So is China going to surpass America to become the world's #1 economy? Or are the predictions that China's growth will decline true?
Some analysts think China's population is too old and that youth will peter out, whereas others think that all the CCP has to do is ask its millennials to have more babies.
Some analysts think that democratic nations will band together and give China the cold shoulder. China could just as easily form alliances.
Others say that the West will build factories in India, Vietnam, Mexico, and Africa and stop single-sourcing the supply chain. China's also playing that game with their One Belt initiative.
The West has bountiful resources. Oil, minerals. So does China.
The West has a huge military and space program. So does China.
The West has high-paying tech jobs because of its lead in tech, but China is catching up and has more people graduating into the field. This could drive dominance (and salaries) down.
China keeps reporting growth. Others say don't trust the numbers. At the same time, look at what's happening to Western economies and national debt. Is China pulling the same levers, or are they unscathed? What, if anything, can the West do to match that growth? Or is it impossible?
What's going to happen? What's the 20 to 30 year outlook?
Really hoping for some good analysis.
(note: this story was "flagged" and I was unable to reply, but I "vouched" for it because I really value conversation and want informed input to help shape my view. Maybe I was wrong to do so, and if Dang or the mods disapprove, I'm sorry. My opinion on this whole matter is constantly in flux, and I'd really like good sources of information so I can be up to date and well informed. It feels like one of the most important topics of our generation.)
> The West has a huge military and space program. So does China
I don’t think this is true. China’s military is quite weak compared to the US (dollar amount, global reach, navy, nuclear) and it’s not able to project power globally. Even as far as the Middle East would be a problem as they don’t have bases or carrier groups.
This is actually kind of an advantage as they can funnel money into more productive purposes, but I think it means they won’t be the sort of unipolar force that the US was.
I think the 21st century will be multi-polar and if I had to bet on a single country, I would bet Nigeria or maybe even somewhere like DRC or Brazil. A truly digital world will be best for countries in Africa who have so much untapped raw power and resources.
It's not just untrue is laughably untrue.
I'm not a big fan of US military power, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be realistic about it. The US military really is the last global superpower. Pretty much all of the global sea lanes rely on the US navy for stability.
By some measures China's navy is larger than the US's [0]:
>In a report published this month, the Pentagon acknowledged a grim milestone: China’s navy, having churned out warships like sausages, has become the world’s largest.
I'm not aware of many signs that this trend will decrease.
China is, at best, a Pacific power, but really they're just regional. China cannot project sea lane power past Japan at this point. The dirty secret of China's economy is that they're incredibly dependent on the American military for stable trade relations.
China’s Purchase Power Parity GDP (in other words, adjusted for exchange rate and local costs) is already higher than the US’s and is probably around 10-20 years from being equal on nominal dollars as well.
There’s no doubt China’s growth will slow due to an aging population, but they’re coming already from a MASSIVE population size advantage.
The West can counter by increasing immigration significantly (and probably pursuing pro-natalist policies as well), plus picking some of the best of what China is doing with investments in infrastructure and R&D while maintaining the freedom and vitalism that has helped the West in the past.
One major problem is that the people directing massive capital investments in the West are simply not as smart as the people directing massive capital investments in China.
If your nation gets rich earlier, then hereditary passing on of wealth will mean that in a few generations the people making the decisions about capital allocation are no longer your best and brightest. All you need to do is look at the difference between a scatter plot of "income vs. IQ in the US" and "wealth/assets vs. IQ in the US" to see at least part of the problem.
e: I'm downvoted, but concentration of hereditary wealth is definitely something dragging Western models down.
Almost any argument attempting to invoke intrinsic intelligence (as an explanation for some geopolitical phenomenon) is horsehocky. But even if you buy that, the West (particularly the Us) can game that by accepting “High skilled” immigrants from the entire world rather than just relying on just a fraction of the human population. A distillation of ambitious people from every nation on Earth.
I personally doubt very much how genetically hereditary this is. So you have to maintain a high number of first or second generation immigrants to keep the effect going.
I think it'd be horsehockey if I were claiming that the Chinese or white people or Americans or whoever is intrinsically more intelligent or "culturally" hard-working or whatever. That's bullshit. I can understand the gut reaction to any mention of IQ since it is a common trope among racists on the internet.
But my claim is not that: it is about the pretty clear concentration of inherited wealth in the US, compared to the intensive testing system used in China.
