Powers that be are betting that the Chinese won't be able to catch up.
These folks might be swallowing the "Chinese aren't creative" too long
1. Stopping technology transfer worked exceedingly well for the west weakening the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
2. A distinct lack of (non-violent) alternatives for the West preventing China becoming the world's leading technological superpower (and hence also strongest military).
I doubt this will be successful in the long run, because China is not burdened by the Soviet Union's extremely inefficient way of organising its economy. Not to mention that China is the worlds biggest market.
All that’s needed is a military containment of China.
Are China's demographics appreciatively different from other industrialised countries? Questionable. Not to mention that it's unclear why an aging society is a problem at least for the next 100 years or so (e.g. most violent crime is perpetrated by the under-30s). It's also easy, at least for a dictatorship, to increase the birth rate (e.g. restrict access to all birth control, give massive preferences to families with children, like housing, salary, "bachelor tax" etc).
> military containment of China.
That is expensive. One frequently cited explanation for the collapse of the Soviet Union was that its poor economy could not support its oversized army, which it needed to keep the Soviet Bloc at heel (not to mention all the revolutions and secession movements it fostered elsewhere).
Also, does anyone actually believe that China is expansionist? Compare:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Peo...
The strategic problem of China's rise is more that other countries will eventually switch allegiance away from the West.
The only ones to switch allegiance to China will be the ones who have been bought off.
I’m also confident that the Philippines will now claim that China is the worst offender in the South China Sea.
As for any country involved in the 9 point line including Malaysia, anyone would have to be delusional to think that they support China stealing their territory
Let's say that even this reading is heavily disputed. I don't think the Director of the Global South Program at the Quincy Institute, and member of the adjunct faculty at George Washington University, is as "delusional" as you think. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/biden-vietnam/
Just face it, Xi is steering China towards another big leap backwards. All the foreign provocation is distracting from serious domestic issues.
Malaysia and Indonesia responded to AUKUS with alarm, do you deny this?
Yes. Also, it is very likely that China has been covering up the true extent of the demographic problems. And not necessarily to hide it from its geopolitical rivals, but to hide it from its own leadership fearing purges and punishment. Like ... there's a 100 million people "missing".
"it's also easy, at least for a dictatorship, to increase the birth rate"
No it's not, because those changes take a while to implement, and even if the birth rate skyrockets, you don't get usable workers for 20 years.
Plus, China's economy is urbanized, and its economy is built around cheap labor that is worked to the bone (996). To make urban areas viable for raising kids, you need to decrease hours worked and increase wages.
And, people need to feel optimistic about the world and the future.
So lets say a massive sweeping change was implemented to make having children quite a bit more appealing. It would probably take about 5-10 years for the policy changes to trickle through the various layers of state control (China is kind of feudal in nature), monetary incentives will likely be greatly reduced by corruption.
Then 20 years later, you start to get a blip upward. Because the issue is, the people that will have the kids are ALREADY THE SMALLEST GENERATION EVER from one child policy. So to move the needle, they need to have ... like ... 8 kids each.
One child policy forced families to pick a gender as well. You won't believe this, but culturally people preferred boys. So the smallest generation ever, which would be 50-50ish, is more like 40-60 or 45-55 (maybe not that stark, but ... kinda is) then ... well, your expansion is limited by the wombs.
https://zeihan.com/new-chinese-demographic-data-population-c...
So, keep in mind Zeihan is a bit of a clickbait artist. He sells himself and makes bold claims. But if he is right about those new vs old/fake numbers, that is some bad stuff.
The solution to falling birth rates is immigration. And while China does see a lot of immigration, it does have a large rural/urban divide, so it might be able to "immigrate" people from the rural classes (who as I understand it are currently treated as a lower class of people).
Countries like China are unable to take advantage of immigration. If increasing birth rates were easy for authoritarian countries like China, they wouldn’t be in this mess in the 1st place. This is a terrible argument. This situation is made worse with many mainlanders are trying to leave China.
The US and its allies like Japan and Australia have already implemented containment of China in the island chains. Pretty sure that thr Philippines and Vietnam are on board as well. This wouldn’t have happened if Wolf Warrior diplomacy weren’t a thing. All anyone has to do is cut off imports from the Middle East to cripple China. (No, Russian imports aren't enough. Most of their pipelines were destined for the EU. )Even India can cut off Middle East energy exports on its own because China doesn’t have a long range navy.
