After the depression the US emerged as the global hegemon because of major shifts in power that happened as a part of WWII. The US was uniquely adapted to grow to be the global super power at the same time that European nations were taking a huge hit from the war.
I suspect this will ultimately lead to China as the new hegemon. We're seeing key advantages to the Chinese state that the US cannot adapt to. Decades of pushing the US government to work more and more exclusively in the interest of capital has lead to a completely impotent state that cannot take care of its people. Likewise we have a complacent populace who, as many here have argued, won't be able to endure extended isolation.
The pandemic is not just a rogue wave that has done some damage and we'll bounce right back. This event has shown deep systemic vulnerability to certain very real risks that the US is incapable of adapting too. And all these same risks are what leave us extremely vulnerable to other similar events like climate change.
The US will recover in a sense, but this is very likely the start of a long process of a major shift in global power, and the end result will look very, very different than the world of a few weeks ago.
Germany lost 2 World Wars and today it has greater GDP than UK by $1 trillion. It doesn't matter who is hit harder it matters whose economy is more efficient and has more innovations.
Not much comparable. Just a random difference - Germany was quickly rebuilt because allies want it to be rebuilt, and not let impoverished and destroyed like after WWI. We know how that ended...
When talking about efficiency, I think China might have the upper hand now - they are much more effective in discipline, they don't mind suffering things that are unacceptable for us, and look where they are with COVID - ahead of every-fucking-body else. West looks pathetically weak and ineffective compared to them. Maybe in 2 months things will look differently, but I don't see much data for that now.
My point was if a country wants to be successful and dominate over others it needs to have an economy which is efficient and which innovates that's why USA is currently world's richest and most powerful country. On the other hand China with its massive workforce and efficiency combined with upcoming innovations is about to become world's new number 1 superpower.
I saw someone make an interesting comparison on this.
In the West, when they think of efficiency, they think of using robots and automation to remove human labor. Labor costs go down, quality goes up, profits go up. Get rid of pesky factory workers and their need for benefits.
The goal in the West, is to maximize profit, above all else.
Whereas with China, when they think of efficiency, they think of production output ratio in mass production. Meaning, how many people can they employ, along with automation and mechanization, in order to massively increase production output.
Humans are more adaptable than robots, and can be repurposed to operate another machine. Quality is not as high, but it may be acceptable. The gain is in mass market share, at a lower cost. And at some point, their higher end manufacturers will automate and compete on par with their western peers.
The goal in China, is to maximize output. Massive profits can come later.
That’s what happens when your people have almost no rights and you can literally weld their building doors shut. Their strength comes at a cost, and it’s the freedom of their people.
Edit: Also, China only matters because we allow them to matter. As soon as we wise up and let other countries start making our toys and phones, China will be screwed.
> they don't mind suffering things that are unacceptable for us
When the ruling class exploits the working class and suppresses their access to information and free speech, that doesn't mean they "don't mind suffering," it means one sector of the Chinese population has cannibalized another sector in order to build wealth for themselves. Much like what is happening in the US with the ultra-wealthy. It's not all rainbows and roses in China, in fact if you forgot, there is an active genocide in progress in that country.
Genocide or not (nobody knows what is happening in those camps, so I would not use that word unless we have some solid hard evidence), we talk about consequences of covid on societies. And Chinese one seems to be faring much much better than most others.
I just saw how a video of Chinese doctors dressing up for a visit to a covid patient. My doctor wife just stared with open mouth - nothing like that is done here in Switzerland. They use super basic equipment, which is simply not enough to protect long term doctors exposed to patients. We simply don't have the mindset to handle this situation seriously. We will learn eventually, but it will be a painful lesson for our society.
As somebody on HN mentioned a few weeks ago, China defined its bottom with closure and quarantine, and now they are bouncing back. While west is still in free fall.
China understands what matters most and that is controlling the narrative. An authoritarian government excels at manipulating the raw data and thus the narrative.
I'm not arguing against the point that China is handling this better than other countries. I'm arguing against the point that it's because they "don't mind suffering." They do mind suffering, but they have no agency, and their government has decided that they must suffer so that the economy can survive this crisis as healthy as possible.