Your immigration solution would fix the intelligence of our workforce (skeptical that's a huge problem to start with), but do nothing to resolve the distributional problems in our model.
If your argument is that we are approaching an aristocratic, low-churn society with a bunch of favored failsons at the top, then that would make more sense than trying to frame it in terms of Intrinsic intelligence. But I don’t think your comparison is accurate. The Chinese Party leadership and bureaucratic apparatus is plenty nepotistic while America’s more private-market-oriented economy is now dominated by (1st or 2nd generation) immigrant-founded or run companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Tesla. Read: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1236343/son-also-ris...
> we are approaching an aristocratic, low-churn society with a bunch of favored failsons at the top, then that would make more sense than trying to frame it in terms of Intrinsic intelligence.
Uh, I'm not sure exactly what you're disagreeing with. I think intelligence is a thing, I think tests can probably reflect it at least a bit, and I think the fact that wealth is not really correlated with it means that there are probably a lot of dummies making capital allocation decisions.
> immigrant-founded or run companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Tesla
I'm talking about ownership and capital allocation, so the management of any particular firm is somewhat irrelevant. The immigrant founders of Google, for instance, only hold 14% stake in Alphabet. Much of the ownership is by these "favored failsons" as you put it, even if they aren't the managers. That's not even getting into the fact that the vast-majority of America's economy is not these popular-to-talk-about tech companies or that Google's have to run-the-gambit of getting green-lighted by "failsons" just to have a chance of being funded.
We could have a whole separate conversation about the effectiveness of China's bureaucracy, but all I'll say is that - even if they have the same problems, ours have had more time to solidify, and China's wealth Gini coefficient is smaller than ours, so the problems would be less magnified.
> China's wealth Gini coefficient is smaller than ours, so the problems would be less magnified.
The World Bank's data is a bit spotty, but it looks like China's Gini is roughly similar to the US's at around 40 whereas other economic powers like Japan, Germany, South Korea and France are bunched closer to 30.
If your theory of is based on China having less wealth inequality than the US, you really should also look at countries with much less wealth inequality than either.
> The World Bank's data is a bit spotty, but it looks like China's Gini is roughly similar to the US's at around 40 whereas other economic powers like Japan, Germany, South Korea and France are bunched closer to 30.
This is a common sleight-of-hand - you're giving me income Gini coefficient and describing it as if it is wealth gini coefficient. Check out the wealth gini here [0] to see that Germany and the US are much higher and China is more comparable with France.
> If your theory of is based on China having less wealth inequality than the US, you really should also look at countries with much less wealth inequality than either.
Also to be clear, my "theory" is not based on China having less wealth inequality. My "theory" is that the people making large capital allocation decisions in China are typically smarter.
In Chinese government, often the smart people get to control capital allocation without owning all of the money.
Also, that's not necessarily true - I think it is better to have investment controlled by a diversified group of smart people, which would mean not a super-duper high gini coeff.
American reliance on high-skill immigrants to build value-generating businesses is reflective of long-term weaknesses, both due to increasing hostility to immigration, and due to domestic high-skill talent being pulled into zero-sum economic sectors that extract economic rents but create no value. Unless the US is prepared to address these weaknesses, they will gradually erode US standing vs. China.
China's parliament has ~100 billionaires, and the concentration of wealth is even more extreme than that when you count those with a net worth exceeding, say, $100 million instead.
The difference between those at the top in China and those at the top in the US is not one of wealth concentration or inheritance or intelligence. The difference is access to raw power, national unity, and a massive foundational population. The Chinese government operates very differently from the US government and can move initiatives forward dramatically faster and at lower cost by essentially bulldozing through what would be vast legal and regulatory webs in the US involving dozens or hundreds of independent parties with various ownership stakes or legal claims that have to be balanced and negotiated against.
Of course, there is the (obvious) point that ~100 billionaires in government is not contradictory with capital allocations being made by smart people. How many of those billionaires inherited their wealth?
> China's parliament has ~100 billionaires, and the concentration of wealth is even more extreme than that when you count those with a net worth exceeding, say, $100 million instead.
I mean, just looking at the facts - independent observers put US wealth concentration at higher levels than China, look at the wealth gini coefficient.
> The difference is access to raw power, national unity, and a massive foundational population.
This combination has existed elsewhere. The intensive testing/promotion scheme used in the CCP has been a little less common. The difference between the US and China is that we put this "raw power" in the hands of private enterprise and management, whereas in China they sequester a lot of that talent into the party and sometimes loan it out to private industry.
