At this point all China needs to do is the gaben strategy, doing nothing while America keeps shooting itself in the foot. Trump seems to have unlimited bullet supply.
1) maintain the autocracy
2) have a strong police to preserve the autocracy from rebellion
3) have a good enough economy to defend the autocracy from external threats
... ten more "for the autocracy" points ...
improving the country for the people
Also, Zeihan overselling or not, China is facing an unprecedented demographic decline. So to the parent comment about "not doing anything and winning", honestly the US can do the same and watch China implode demographically.
Also, the CCP ultimately derives its legitimacy from materially improving the country for the Chinese people: back in the day fighting back against the Japanese and corrupt warlords, now economic progress. Both the Chinese people and the CCP know well what it means if they stop delivering and the "Mandate of Heaven" expires.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_of_Heaven
China's demographic decline will take decades and unless the CCP really fucks things up (eg. invading Taiwan and failing miserably at it), it's going to be a Japan/Korea-style slow-motion stagnation, not a dramatic implosion.
Meanwhile, China has been getting better and better, looking at US as an example, and correctly avoiding providing the "freedoms" given to us in US in avoiding the same fate.
The real change is that the US economy isn't obviously superior to the next however many economies combined. Consequently the US is losing the ability to impose its opinions on others as fundamental truths. It looks like everyone in the West will have to re-learn negotiation and it'll probably be a rocky process.
Sort of. I’d move the needle to the 1970s, when Soviet power was on an obvious downside. Realpolitik would dictate, at that time, for Europe and Asia to balance America. But we were a good ally. So balancing wasn’t seen to be necessary.
Wasn't seen as possible, an important distinction. The Australian experience so far is the US demands we ... basically commit war crimes every so often. Or whatever the term is for invading countries without justification. It is a lot like being good friends with a shark; it is important to keep them pointed at other things and the shark isn't ever going to go out of its way for you unless it is hungry and the friendship is ending.
The world was probably better for us when the US was unconstrained by reality; but the reality is the US have been behaving very irresponsibly for decades. Trump is on the upper end of the presidential scale in recent history, the world can't cope with another Bush or Biden. Obama might have been able to get better diplomatic results.
They’ve also massively overinvested in sectors like real estate
But maybe if Drumpf screws up the US enough, they will be able to weather these problems
Or perhaps AI will get so good it won’t matter
[1] https://itif.org/publications/2024/03/11/how-innovative-is-c...
[2] https://www.aspi.org.au/report/critical-technology-tracker
> Our research reveals that China has built the foundations to position itself as the world’s leading science and technology superpower, by establishing a sometimes stunning lead in high-impact research across the majority of critical and emerging technology domains.
> China’s global lead extends to 37 out of 44 technologies that ASPI is now tracking, covering a range of crucial technology fields spanning defence, space, robotics, energy, the environment, biotechnology, artificial intelligence (AI), advanced materials and key quantum technology areas. The Critical Technology Tracker shows that, for some technologies, all of the world’s top 10 leading research institutions are based in China and are collectively generating nine times more high-impact research papers than the second-ranked country (most often the US). Notably, the Chinese Academy of Sciences ranks highly (and often first or second) across many of the 44 technologies included in the Critical Technology Tracker. We also see China’s efforts being bolstered through talent and knowledge import: one-fifth of its high-impact papers are being authored by researchers with postgraduate training in a Five-Eyes country. China’s lead is the product of deliberate design and long-term policy planning, as repeatedly outlined by Xi Jinping and his predecessors.
this was a reference to Gabe Newell and Valve
Look at BYD sales and Ne Zha 2.
Their gaming industry and entertainment industries are starting to pull ahead of the US.
We’re seeing the effects of ~70 years of hyper-consumerist behavior. It worked for a while, but now the costs have accumulated. There’s shit everywhere, and everything either breaks or is poison. Or both.