America could end up making China great again | Hacker News Reader

America could end up making China great again

economist.com

39 pointsAnon8430 comments

While this may be true in the short to medium term how do you square this with the issues of an aging workforce and low fertility in China in the long term? While I don't believe Peter Zeihan's opinion that China will no longer exist as a country in the next 20 years I haven't been able to find any more reasonable takes on how aging societies will or won't adapt and what the consequences' of that will be.

I think to really make sense of it, we need to stop looking at China's issues in a vacuum. It's not just about comparing apples with apples, sometimes it's apples with oranges. The U.S. and most of the world are also dealing with aging populations, low fertility, and big systemic shifts.

Zeihan as a source? That's... optimistic. More entertainer than analyst. Premature to write off 1B+ on the birth rate issue. Remember peak oil? We adapt. Alternatives exist (and will).

What are these alternatives, and where are they discussed? I agree he's more of an entertainer but I have not scene a more serious discussion of the possibly valid points he brings up.

Robots. Chinese factory employment has been steadily declining over the last decade despite increased production.

Zeihan:

US good demographics via immigration, shielded by deep water, internal water ways... fortress america. Shale revolution for energy autarky. Food security. PRC not.

Reality:

PRC growing from current roughly parity to 2x-3x larger skilled workforce vs US in next 20-30 years... who will be in workforce 2060/70/80s (this is already baked in from past 25 years of births), i.e. medium/long term of our and most of our children's lifetimes, long enough that hard to extrapolate after. Also the highest concentration of automation in the world. Maybe this is gap AI can plug, but in absence US with even immigration cannot come close to PRC simply minting roughly OECD combined in just STEM. Meanwhile PRC pop trending to 800m by 2100, i.e. 600m less mouth to feed and fuel but remaining 800m mouths that's 60/70/80% skilled workfroce vs current 60/70/80% lowskilled/peasants is a complete different strategic competitor. PRC declining population, but better workforce = most optimal competitive demographic trend to compete with US. Reminder that JP/SKR increased economy 10-20x post <2 TFR simply by upskilling their workforce. PRC current "only" has 20% high skilled workforce, them moving to 60%+ of advanced economies = decades of stupendous amount of high skilled demographic divident to extract.

PRC dredges shallow shores to build plurality of most high performing ports for global trade.

PRC infra/waterworks connecting internal waterways gives it highest utililized internal water transport system in the world.

PRC capacity for renewables has higher ceiling than US shale, cheap shale is not endless, extracting tapped out permian is projected to increase, $70-80 breakeven in 20 years might kill economic competitiveness vs other producers, vs hard to project anyone competing with PRC on industrial renewables.

PRC developing global strike to pierce fortress america... which really is misnomer for expeditionary america, i.e. technology that forward deploys advanced military (relative to others' projection powers) to bottle up others within their shores so they can't reach US. Remember how the US experiment could have ended off CONUS shores by wooden british boats if it wasn't for French intervention. Vunerability of CONUS is product of geography mediated by technology. Right now tech balance vs adversaries = CONUS leans fortress, but advances in gunpowder made fortresses irrelevant. PRC global strike with conventional ICBMs in a few energy distribution nodes and US is no better than Saudi refineries vs Yemen - it doesn't matter if US have resource autarky if you cannot protect vunerable extractive infra, which has knock on effects to everything, including (fertilizer for) modern agriculture. Even JP pierced CONUS with fugo ballons in WW2, of course it was ineffectual, but modern guided munitions are likely to be. Ask how much US preeminance is built on CONUS serenity, and what happens if that is threatened, like US can threaten everyone else with relative impunity. How many students can US brain drain in shooting war with mutual homeland vunerability, what happens to US global hegemonic framework when Boeing plants, SaaS/payment data centres, tech campuses, F35 production lines can be distrupted. Like Trump doing fine dismantling a lot of that without PRC help, but postwar US order/strength is built on the fact that US can hit others while homefront sustains the expeditionary hitting. Once homefront gets disrupted, that model stops working.