It's just not clear to me what point you're trying to make. Maybe the US has more wealth concentration at the top than China, but it's clear that both countries experience this problem/symptom to an extraordinary degree. It's also clear there are tons of self-made multimillionaires and billionaires in the US, including probably a surprising number right on this very forum (well, maybe not billionaires so much). You're trying to make it seem as if the US is dramatically more unequal than China and that every wealthy or powerful person in the US inherited everything but this is far from obvious and probably false.
> The difference between the US and China is that we put this "raw power" in the hands of private enterprise and management, whereas in China they sequester a lot of that talent into the party and sometimes loan it out to private industry.
The point I'm making is pretty clear. Obviously this analysis is entirely comparative, since we're trying to diagnose why China might diverge compared to other growth models.
China has comparatively less wealth concentration, and a comparatively much higher proportion of Chinese billionaires and multimillionaires are self-made compared to the US. Keep in mind, there weren't really any billionaires in China before 1980 for them to inherit the money from.
Your point is not at all clear to me, sorry. I think the differences you're pointing out are small at best, and while they may not have had a vast aristocratic billionaire or centimillionaire class in the past, they definitely do today.
Billinares have enourmous power, then putting them into the power system, is a appropriate recognition; and ensures appropriate control and management as well.
While in US, the enourmous power of billinares are masked behind an entagled web of legal and political constructs, which are so complicated that the ones involved probably dont have a clue how much power they actually have. Today they can be enoumously powerful, the next day they are suddenly under constant barrage from all sides. Like FB Google and Twitter were chanted as the beacon of free world's inevitable domination in world in the grassroot's revolutions in middle east (Arab's spring); now they were blamed for almost every instances of domestic plitical failures.
A better approach might be subject these powers into the government system, and manage and use them as tools. Instead of pretending that a free-rein systems can regulate themselves, which ends up with a swamp of complications and complexity that no one is able to remotely influence the thing with a coherent vision and strategy.
> I think it'd be horsehockey if I were claiming that the Chinese or white people or Americans or whoever is intrinsically more intelligent or "culturally" hard-working or whatever. That's bullshit.
Why would that be horsehockey? Why would you expect people in different countries and cultures to be equally intelligent or hard-working? That would be surprising! So clearly there will be difference of some kind, and it might be small on the average, or it might not be. I'll follow the data where it leads.
I don't accept that the topic is forbidden from rational investigation and discussion. Or that everyone is somehow magically equal and life is fair - that's the real bullshit.
That's an interesting angle I haven't heard before.
Your thesis could be restated as hereditary wealth / rising aristocracy concentrates wealth based on lineage and not meritocracy, thus unlikely to be in the hands of those most able to put it to work effectively. This inefficiency in the market would lead to lower future growth potential. I'm going to ignore the mention of IQ because a) It's largely hereditary so I think it actually runs counter to your argument and b) It's not the best measure for ability to allocate capital effectively in the first place.
That seems plausible though. It would superficially make sense to tax that with a wealth or estate tax and put the money into programs that increase social mobility. I say superficially because whenever you tax something you change people's behaviour, like moving their assets into a trust to avoid estate taxes. I think we're seeing this in the US where the states with the highest taxes, California and New York are seeing the highest net emigration of 200K people a year to other states. I wonder if it's related.
The US in particular has the lowest social mobility compared to other major Western nations. The American dream is least alive in America in the West. That's a major drag on the future economic potential of the country.
> I say superficially because whenever you tax something you change people's behaviour, like moving their assets into a trust to avoid estate taxes.
To me, evasion is a solvable problem at the national level if we, again, hire & assess for merit w/ competitive pay in our enforcement agencies. Unfortunately, much of the government-especially the portions of government that would enforce this- is captured, so pretty unlikely chance of that.
China's capital investments tend to be more successful because they copy the ones that already work. High speed rail is more likely to bring economic value than vertical landing rockets or self-driving cars. I think the problem in the US at least is that there is much much capital that all the brightest minds flock to profitable areas. In China, these opportunities are a lot rarer, so more people will pursue research or work for the government.
There are huge opportunities happening in China all the time. They are doing new projects and creations that we do not have in the West, again - all the time.
Rare opportunities to be involved in something big are just not how I would characterize China if you've been there in the past 5 years.
This problem with this argument is that it can be flipped on its head to justify an aristocracy: the wealthy today are the ‘best’ and they will pass on their genes, successful values, and educational strategies to their children.
