, an engineer in the US makes about 10x the salary of an engineer in China or India. Unskilled labor in the US makes 40-100x unskilled labor in China and India. This is unsustainable. US workers are more productive, but not by this large a factor. Wages have to come closer to equalizing. Wages here may be a factor of 2x greater than there, due to better education, infrastructure, more natural resource, etc., but not 10x-100x greater.

This means income disparity in the US will grow, while income disparity in China and India will shrink. The wages will come closer together. With 3x the population, China will pass the US as an economic power in the not-too-distant future, and India will most likely do the same a couple of decades later.

China's government is overstated as a problem. The Chinese are, by and large, happy with its government. Government control of the internet is annoying to human rights, but doesn't impede economic progress in any way. The government errs on the side of less, rather than more, control. The core effect is that getting information on Tienanmen or Taiwan or whatever is annoying, lost in a sea of noise, and practically few people do it. It's much like getting information on the US monetary system, or how lobbyists control the government, or dozens of other issues affecting Americans. They are public scandals that no one knows about; they are not reported by the media, and the information gets lost in a sea of noise of conspiracy theories.

"Chinese Stimulus Spending Constructed An Empty City In The Middle Of Nowhere"

check out THAT housing bubble lol

Even if the article were true, I think a little fear of your competition is healthy. I like how people are sweating it. I hope it spurs innovation and growth here at home.

But Japan's downfall had little to do with demographics and a lot to do with an unsustainable bubble economy writ very large indeed. The problems with Japan are manyfold, you could write a very long essay just covering the major points, but basically boil down to cultural risk-averseness. There are not many entrepreneurs in Japan. The country needed to re-invent itself and failed.

China could not be more different. Many, many Chinese are entrepreneurial, brash go-getters. Whereas Japan is all about social harmony and "wa" and not rocking the boat, Chinese are the most capitalist people imaginable and a brief visit to basically any Chinese city will convince you utterly of this fact. I don't think you can compare the two at all.

It's true China has some systemic problems. If the banks' account sheets were audited properly I bet many of them are in the red, deeply. There is corruption and nepotism and all manner of petty inefficiencies imposed by officialdom. But the raw productivity cannot be denied.

The author also assumes the instability of the Chinese government. He/she seems to take this as a matter of faith - I see no signs of instability. If the government can raise people from poverty into a decent middle class - and they are doing an outstanding job of this - then their position is assured. The rich do not revolt.

I also have questions about the whole idea that more workers is what is needed to assure economic success. While it's true Japan's youth are dwindling in number, there is by no means a worker shortage in that country. If there was, wages would be high. They are not. There is plenty of youth unemployment. The growing automation of any number of industries may make all those idle youth obsolete. It may well turn out that in the future, less workers are needed, not more. And it's not as if America's teeming masses are particularly well-skilled. What will happen when a robot can flip the burgers? It's not too far off.

I could go on and on but basically I think the article makes an awful lot of assumptions and comes off as wishful thinking. I am not about to bet against America, but I wouldn't exactly sell my shares in China just yet either. I doubt China will rocket up to dominate the world like the breathless predictions of "sinophiles" but I can't see too many alternate futures where they don't have the largest economy by 2050. It's pretty hard to beat a 400% larger population no matter how much "sokojikara" you have.

but more seriously, I'm not that sure the 21th century will be decided by population size. The level of American consumption is already unsustainable.