Zeihan focuses on the geo and forgets the politics, or conveniently uses biased politics for geopolitical analysis to sell chicken dinners to US supremacists. Granted a lot of PRC military / tech developements happened after his books, but anyone with half a brain cell can project 20-30 years and realize the conditions he builds off was unlikely to be the balance in the future. PRC political advantages negate a lot of geographic disadvantages... meanwhile PRC geography actually pretty favourable... there's a reason it sustained largest civilization for 1000s of years. Also reminder PRC actually per capita calorically self sufficient, use to be net fertilizer export via coal gassification (which PRC has unlimited in reserve, and only scaled back due to enviroment), increasingly energy independant via domestic renewables... and declining net population will only reinforce their domestic autarky - which will still remain vunerable to US strikes, but the equation changes when there is mutual homeland vunerability. Then equation shifts to attrition... who can hit more, who can endure more... and let's just say PRC with 4x more population, has 4x infra to degrade. Maybe currently US can project >4x fires at PRC mainland... but maybe in 5/10 years maybe not. Maybe PRC A2D2 enough to dismantle most of US security architecture in region, and US hedge on exquisition expensive munition delivery platforms (carriers, b21s) is less survivable than PRC brrrrting conventional hypersonics that can hit CONUS from 1000s of survivable land based fortifications. There is a lot of uncertainty in the tech stack. This not mentioning US MIC isn't calibrated for adversary size of developed PRC. Took 5 carrier groups + regional basing and multiple weeks of not sustainable high tempo operations to dismantle Iraq that's (generously) 1/100th PRC in industrial capability, all of which is deployed in PRC theatre and explicitly designed to counter US MIC.

TLDR is Zeihan makes many invalid points, some points that maybe valid 10-15 years ago, but wouldn't have really stood test of time, even then.

> how do you square this with the issues of an aging workforce and low fertility

With the second opening America’s voters have granted China: an immigration destination for the world’s ambitious. (Or perhaps an imperial model whereby China controls labour pools outside its borders to supplement its own.)

The CCP is communist. Nobody seems to remember this, but leftists were rather strongly anti-immigration and that is not something that has changed in CCP ideology.

They have "opened up", according to themselves. Which means: if you are of Chinese heritage (sufficiently pure - yes really) and are persecuted (e.g. Indonesian Chinese) you sort-of kind-of can immigrate. Sometimes.

Refugees are not welcome.

If you want to see what happens with an aging workforce and low fertility rate look at Japan. It's more stagnation than decline.

Unlike Japan, China also still has a massive rural population that can get educated and move to the cities. This internal migration has been and will continue to offset their declining population for many more years.

Isn't this also true for USA though? The US's fertility rate is only a bit higher than China's and also has an aging workforce. Plus, even if China has a lower birth rate, their sheer numbers will mean their workforce will remain huge.

China's fertility rate is 1.18 births per woman. US fertility rate is 1.66 births per woman.

This is not really comparable. Out of all western nations, the US has perhaps the least problems with fertility.

The US both allows immigration (China doesn't) and has sources of immigration of people of relatively close cultural heritage. Also, China is a conqueror, there is only one major territory where Chinese live that is not within China's borders (and MANY where few/very few Chinese live that are within China's borders, even more if you count places where the CCP has control even if they're not within accepted UN borders)

Did not have to read this, not that I could get into it :)

Anyway, Trump is handing the economic world to China. Many countries Trump alienated will probably replace much US trade with Chinese and other east Asian Countries.

Already you see Canada and the EU moving closer together, I am sure China is hanging around and will eventually get an "in". Makes me wonder how this will impact the USD as the world's reserve currency. If the USD is dropped, we are in for a lot of hurt.

So as MAGA people use to say about Biden, "Thanks Trump".

The Biden carrot was more successful in getting foreign countries to do what he wanted than the Trump stick.

Biden had successfully instigated a trade war between Canada & China, by getting Canada to join the US in putting a 100% tax on Chinese EV's. This exasperated an already tense relationship due to the extradition of Meng Wanzhou and resulted in nasty tariffs on Canadian oilseeds, legumes, seafood and pork.

I'm relatively confident Canada will settle with China to avoid a two front war.

> Canada will settle with China to avoid a two front war

The wild thing is it may be in Canada’s interest to seek security guarantees from China at this point.

> to seek security guarantees from China at this point.

The Chinese won't provide these guarantees. If you understand Chinese culture and read Chinese history, you'd realise that the Han are generally not a very militaristic people. (As an example, look into Zheng He and his fleet of massive ships, which he used only for trade and expeditions, and not for colonialism.) They simply don't have the same ambition or interest as the US does in placing boots on the ground and interfering militarily in other countries. (Neither are they interested in imposing their current authoritarian Sino-Marxist system on other nations -- such fears are merely a consequence of projection by the US and the West, which have historically behaved in ideologically dogmatic ways, being quick to judge, condemn, and prescribe, while unwilling and unable to understand different contexts and nuances.)

No Chinese parents would tolerate the idea of sending their sons to die defending Canada, a Western country an ocean away with nary any historical and cultural ties to China. And, contrary to what most people here might assume, the CCP does care about what the Chinese people think.