> it can be flipped on its head to justify an aristocracy: the wealthy today are the ‘best’ and they will pass on their genes, successful values, and educational strategies to their children.
I disagree, I don't think this argument can be flipped on its head:
The point is that it's pretty clear that the wealthy today are not the best and that meritocratic approaches are much more effective than crossing your fingers and hoping that Einstein's kid will also be an Einstein.
A large reason why affluence and intelligence are at all correlated is because wealthy people have access to better education and better early childhood environments. The fact that even with those advantages, wealth is so uncorrelated with intelligence shows that we have a pretty big problem.
You write as though that is obvious, but it seems like most new billionaires we hear about on HN etc, are pretty intelligent.
It’s obvious that there are a lot of intelligent people who do not become wealthy, but that’s because becoming wealthy requires not just intelligence, but being in the right place at the right time at the right age. I.e. it requires the right kinds of opportunity.
> new billionaires we hear about on HN etc, are pretty intelligent.
New billionaires are the ones most likely to be intelligent (although again, measures of intelligence can't be detached from the opportunity you were provided), this is entirely consistent with the point I'm making.
> Looking at the numbers over time, the data lead us to an interesting insight: In 1984, less than half the people on The Forbes 400 were self-made; in 2018, 67% of the 400 created their own fortunes.
To be clear, I'm not saying that the US is entirely without mobility. Particularly for the billionaires, most of that wealth is not inherited - although much more of that mobility is from low millionaires -> billionaire than it is from poverty -> billionaire.
You deleted your other comment about income and IQ. Worried that it would reflect badly when someone in the future would trawl through your account?
Thats of course ridiculous. "Low !Q" wealthy people in the US arent managing their own money. They hire the best and brightest to do it. China has a massive advantage because they can simply copy or steal what works in the US more efficiently than we can come up with the next best thing.
> Just pick hedge funds who have performed in the past run by a bunch of people with top business degrees. Its a lot easier than picking a stock
Nope, it's actually very hard to outperform the market just by looking at hedge fund past performance. Top business degrees do not really equal top talent, having taken a few of these "top business" classes. It's all a salesmanship game to the rich, it's not about actual returns.
A related point. the US economy tries to fix this every so often by sending the people directing capital flows bankrupt (notably, circa 2007). The US government keeps stepping in to fix capitalism when it looks like there might be change.
It doesn't make sense to use PPP when asking questions about a country's economic strength or power. It's designed for questions of manufacturing or cost of living.
China has a high PPP GDP simply because it has hundreds of millions of people living in some form of poverty, which drives down costs locally. Clearly if the driver of your high PPP GDP is a massive underclass living in poverty, you can't turn around and use that as an argument in support of your economic might -- it's incoherent.
In terms of geopolitical significance, such as ability to wage war (modern industrial wars being heavily dependent on manufacturing capacity) then PPP is pretty relevant. If anything, that probably under-estimates China’s industrial capacity compared to the US.
It's from May 2019 but was obtained under FOIA more recently. It was submitted here at HN a couple of months ago, but under the baity title "NSCAI Eric Schmidt says Mass Surveillance killer tool/opportunity" so it missed broad discussion. Surveillance is only a small part of the document.
It also addresses:
- China's homegrown digital innovators
- China's dependence on imported semiconductors
- AI in transportation and medicine
- Banking and payment systems
- The future global manufacturing landscape
- The future of global development and governance
Among other topics.
It was the most riveting slide deck that I can recall reading.
I don't think it is currently possible, there is such a war-footing in the West even among the intelligentsia.
Best you can do is to read Chinese documents and try to squint through their own bias or to read academics who have spent extensive time in China recently (ie. past 5 years).
Seriously. There are so many right wing that think they are a paper tiger, and there's so many left CCP apologists that cloud the discussion in their own way.
The West needs a completely unbiased body to release a report to the world about where stuff stands. Nobody wants a conflict. We realize our systems are like two huge tectonic plates about to grind against each other... but let's fix it
China looks like Japan in the 20s and 30s. Rapidly developing country, with territorial ambitions around the seas /islands close to the coast, and a almost predatory commercial way of doing business, and a almost nazi like squashing of minorities.
History doesn't exactly repeats itself, but it certainly rhythms...
