Historically, yes. But Xi is a dictator, and has been making decisions on mortal, personal timelines.
Eg. For Putin. Yes men: Yes, Take Kyiv in 3 days and it's a done deal.
Reality: lose > 300 k. Troops, a major portion of all Soviet tanks, risk of Russia splitting, occupy part of Ukraine instead of the whole, lose 300 billion € in Western banks, bring other countries into NATO, risk sphere of influence, Russian military strength debunked, ...
Additionally: paranoia
The only thing that was correct of Putin's analysis is that corrupt people mostly "support" him. ( Trump, Orban, Xi, Erdogan)
Their propaganda failed where it matters ( except in Slovakia concerning the EU). However it's still in Africa, but don't have enough info about it.
No offense, but who keeps perpetuating this myth. Is this Zeihan bullshit?
In my previous life I've worked with people who worked at or near those levels and Chinese policymakers aren't any different from those in other countries (though the older generation does seem to have a bit of a penchant of skimming the top more than younger ones).
If there was a long term multigenerational plan, then LGFVs would have been cracked down a decade ago, they wouldn't have bungled the entire Semiconductor Manufacturing subsidy (only 1 company remains out of 6-7 that were given tens of billions of dollars, most of which was skimmed by corruption), and they wouldn't have instigated a trade war with South Korea and Japan leading both nations to move their investments to Vietnam and India respectively.
That is the polar opposite of Zeihan's view. You couldn't have picked a worse name.
That's the issue.
Most people in the policy world who want to have a tangible impact have to work with credible organizations that have a direct impact on policymaking (Govt Agencies, Defense, Lobbying firms, the hill, top tier NGOs and Think Tanks).
Stratfor isn't one of those. It's founder George Friedman has had a notoriously horrible track record in the IR space
For example, in the 90s he predicted Japan would start a war with the US and did a massive press junket about this from 1991-1996. Turns out, the opposite happened, yet his "analysis" had a massive negative impact on US-Japan relations and impacted foreign discourse in the 1992, 1994, and 1996 elections.
The big issue is no person with credible domain experience wants to work at Stratfor. If you have years of policymaking experience, there are multiple other better paying career options than a firm located in Austin TX - about as far from politics as they can be.
They shut down their DC office in 2001 after they lost all credibility, and pivoted to a bit of consulting (think McKinsey type work) before pivoting to thought leadership and media junkets.
They're about as credible as IDC or Gartner are about technology.
> better than 95% of the mostly silly international relations talking heads
Who and where are you getting your sources? If you're watching/reading Cable News or a subset of niche blogs, you are completely out of the loop of where the actual conversations and discussions are happening.
I can give you some actual credible sources that people in the field use. Most people in the space don't really participate on CNN or the like.
And if you are going to pull the "Russia Invasion of Ukraine in 2022" example, multiple of the top think tanks and NGOs publicly broadcasted that threat half a year before it actually happened, but they weren't invited to CNN or Fox to discuss.
> you have too high expectations for here. Everything but programming is going to be pop-sci, pop-geopol, pop-econ, etc. in general
I wouldn't care if I wasn't seeing conversations veering to that on a near daily basis here on HN. I want to nerd out about Golang and the business of tech (that's why I'm on here), but seeing entire echo chambers of people talking out of their ass about stuff needed to be rectified and I decided to start jumping into those conversations, but it's basically yelling into a vacuum. Hopefully YC cuts HN now that most of the old guard has retired. Bookface is nowhere as bad as HN.
I’ve only recently ventured back to focusing on current events after a 2 year nihilistic fallout with my perception of modern media and I’m desperately trying to get a foothold on some real solid reporting.
Don't. It's completely useless. You are not in a position to make a change so it's completely useless. Grassroots activism almost never works without explicit backing from someone with some power.
That said, if you still want to waste your time and mental sanity, for international relations I'd use the list provided by this prof at UPenn who's entire professorship is about ranking think tanks [0].
I'd also recommend reading this guide on how to evaluate think tanks from Harvard Expos 10 [1]
[0] - https://repository.upenn.edu/exhibits/orgunit/think_tanks
[1] - https://guides.library.harvard.edu/c.php?g=310680&p=5692971
Keep doing what you can and not stressing over what you can’t.
I’m not watching cable news, or getting it from from the rest of the niche media cranks. That’s what I’m talking about the 95%. That Zeihan threads the needle between not being the brightest most connected in DC, but giving geopol info better than most of the crap there is. Since I’m a layman, I personally have an info diet from Zeihan, Caspian Report, Dmitri Alperovitch, and the DC think tank Institute for the Study of War, a long with the occasional book like Prisoners of Geography and World Order.
> And if you are going to pull the "Russia Invasion of Ukraine in 2022" example,
Would never. My info diet, kudos to Dmitri Alperovitch, made me almost certain of this back in Dec 21, a few months before.
Of course Bookface wouldn’t be as bad, it’s further filtered.
I do appreciate the info.
These are bad sources sadly.
The origin is a mistranslation/misquote, albeit maybe one that played into the desire of the left to believe that communist dictatorship is a system in which wise long-termist technocrats get to make better decisions than presidents with an 8 year term limit, or CEOs focused on the next quarter.
--
In 1972, Chinese premier Zhou Enlai was asked about the impact of the French Revolution. “Too early to say,” he replied. Given that the French Revolution of 1789 had occurred nearly 200 years before, Zhou Enlai was expressing the long view of history in a very witty and Oscar Wildean way. News of this quote flew quickly around the chattering classes in the west, and it was soon used as evidence that the Chinese (especially Chinese intellectuals and leaders) took the long view of things, that they were a patient civilization, and that, when they thought about the future, it was hundreds of years distant.
Alas, Buzzkillers, it seems as if this was a case of mistranslation or misunderstanding the question. Prominent American diplomat Chas Freeman was a translator during that trip, and he was there when Zhou Enlai made this statement. Along with Chinese records of the exchange seen by historians, Freeman has confirmed for us that Zhou Enlai did reply to a question about the French Revolution — the 1968 student uprising in Paris, that is, not the 1789 French Revolution.
That doesn't mean these projects are "better", that there is no (massive) corruption, that it's a preferable governance model (fuck no), etc etc.
CKS had the full support of the US.
Ah but he did not have the “full” support for the last 20 years of his reign due to his insistence on using foreign aid to bolster his holding in Nanjing instead of pushing out the Japanese from the mainland to the north and in Burma. He was more concerned with losing power to the communists than losing his country to Japan. While his role was viewed as “democratic” in the eyes of the US media his role was nothing short of a one-party dictatorship that suffered from the same inability of subordinates being able to notify the powers that be of anything even resembling bad news.
It reminds me of the demographic collapse nonsense that people have been spouting for 30 years. It's all such cope, it's pathetic.
No one is seriously claiming that Xi is crazy. However, even perfectly sane and intelligent people tend to make poor decisions when they're fed inaccurate information.
The demographic collapse due to the one child policy is literally happening right now. Their population is aging faster than most of the rest of the world, although their neighbors in East Asia have similar patterns.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/12/05/key-facts...
For one example, Xi's pointless and counterproductive measures to contain COVID-19 are certainly reminiscent of Mao's four pests campaign. History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.