> Neither are they interested in imposing their current authoritarian Sino-Marxist system on other nations

Tibet would like a word. Oh and so would Xinjang, Bhutan, Hong Kong, ...

Most of these cases were about former chinese areas that were occupied and stolen by the west. Suddenly, when China wanted them back, western countries begun caring about democracy and freedom. Compare this with current western powers which commited atrocities all around the world with colonies, US which attacked and invaded areas which were never theirs in Texas and Hawaii, and supported all sort of genocide, coups and invasions when countries around the entire world did not aligned with its capitalist system.

Donald Trump is gods gift to China. Trump is serving the whole world to the Chinese on a platter.

There is probably some truth in this but China have their own major obstacles to overcome that this won't help much with. They have demographic challenges they needed to solve many decades ago and are basically running out of workers. In my opinion they would have to open the doors to global immigration and give people really good incentives to do this. I have no idea what those incentives would have to be.

If this were a science fiction story, I'd say Elon Musk activated secret Neuralink[1] features implanted in Trump's brain, all in service of an even more secretive society with a hidden agenda.

The features were designed specifically for subjects with the optimal cognitive traits.

[1] https://neuralink.com/

> Elon Musk activated secret Neuralink

Musk has been god’s gift to Beijing moreso than Trump. He’s fundamentally compromised on China. And he’s going on drug-fuelled binges of unpopular exercises of illegal executive authority through our republic’s institutions. He’s a walking global billboard for China’s political system, which has shown itself perhaps uniquely capable of disciplining its billionaires.

Musk's antics (and those of Bezos and other subsidy enjoyers) have also legitimized the Chinese approach to state subsidies. They're for the most part financing things that advance the whole nation's interests, not just the delusional follies of a connected few.

That makes it sound like the world being in America's pocket would have been a better outcome.

America in the 21st century has been running on the fumes of its achievements post-WWII. China has been building entire cities' worth of infrastructure domestically and internationally, deepening trade links and political influence. America wasn't even willing to rebuild New Orleans, let alone Afghanistan and Iraq. That hasn't escaped the attention of the rest of the world.

In the era following the Great Recession, it has been mired in comical levels of political disunity, where investing in public infrastructure like housing, healthcare and education is seen as a 'handout' to the 'undeserving'. In no other nation-state on earth would somebody like Musk be provided with taxpayer funds to derail plans for high-speed trains by pursuing a non-working vanity project that appeared to be inspired by a Simpsons episode about a charismatic charlatan.

> In no other nation-state on earth would somebody like Musk be provided with taxpayer funds to derail plans for high-speed trains by pursuing a non-working vanity project

With you until this. China has built its fair share of nonsense vanity infrastructure to the point of entire cities. The difference isn’t the tendency to fever dream. It’s that China actually gets around to the building of it. Both in controlling its billionaires and suppressing NIMBYism, its model looks like an attractive one for developing countries to replicate (versus the American or European models).

Over-construction is not uncommon during boom times. It's not a problem either: the buildings may be empty temporarily, but once prices adjust, they will be occupied and in use. China needs new cities to distribute their population more evenly geographically, so some level of over-capacity is planned for.

Contrast that to the US, where housing economics are completely messed up due to zoning restrictions, Airbnb-only properties, immigration crackdowns causing labour shortages, and a system that allows cash-rich investment funds to hoard large amount of the supply.

> the buildings may be empty temporarily, but once prices adjust, they will be occupied and in use

With what population? Like, there is a reason these structures are being left unfinished: they were never smart to have started.

> zoning restrictions, Airbnb-only properties, immigration crackdowns causing labour shortages

China is heavily zoned, has a prominent issue in its cities with the rich “hoarding” property as investment, and is notoriously immigrant unfriendly. (We haven’t even gotten to hukou.)

China’s system excels in one respect when it comes to housing and construction: efficient use of public lands and eminent domain to overcome NIMBYism.

> cash-rich investment funds to hoard large amount of the supply

By which “large” means considerably less than 1% [1].

You have a good argument. It doesn’t need hyperbole or falsehoods.

[1] https://www.housingwire.com/articles/no-wall-street-investor...

It isn't sensible to project your personal intuitions about the US onto China. China keeps surprising us (in different directions).

> the buildings may be empty temporarily

If they are quality buildings in a useful location then they might become useful.

That is why he is (tongue in cheek, maybe?) jokingly called "Comrade Jianguo" by some in China, which means "Building the Nation", as a backhanded complement that he is helping make China great.

There is a good thread [1] on Reddit about this.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/1dwbc8s/people_are_c...

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