This isn't comparable at all. The territorial expansion was always difficult to sustain and grew from a ravenous, irrational ethnonationalist political culture and the need for oil and other industrializing resources. China's mode of imperialism is inherently based on China's geography and centralized bureaucracy. There is no analogue of the Emperor being both absolutely powerful and removed from day to day decision making. There's not much analogue to the ethnonationalism angle either, their apparent persecution of the Uighurs stems from internal social control, not fueling a war machine, and they've adopted the soviet multinational state. The CCP is much more politically & economically competent and geographically stable than Japan was leading into WWII. The idea of japan attacking pearl harbor was arguably inevitable, but the idea of china doing that is beyond ridiculous.
He's probably just drawing the comparison as a warning. Because when it comes down to it, the CCP has developed a ethnonationalism of it's own. And that's a powerful thing when the rest of the world is actively trying to shed their identity and become multiculti.
Edit: this whole thread is insane. Anyways, Sinocism is run by people who have spent significant time in China. It conglomerates Chinese, Western, and Asian news sources and provides balanced commentary.
Can you please elaborate? I find this to be an Achilles heal for China. If there is a bipolar world with US on one side and China leading the other, who do you think will ally with China? I can see Russia, Iran and North Korea but not really anyone else.
In the US camp, I see Western Europe + NATO countries, Australia, NZ, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, India and Israel. Do you think China can match that alliance?
The US has been doing its best to alienate its allies, and has called NATO "obsolete". The alliance hasn't fallen apart entirely, and in the event of an actual shooting war with China would most likely be forced together. But shooting is unlikely, and the fragility of the alliance makes peacetime coordination more difficult.
That's potentially to China's advantage. It's not larger than the US plus its allies, but when the US goes without its allies, it's no longer the largest player. In a multiplayer world, those allies you mention could well decide that China is, if not their ally, at least somebody they can do business with.
US stance is mainly Trump's stance and neither Democrats (Obama / Clinton / Biden) nor mainstream Republicans want to alienate our allies. While Trump is indeed tapping into "America only" sentiment prevalent in some sections (make NATO allies allocate more budget towards defense, end endless wars in the Middle East etc), I don't see a broad political support to completely alienate the allies.
It focuses on one person, but that person was elected. Whether he's re-elected or not, the support that put him there remains. It makes the US an unreliable partner: agreements made today can be broken tomorrow. Our allies will be much less likely to make the kinds of serious, long-term commitments if they can't be sure they'll be held.
That America-first sentiment has always been there, but other countries have always trusted the government to rein it in. It could be dog-whistled at but didn't drive policy. Now that it has done so, they must assume it will do so again.
> In the US camp, I see Western Europe + NATO countries, Australia, NZ, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, India and Israel. Do you think China can match that alliance?
Project population forward another 50 years. China will have Nigeria along with a few other African power houses, which at some point will probably comprise at least 40% of the world's population.
I don't think the US can count on India in the same way that it can count on the others in that list, although I suspect that the US and India will grow closer as immigration continues to increase/due to lingual bonds.
Unless China stops antagonizing India, I think there will at least be a conditional alliance between the US and India. We may also see slight shifts as Indian-Americans become eligible for US political office.
> the US is becoming increasingly liberal and India is becoming increasingly jingoistic/illiberal.
False. India is becoming culturally jingoistic but far more liberal economically than what it was a few decades ago. That brings it closer to US economic model.
>The US views Pakistan as an important strategic ally.
US viewed Pakistan as a strategic ally, mainly during Cold War era when India was tilted towards USSR (friendship pact etc).
Ultimately, "antagonism towards China" can outweigh the differences if China continues on its current path.
In such a hypothetical situation, I think China is able to at a minimum neutralize nations into not being on a side at all given the economic sway that it has in the world.
That's why I picked the countries which are strongly in the US camp (UK, Canada, Australia, NZ, Japan, Taiwan, Israel...) and/or strongly antagonized by China (India, Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan, ...).
China is trying hard to gain a foothold in Europe by establishing an alliance with Serbia. So far Serbia has been shut out of NATO and the EU due to the Kosovo issue.
Countries that want money. When you ally with China you get fat stacks for infrastructure and other development projects that those nations (Africa, SEA, Eastern Europe) simply can’t afford on their own. Now you owe China favor so you will do as they ask when they come to collect.
What prevents countries from saying thanks china, we aren't going to pay and then allying with the rest of the west, or playing back and forth to negotiate ever better deals? The problem with infrastructure investment is it's hard to move.
1. The infrastructure is often not just built, but also operated by chinese companies. So the chinese have direct operational control through their expats.