China is an authoritarian country, and they've resorted to literally locking people into their homes until a quarantine period passes, arresting them, and beating them. Can you imagine if American police started locking apartment complex doors from the outside? I don't want to live in a country like that, even if it means we're worse equipped to deal with pandemics.
And let's not forget this whole thing started in China because their food safety regulations aren't adequate.
edit: ah yes, downvotes -- mash that disagree button
It was meant more as a "there is no real response to a contentless statement like this" comment, though I admit people don't seem to be taking it that way.
Nothing in the grandparent comment is particularly neoliberal; now, if it stated that neoliberal policy assured (or even made more likely) the kind of economic resilience that it suggests is what matters, that would be different, but as it is it is compatible with the criticism of neoliberalism that is common from the center-left to the far left (though each position in this range also has many more criticisms of neoliberalism) that it favors myopic microoptimizations over systemic health and resilience.
Heck, as a center-leftish frequent critic of neoliberalism, I mostly agree with the statement: while who was hit hardest has some effect, differences in the trajectory of the rebound from the bottom tends to matter more for the post-crisis position than differences in the depth of the bottom.
"efficiency" and "innovation" are neoliberal buzzwords. They are the very same buzzwords that were used to justify the cuts to our supplies and offshoring of our supply chains that led in part to this crisis.
It is absurd on its face to summarize Germany's ascendancy to "efficiency" and "innovation" when, you know, complicated geopolitics is a thing. It is literally fluffy propaganda.
> "efficiency" and "innovation" are neoliberal buzzwords.
No, efficiency and innovation are real things. Neoliberals tend to think that they are areas that neoliberal policy produces better outcomes on, and in the case of efficiency at least there is a strong theoretical case that this is true in a very narrow range of hyper-idealized conditions.
People who are not neoliberals often agree that efficiency and innovation are important (though perhaps not of as paramount importance as neoliberals tend to portray them), but often disagree with neoliberals as to the optimality of neoliberal policies at producing them outside of the kind of simplified conditions that dominate the first couple weeks of undergraduate economics classes.
> People who are not neoliberals often agree that efficiency and innovation are important (though perhaps not of as paramount importance as neoliberals tend to portray them), but often disagree with neoliberals as to the optimality of neoliberal policies at producing them outside of the kind of simplified conditions that dominate the first couple weeks of undergraduate economics classes.
People who are not neoliberals often agree that efficiency and innovation are important _up to the point where needs are met for all_. No leftist uses efficiency/innovation as a target (and if they do chase it for the sake of productivity they are by definition not left of capital).
> People who are not neoliberals often agree that efficiency and innovation are important _up to the point where needs are met for all_. No leftist uses efficiency/innovation as a target (and if they do chase it for the sake of productivity they are by definition not left of capital).
Plenty of leftists, agree with neoliberals that utilitarian efficiency ought to be a key goal of an economic system. Leftists, unlike neoliberals, are unlikely to believe that the capitalist markets optimize for utilitarian efficiency, because, even aside from the general failures of the rational choice model due to imperfect information, etc. (which neoliberals often also discount), capitalist markets effectively weight individual utility differently based on the individual’s wealth.
1. The supposedly superior Chinese system is largely responsible for the outbreak being as bad as it is. Never mind the initial coverup and lies about the nature of the disease, their allowance of those horrifically unsanitary wildlife markets is crime enough.
2. I'm wondering what makes you think the US is incapable of adapting. Will we ever be able to do a China-style lockdown? Probably not, but that's a feature not a bug. There are other ways of dealing with a pandemic, and I sincerely doubt anyone from the west, or most of the east for that matter is going to be moving to China for their pandemic-response measures.
If anything I see this as a negative for China. The experience has revealed just how vulnerable China-dependent supply chains are, particularly for medications and medical devices. I expect both political and social moves to diversify away from dependence on China, which would hardly make them more of a Hegemon.
1. China’s early failures were quickly remedied. They enacted a massively costly economic shutdown early, and bought the west weeks or months. What did we do with that bought time? We wasted it by denying the threat, failing to stockpile, and ultimately doing the exact same thing China did (trying to suppress news of it from the top). At least in the US a select few Republicans were able to profit off this, so I guess they can thank China for their generosity.
