America Can’t Stop China’s Rise

Instead of fixating the perspective on another competing country with wishful thinking of its demise it would be much more advisable to fix what's wrong in the own geographical region. From a European perspective gained during the last 60 years, the US is increasingly neglecting its very own populace in appalling fashion (lack of universal health care, racism, religious fanatism and ignorance, large scale imprisoning) and blaming and fighting the rest of the world for its own deficiencies (war on drugs on global scale instead of fixing the social issues underlying substance abuse). The error is in assuming that the enemy is out there, but in reality USA ignores the fact that it is its own worst nemesis while making the rest of the world suffer from it. This is a clear case of ignoring what is within the own circle of control, while burdening the own shortsightedness on the shoulders of external nations.

https://www.advisorpedia.com/growth/we-have-met-the-enemy-an...

https://library.osu.edu/site/40stories/2020/01/05/we-have-me...

Based off the three authors all having long-term ties to China, the tone of the article, it parroting known propaganda, and the comments under it all scrutinizing it, I feel this is very obviously propaganda.

That being said if we were to assess this seriously, the premise itself makes no sense. No country needs to stop China's rise as their economy is already stalling and showing signs of decline.

A better article here would actually assess U.S. foreign policy and whether it had any impact on China's economy stalling (or if that is truly just a byproduct of other factors).

What if the goal of these restrictions is to impoverish China? America competed with the Soviets and they spent ruinously, including in their war in Afghanistan, ultimately leading to their downfall.

By some estimates China has been overstating GDP growth and massively understating their military expenditure as a percentage of GDP. This means that for the past decade China may already have spent more than they can afford on a nonproductive area of the economy. One could rightly say that America is also spending like drunken sailors on defense, but the difference is that America issues the world’s reserve currency and can easily monetize its deficit, a luxury that few countries, including China, have.

Smart people on both sides seem to be making wildly different predictions.

People like Bradley Schurman and Peter Zeihan lay it out in pretty simple terms to show China is essentially doomed (demographic collapse, etc).

Ray Dalio lays it out pretty clearly that we are due for an empire shift, and looking at his ~18 graphs, China is pretty clearly the successor.

I get the feeling that one of the sides is a metaphorical Peter Schiff. Convincing in small doses, but it’s all the same gold perma-bull schtick.

Compare the current situation with Japan’s rise in high tech. Japan voluntarily accepted the Plaza Accords, that somewhat slowed them down, and I believe that lead to a few decades of economic stagnation for them.

The Chinese are resisting similar treatment but they have other problems that will slow them down, demographics of not enough young workers being a good example.

I think it's more likely China will stop its own rise. Between draconian measures against citizens and workers, and the degradation of the environment, and the general Chinese economy, it's more self-defeating than it is a threat to America.

America can't stop China's rise, but China can, and China will: the question is, can the world wait that long?