The BRICS coalition has also largely been a failure because no one can agree on what currency to use.
If either the Hu or Jiang faction were still in power, none of this would have happened because unlike Xi neither faction was delusional.
2. Iran isn’t doing anything but proxy wars here and there. Mostly in places where we will eventually retreat from.
3. Washington doesn’t need to contain any of them. Globalism is no longer a US interest. We are tired of subsidizing world trade and world security for little to no gain. All we get plenty of is criticism. Only countries that need energy imports from the Middle East are worried about the Houthis. Unlike many other countries, the US does not need energy imports or food imports. This is everyone else’s problem now.
2. I guess this is a way to dodge the Houthis question, who are actively striking US-aligned ships. What happened to "Operation Prosperity Guardian"?
3. And yet Washington does want to contain China? This sounds like "I can't lose because I'm not even trying".
I know the 'demographics is destiny' is the Washington Consensus but it should be understood that these are the same people wrecking our economy over and over again and starting forever wars we end up losing.
I'm pretty sure we're rapidly heading into a West vs China military conflict. I think part of the reason we've held rates higher for longer is that it hurts China more than the West as a way to undermine the Chinese economy. Coupled with the sanctions the West is getting ready for a 'timing attack'. But if the West is wrong and loses that war then we're effed. I would prefer a graceful stepping down from world hegemon and taking our seat at a multipolar world where we can focus on getting our own house in order. But obviously those in charge have other incentives.
- China is facing a massive demographic bomb from one child policy
- China is a financial house of cards. Some of the stuff I've read about is 3 billion apartments built as investments/savings which are actually worthless, local/state debt and shell games that is frighteningly leveraged, and the general cheap/empty consumption/construction that state driven funding has produced
- China is turning sharply authoritarian, possibly headed to Stalinist levels of purges and cult of personality with Xi.
- China can feed its population and gets its oil due to free trade and shipping, quite extended supply lines, which are going to get a lot more chaotic in the future. If/when China attempts to invade Taiwan, the US will impose a naval blockade on its shipping (Zeihan claims a "couple destroyers in the Indian Ocean" ... probably a BIT more involved than that) ... China will starve and its economy will stop functioning.
I think this is part of a multipronged trade war to attempt to collapse the Chinese Communist party. If you want to talk about "powers that be", consider what is on the table here: the Putin regime will likely collapse from the failures in Ukraine, and Russia (who is facing a demographic bomb almost as bad as China's) is expending its last functional generation of youth on human waves in Ukraine.
So the two major nuclear powers might collapse entirely, and the only real economic rival to the US.
But part of that is just the state of economics in the realm of mass media.
To that. Economist - Definition : Someone who can tell you today why yesterdays prediction of tomorrow was wrong.
Q. What do you call an Economist that makes a prediction? A. Wrong.
Other point of consideration is sometimes things breaks with a whimper not a collapse. Real estate technically "broke" with 3RL = expected 2-3% drop in excess / unproductive GDP. Collapsist think PRC will turn into Yemen without pumped up RE growth, but actual RE sales is ~15% of economy, the often quoted ~30% number includes ancillary industries like construction that got redirected to other projects like renewable rollouts. PRC RE sales dropping from 15T (yuan/rmb) in 2021 to 12T in 2023 out of 100T GDP = today's "quality" growth at ~5% instead of previous wreckeless growth ~8%. Meanwhile, resources directed at actually useful strategic industries, backed by pipeline that generates about as much high skilled workers as western block combined doing actual useful things like building EVs, fabs and generally moving up value chain. IMO west is going to miss the days PRC wreckeless sunk money in real estate instead of high tech products that will directly challenge encumbant western market leaders.
- no one seems to be contradicting the contention that the CCP under Xi has become sharply authoritarian, regressive, and is worsening
- the reported demographics may be sharply worse for the immediate forthcoming generations than previously reported: 100-250 million "missing" people, and a sharply worse male-female ration that previously reported. Again, for me, these depend on the size of the Chinese rural population, which I think might buffer demographic declines in urban areas.
