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Comment by marianatom | Hacker News Reader

here's the thing, humanity got lucky. there was a nonzero chance that china and the dictatorships could have triumphed. if China didn't botch the chance to overtake US in 2008 with a capable dictator. if China got its hands on many advanced US military technologies. if Russia didn't botch the Ukraine invasion. if covid didn't have a vaccine, except one that China developed.

I'm sure most of us are aware of the gulags that China ran in 2022, in the most prosperous city like Shanghai, with welded doors, lack of food, arbitrary killing of pets, moving their own citizens against their wills to camps or cells with no running water and unsanitary conditions. with cries in tall buildings from families in the middle of night for food. If. you haven't seen these things, go watch it online. Imagine if somehow China succeeded, and that's most of humanity's fate.

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I don't think that China has any interest in conquering the rest of World. They just want to be rich. They are stealing IP and spying. The fact that the US needs to use military force is a failure of policy.

Violence is the last resort of the incompetent.

I think that China is pulling on the US what the US did to the Soviet Union. The US bankrupted the Soviet Union with an arms race. China is doing it much more economically by spending 1/3 of the US. This is money that the US could be using to build a high speed rail network or educating its citizens.

There are so many wrongs with your statements that I don't know where to start. I'll just tackle one of them.

"build a high speed rail network", implying that US is failing there. China is suffering from a $1 TRILLION debt for its rails https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/China-debt-crunch/C..., while ridership collapses https://japan-forward.com/weak-demand-for-chinas-high-speed-.... Cities in China are suffering from $23 TRILLION insolvent debt and inability to raise more https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-05-21/china-s-2.... I certainly hope US doesn't suffer the same fate.

when you are $1k in debt, you are in trouble. When you are trillions in debt, the "bank" is in trouble.

The thing is, debts are just numbers on paper at the end of the day. You can erase them, but the infrastructure will remain.

Erasing debts wipes out (most) savings and hurts rich people. So it's not something that can be done lightly, but it is an option.

Also, Chinese HSR ridership is back up after COVID restrictions were lifted.

Infrastructure needs to be maintained.

> You can erase them

that's not how economics works. if that's the case, you would not see the Chinese governments (federal and local) doing desperate things to collect more revenues like:

- China considers measures to encourage re-employment of retirees https://hrmasia.com/china-considers-measures-to-encourage-re...

- issuing massive traffic/parking tickets a year after, to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars, to commercial and normal drivers

- banks preventing normal withdrawals of money. often, deceased's children can't withdraw their parents savings, even with all the official documentations

- government entities delaying several months of owed salaries to its employees https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/5/11/chinas-cash-stra...

> that's not how economics works.

It is. You can erase all debts by hyperinflation, for example.

China for sure has problems, but it's not the "crashing down tomorrow" kind of problems. They still have a robust growth, now that COVID restrictions are over.

China had a demographic collapse problem that can't be remedied and can't be squared with their doctrine of racial superiority.

China is on its way out.

> China had a demographic collapse problem that can't be remedied and can't be squared with their doctrine of racial superiority.

It's amazing how many racists come out in these threads.

China's population is projected to peak at 1.7B by 2060 and then fall to 1.5B by the century's end: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2023/04/24/c...

If anything, China is leading the world at trying to live with a static population numbers (and EVERYONE will have to do it eventually).

Not to defend the other poster but the numbers you listed in the article are for India.

> The fact that the US needs to use military force is a failure of policy.

And a million realists(in the technical sense that IR people use the word) cried out in terror at once.

It's not just luck though. The American system is better than both the Chinese and Russian ones.

Wow you should visit China though, it's great. I feel for those who don't get to experience the benefits of globalization.

lol, how presumptuous. I have visited China in 2007, before it turned authoritarian/dictatorship. I would not visit China again to support the dictatorship. I can visit any number of democratic countries like Taiwan.

I feel for those who don't get that they are supporting evil.

Btw, speaking of evil, China isn't giving up yet (Xi still have 10-20 years to live. free organ transplants from young Chinese, you know. high ranking politicians get them for free). It is producing destroyers at a massive rate, and will exceed # of destroyers that US has by 2040. Combined with the millions of disposable unemployed single young men, and there's still a chance that Taiwan would overwhelmed. and if Taiwan falls, the same strategy can be used to conquer Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Australia.

> will exceed # of destroyers that US has by 2040

Bear in mind that China has pretty much no oil and these 055 destroyer boats are diesel&gas turbine powered. And the US has been slowly winding down military presence since the Cold War ended basically[1].

And lemme tell you, if Taiwan goes hot, there wont be any USN boats spare to patrol the Middle East -> South China sea route, and nobody would be angry if any oil tankers on that route go missing.

[1]: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/graph-of-the-week-why-flee...

> Bear in mind that China has pretty much no oil and these 055 destroyer boats are diesel&gas turbine powered.

Well, then they are lucky that Russia, now sanctioned by the West, has no choice but to sell all their oil to China, at discount prices.

By way of one tiny pipeline that has to travel across an entire continent the long way, or via boat through the suez canal?

There is oil in Sakhalin Island, new pipelines are planned and existing railways are fully capable to transport enough oil to sustain military campaign if China curtains civilian oil consumption (like every country at war did in WW2).

Frankly highlighting China dependence on maritime trade is a cope. It just won’t matter much in hot war.

> or via boat through the suez canal?

Nah. Ship.

There is no logical, or even mythical, reason to conquer another territory (excluding taiwan from this). China really wants to be involved in long term insurgencies across Asia? Why?

The "greatness" of China is an excellent example of Cheops' Law: You can do anything you put your mind to if you have an endless supply of expendable labor.

Great in which way? I guess working for peanuts is a great step up for people who suffered through famines.

Otherwise it's the common battle between "orderliness at any cost" and freedoms. US or Europe seems to strike a better balance, for all of their shortcomings. In China its ruled by the CCP with an iron fist.

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