2) China built two hospitals in a week, and nearly instantaneously shifted a significant portion of their industry to making medical supplies. Thousands of Americans will die because the US President won’t invoke the defense production act. US does adapt, but it does so too slowly to solve the problem.
China has proven themselves massively resilient. Right now, they’re worried about reimporting cases from Europe and have covid largely under control. It would have been better to not get out of hand in the first place, but they’re the only country that’s demonstrated an ability to work themselves back out of the crisis once it’s unfolded.
Already, colleagues in China are returning to work, and I’ll be out of the office likely until May. China gave us weeks if not months of warning that we ignored, so it’s a little frustrating to see Americans and Europeans finger point when ultimately we’re responsible for our own shit.
If you look at China’s trajectory over the past ~15 years, it is obvious that the 21st century is theirs for the taking, as the 20th was for the US.
I sincerely doubt "buying time for the west" was even remotely in the minds of any Communist Party officials in charge of the lockdown. They committed to the lockdown so their own medical systems wouldn't get overwhelmed and cause even more economic damage, just like everyone else.
US adaptation will take the form of putting systems in place to prevent a re-occurrence. Of course we move too slow in the initial crisis, we always have. Any democracy moves slower than an authoritarian dictatorship in the moment, that's one of the trade-offs. It's frustrating, but a natural feature of the system, and pays dividends in the long-term.
China's trajectory over the past 15 years has been providing cheap labor to be the world's workshop. But that labor is no longer as cheap, automation continues to advance, and companies were already relocating their supply chains due to political/economic/IP theft concerns, Samsung being the most notable example. Now this? There will be a surge.
That and the Chinese's government's bottomless-loans-as-political-favor policy can't last forever. And thanks to the one child policy they're facing a major age and gender demographic crisis. China is also dependent on imports for food and energy.
They exist in their modern form at at the pleasure of the rest of the world. The foundation for their economic miracle was the west opening them up to world trade to distance them from the Soviets, and later cheap labor. It was never anything intrinsic to China or Chinese power. The moment they try to force their will on the world they'll find their ability to do so is short-lived.
I’m not sure about this. China is, rightfully, being blamed for the initial outbreak of the virus and their failure to contain it. I think when the dust settles, we’re going to see a rapid decoupling from China as countries look inward to strengthen their domestic supply chains.
I have a hard time seeing China emerging as a winner from this crisis.
Given how poorly the rest of the world reacted after getting two months of advance warning, I can't think of more than three countries that could have contained this outbreak.
Fingerpointing at China when they reacted far more decisively then the West did seems... A tad off the mark.
If this originated in Milan, Kansas, or Bangalore, we'd all be in the exact same boat today.
Hell, if the outbreak started in Kansas, we would probably have a hundred thousand dead by now, with our supreme leader still insisting that the virus will magically go away in three weeks.
Not sure it is fair to say that the world really had advanced warning from China. They were saying everything was okay and people-people transmission is low. All trust was lost, so time was reset when Italy was hit, that is the real time zero, because no one trusts China.
The first lockdown in Italy was Feb 21. Trump had alread convened a task force to investigate and handle the spread of the virus on Jan 29, and was later called racist for the travel restrictions placed on people coming from China on Jan 31.
It's apparently been memory-holed, but during this period it was the US media calling it "no worse than the flu", not the other way around.
* Shipping a laughably insufficient number of test kits that didn't work, while banning private labs from developing their own tests. We still have a crippling test kit shortage.
* Asking people traveling from China to self-quarantine, and not following up.
* No stockpiles of necessary medical supplies.
Getting called names has never stopped him from rolling out bad policy in the past. I don't see why it can be credited for stopping him from rolling out good policy this time.
Inner cynic: For now long? 5 years? Then we will again be cutting costs, looking at the bottom line, and find that Chinese manufacturing gives a better bottom line.
Interesting theory. I suspect China will continue to do what they’ve been doing, and build out their own country.
The United States was built on the foundation of transportation (roads and highways), automobiles, mortgages, and travel. These industries built up the middle class, by providing jobs for home, and profits from exports to abroad. Then came tech and the massive windfall from that.
They essentially have the population of 4 United States, that they can essentially just compete internally among themselves, while still producing products for export to abroad.