- the financial "bombs" I agree are the least significant ones in terms of dramatic collapse scenarios. They are the ones all the rich care about because they might lose money, but the Chinese can print money and impose price controls and lots of other things that Western economies probably can't get away with.
What the financial numbers mean is two symptomatic signs: degree of corruption in the system but, worse than corruption, the degree of incompetence of the CCP to properly centrally manage things as they consolidate authoritarian control.
You won't find me defending economics on fundamental principles. Economists basically exist to justify the status quo power structure and are utterly incapable of constructing models to include things to price environmental degradation that might, you know, destroy human civilization.
I think that if China had not turned sharply authoritarian, they would be fine. It is a modernizing country of 1.4 billion people. But not the double-combo
The market will stay irrational far longer than anyone anticipates. But eventually, we the fundamentals correct the whole thing.
China will not face starvation because it shares a land border with Russia, which has enough food to supply China if necessary. However, this scenario is unlikely to unfold, as it overestimates the power of the US in this conflict. The conflict would predominantly be a naval battle, with US forces engaging with what are essentially forts. Most war games conducted in the US indicate that in an initial battle, the US would be defeated and forced to retreat. You should read the report presented to Congress a few months ago about China's military capabilities.
> the Putin regime will likely collapse from the failures in Ukraine
Based on situation today, lets just hope that Ukraine will not collapse because we are very far from Russia collapsing. See IMF data about their economy and situation on the front.
India might also become opportunistic and start to resolve its boundary disputes with China.
This also doesn’t account for Xi’s purges of the PLA including its all important rocket force.
It is doubtful what can be essentially considered a single fragile rail route can provide it logistically.
the Russian yields are not fantastic, and atop that Ukraine is for the foreseeable future not available for providing grain.
A war with China will disrupt international trade so much that grain demand will explode (countries will probably stockpile more) and the grain providers can select 1) blockaded china or 2) any of a hundred other customers.
https://chinapower.csis.org/china-food-security/
So Brazil, Argentina would be out, can't ship to China
US would obviously stop exports
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France: out
Indonesia, Thailand: probably out.
I agree that Russia is not in a situation of imminent collapse, neither is Putin in danger of imminent overthrow. However, demographically the Russians are expending the last of their skilled and young workers, while forcing Europe to no longer need their oil + gas, accelerate all EV / PV / Wind initiatives. Russia will lose "the last decade" of high oil profits before the demand begins to collapse.
Russia has also emboldened its other satellite conquests with its military incompetence. There was a video of Putin negotiating publicly with one of the southern states (don't remember, may have been Georgia) where the leader at the public negotiation table outright defied Putin. Meanwhile Ukraine modernizes, trains, becomes stronger and more effective. NATO is arming, and at this point Ukraine will probably be the site of an actual NATO-Russia conventional battle, which given NATO's ability for total air superiority means a complete defeat. If you're wondering who would fight the ground war given likely American apathy for another war, Poland would ENTHUSIASTICALLY fully mobilize to fight the Russians.
Down the line, Belarus's propped up government will fall, and Russia is staring at virtually a multi thousand mile border with outright NATO or might-as-well-be-NATO countries between Finland, Baltic republics, and Ukraine, and probably Belarus as I just said.
Black Sea access is very tenuous. Kalingrad is unreachable, and may secede. North Sea access is really tenuous.
Honestly the only hope for Russia is Europe doesn't arm fast enough and the US House of Reps holds up funding (which I believe 96bln just got approved).
And Russia's leadership is historically aware, what is happening as a result of this war (severing of gas supply dependence) is an armed Germany. The prospect of a fully industrially armed and modernized German military should strike a deep cultural fear in the entire Russian people.
And we didn't address the oil/petroleum issue. China can stockpile what they can, but an embargo will still result in the lights going off in China within 30 days.
China is still essentially a warlord state, and Xi is likely generating substantial resentment in the regional power centers. If the central government fails in a blockade, the Chinese state, fragmented between the free market liberal urban governments who resent the free market rollbacks, the CCP power center, and who knows in the rural areas, will crumble into warlord states.
As a side note, not a lot of people talk about the SOuth Korean demographic bomb (worst in the world), but if China falters the solution to South Korean demographics is to topple the North Koreans and import their population into the South Korean economy. I think that will happen in the next 20 years.