In November of 2022 Chinese leaders found the limit of their control over Chinese people, and were so worried about rebellions that they precipitously dismantled almost all covid protections. Data suggest this killed 2 million people after China had previously exhibited among the lowest covid fatality rates in the world.
The internal politics related to China’s recent economic decline remain very muted, for now. One of the causes of this slowdown is the increased focus on geopolitical competition at the expense of economic relationships with the rest of the world. At some point, further economic decline that also results in food shortages, would seriously test its internal political stability.
A rapid decline in quality of life would challenge the US political system, too, especially with democracy in the US looking less resilient than it did 20 years ago, but food security would be much less of an issue.
We largely understand the failures that killed a million people in the US; China was not confronted with the same issue that would have resulted in well over 4 million deaths there.
> One obvious takeaway from the paper: whoa, America is far more reliant on China than it thought. But actually this underplays the complexity. Think back to our Brandauer electrode. The chances are that it was made of metals which were originally refined in China (I’m guessing here, but given China is the world’s biggest metal refiner this is not implausible). Those metals were then shipped to the UK where they were turned into the micron-accurate electrodes I saw being turned out of the machines in Birmingham. Then they were shipped back to another factory, probably in China, where they were put inside a rear view mirror.
Now I'm not saying China's not capable of manufacturing that electrode, probably of the 45% not made by Brandauer some or all are from China anyway, but the point is it shows the kind of disruption it would cause to any country. Some like China less than others like the UK, sure, but still disruption. Globalisation isn't quite 'we all get everything from China now'.
There's a lot of tit-for-tat actions that the US (or the global West, for that matter) could take that would cripple China socially. A bunch of starving, young, educated men with no job prospects and no family prospects is the CCP's nightmare scenario. That sort of thing generally leads to revolutions.
The problem is that both actors have some serious leverage, and either side using that leverage in a serious, combative manner would harm the both the aggressor and the recipient. Nobody wants that.
America is slowly entering an era of reshoring our factories to control low value manufacturing and high value products.
Just kidding. But yeah I think Zeihan is one of the most outspoken on the issue. I've seen a few others as well and assume it isn't just groupthink coming from Zeihan. As a counter example to his points about China not having any high value would be a recent PBS Nova episode on China's tech sector that goes over some success stories like Huawei. Nobody can tell the future, so take what I said further above with a grain of salt. I think the demographics angle is pretty important though as well as China's need to import food due to bad geography that requires a large and fairly manual workforce that no longer exists after urbanization. Interesting stuff.
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/ranking/trade-gdp-rati...
Ok, USA trade isn’t vital you say (disagree, but let’s go with it). The USA is has outsourced aluminum, steel, a lot of composite production. Even if you wanted to spool more up, we lack the ability to make chips, we lack the rare earth metals that China took world control over.
Even if USA isn’t massively dependent on paper - the practical effects of that 25/38% makes 100% of our capability happen.
It's all explained in Dead Kennedy's excellent "Kinky Sex Makes the World Go Round"
No need to speculate. Australia pulled this stunt this decade. It's notable enough to get it's own Wikipedia entry https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia%E2%80%93China_trad...
Australia lost billions in exports. We were treated to the site of ships fully laden with Australian coal queued outside Chinese ports with nowhere to go, and reports of Chinese provinces literally freezing in the dark. It was caused by mind boggingly godsackingly daft behaviour from politicians at the highest levels in both countries. And, surprise surprise, none of it would have happened without a some help from Trump.
Three years and a change of Australian government later, and the restrictions are being lifted. It hurt at the time. Some exports like wine and lobsters never did find alternate markets, but most did, and notably Australia didn't suffer a recession after losing it's largest trading partner without warning.
I presume China found alternate sources of most things. It would be a higher price of course, just as Australia was forced to accept lower prices. Unsurprisingly both countries look to be very keen to renew normal relations.
In fact they mostly have. But very little has changed trade wise because each country has now signed trade agreements that bind them for a year of two, which I guess is testimony to how fluid globalisation is.
So back to your question about China starting a trade war. They could, but it would hurt them as much as the other country. It would leave them a little bit poorer, and would not achieve much beyond symbolism.
- the economic damage to china will cause the overthrow of the CCP
- any serious escalation would be met by a naval blockade of china and mass starvation
China’s economy is not too strong in fact and they have few allies with strong economies or militaries.