They can just follow the same playbook here.
* Infrastructure, check, they have highways, airports, and also, high speed trains.
* Automobiles, check, they have the largest car market in the world. And they are continually working with, and learning from, their European partners. Eventually, they’ll get good enough to not need external partnerships.
* Mortgages, check, lots of high rises, since that’s the only way to house so many people.
* Travel, in progress, they’re working really hard to make a commercial airliner. This will take another 20 years, but Boeing messed up with their 737 Max fiasco, which may give them an opening sooner. But most of the parts to this airplane comes from American companies, so if Trump wants, then he can really crush their airplane independence dreams, at least for 10 years.
* Technology, in progress, they have mostly web companies, and application companies, but not yet core technology companies. They still don’t quite have CPU and memory chip companies yet, and they outsourced manufacturing to Taiwan. This is where Trump can really crush them, but again, at a heavy price, and only for 10 years.
In the end, anything is possible, but I highly doubt they are interested in squeezing the US by the balls anyways. They are finding it more profitable to maintain friendly terms with the US, and sell them cheaper trinkets, than taking a confrontational approach, and getting into a hot war, where nobody wins, except Lockheed.
OP assumed the rest of the world will become less dependent on foreign goods, which would therefore hurt China. I pointed out China is hedged to come out on top in that scenario, not that China would necessarily push for that scenario.
China's own population may be additionally disenchanted with a government unable to handle the situation without iron/hamfisted attempts to clamp down after ignoring the problem / sources for a long time.
A few weeks? Really? A major geopolitical shift the likes of which the world has never seen is going to occur in a few weeks?
These things take place over years, even decades. I do agree that the US hegemony may come to an end if things continue as is. But I don't think that means another becomes hegemon.
A key determiner is who invents an effective treatment and vaccine first. Many bright young minds globally are paying great attention to Covid-19. If it happens in a country, possibly US, East Asia, or Europe, then the institutions of higher learning in the country would gain immediate prestige. (Pretty sure some teams in China have set its sight on this.)
If it happens in East Asia, that would also be a recognition of their recent rapid improvement in STEM research that's not yet common knowledge, and not recognized by many general rankings.
An academic ranking with some objectivity has 5 Chinese, 1 Korean, and 1 Singaporean universities among global top 10 in biomedical engineering, for example:
A shift in perception among talents may start a positive feedback loop that propels innovation in East Asia (incl. Singapore) further. Today, many graduate students in top programs in the US are from Asia.
Over the long term, quality and rate of innovations are what determine global leaders (as a sibling comment suggests).
I agree with the last part of your statement, but not the first. By the time an effective vaccine is developed and run through human trials, most of the population will already have gotten Covid, so it's not likely to be a savior moment. Additionally, given how many vaccine candidates are already in the pipeline, it's pretty likely there will be multiple options approved within a few months of each other.
On a related note, if China wants to improve its STEM research prestige level, it needs to do something about the rampant fraud in research results that cause a lot of people to be highly skeptical of anything they publish.
Many countries, esp in East Asia, have slowed COVID spread down a great deal. Vaccines will likely be invented before it penetrates the populations there. They are among the largest groups of graduate students, ie key research workforce, in the US.
If a vaccine developed in East Asia is either cheaper, more scalable, or more effective, increased self-confidence would mean many top students will choose to pursue graduate studies at home instead of the US. This is in addition to fear of being discriminated against because of the pandemic.
Given the number of top people in East Asia with strong quantitative skills, it would significantly shift research momentum to the east.
I suspect this will ultimately lead to China as the new hegemon. We're seeing key advantages to the Chinese state that the US cannot adapt to. Decades of pushing the US government to work more and more exclusively in the interest of capital has lead to a completely impotent state that cannot take care of its people. Likewise we have a complacent populace who, as many here have argued, won't be able to endure extended isolation.
The pandemic is not just a rogue wave that has done some damage and we'll bounce right back. This event has shown deep systemic vulnerability to certain very real risks that the US is incapable of adapting too. And all these same risks are what leave us extremely vulnerable to other similar events like climate change.
The US will recover in a sense, but this is very likely the start of a long process of a major shift in global power, and the end result will look very, very different than the world of a few weeks ago.