2. If you as diplomat even think about suggesting that Taiwan is its own nation, China will give an extremely offended reply. Same will probably happen if you try to negotiate. Either their terms, or you are an enemy. No meeting of equal partners.
3. China has large power over these nations by trading with them. This power will likely increase the more of their infrastructure is ran by China.
4. Eventually China will develop better tools to project power. I don't know what the Chinese analog of the CIA is, but likely they are working on it. Furthermore, recently Xi has opened the first military base outside of the Chinese mainland. If a nation's government defaults on its loans, China will just install a new government. This has little precedent because the change is so recent, but it's not unheard of in the general history of mankind.
Most of those countries remember being conquered and looted by the west. They're not going to just ally with the west -- they'll play both sides (as they should) to get the best deal from China and from the West.
India was colonized by the west and Vietnam recently warred with the US. And yet, today's China is so antagonistic towards these countries that they are tilting towards West (TPP for Vietnam, growing Indo-US collaboration etc).
A country never stops wanting more investment, and once a country has accepted investment money, there are parties in both nations that are incentivized to continue the relationship.
If a country takes money from China, they will continue to want to take more money from China instead of switching to a less well known, more risky alternative.
Also, if a country reneges on their investors, why would investors in any other country want to invest in them? They've already shown a willingness to go back on their agreements.
China is pragmatic. The CCCP portrays their leaders as competent technocrats who are building their way into a future of prosperity. The Belt and Road Initiative is a means for China to secure access to needed raw materials in Africa and other developing countries in exchange for Chinese financed and built public works projects such as ports highways and telecom. Similar to how the internet is splitting due to the Great Firewall, China is creating its alternative vision of world trade and international order.
I would argue that China is almost economically and technologically on par with the USA. It’s military is behind. It’s biggest weakness is internal politics. Xi Jinping is using the tools at his disposal to prevent China from falling apart like the USSR. What is unknown is the amount of push back he is getting for his crackdown of dissent, secret detentions, mass incarcerations and re-education. As the article mentioned both Xi and his father suffered from the Cultural Revolution which was triggered by Mao to regain power after he was temporarily sidelined by the failure of the Great Leap Forward. After Mao’s death it was Deng Xiao Peng who gave the Chinese the right to make decisions based on facts again instead of blindly following the latest central party dictates. This was the “Seek truth from facts” speech. It seems that China is reverting to its old ways with the enshrinement of Xi Jinping thought. But I think Chinese leaders are very much aware their legitimacy is based solely on providing material prosperity to their people. China is not actively seeking to antagonize the West but their relentless focus on winning the trade wars may be misinterpreted which is dangerous for everyone.
China is huge and powerful and still growing rapidly. It's nominal GDP is $15tn, compared to $20tn for the USA. However it's GDP per capita is 1/6th that of the USA because it has 4x the population.
Of course the west, or the developed democracies are much more than just the USA. Also while China is catching up in many areas, it is far behind in many of the ones that really count. China's military infrastructure and military technology is far, far behind. They have been struggling for almost a decade to get even one refurbished Russian aircraft carrier operational. Their space launch and satellite technology is decades behind, as is their silicon chip tech.
China is almost caught up to the USA by itself in raw industrial and economic power, they're close to parity, but this is just muscle. On the technology front they are still copying the basic stuff. It will take them another generation to catch up to the west in the ability to innovate in new technologies. They will do it though. It's just a matter of time. Then they will be a match for the west as a whole, not just the USA.
The only area I know something about in your list is silicon chip tech, and I'm convinced that China will have at least one ASML competitor and at least one ARM competitor (or comparable) in the next 20 years, likely faster. Western countries trying to their block access to that tech (eg the US govt trying to stop ASML from shipping chip machines to China), is going to speed that up, not slow it down, because it creates a giant internal market for such tech.
All the Chinese government has to do to accomplish this is sit back and wait. There's plenty smart Chinese engineers and the market forces will do the rest.
(Source: I freelanced for a Chinese-owned lithography startup some years ago. It got run into the ground by bad management but that doesn't change much about my observations about market forces and Chinese engineers)
I have a hard time taking the rest of your list all too seriously given that the one I know something about is, I think, mistaken.
This might be important. A free-market economy is more conductive to both creating new businesses and to killing those ran poorly, thus evolving better teams faster. OTOH a nepotic economy launches fewer companies by constricting the talent pool with nepotism and corruption, and it faces additional headwind in disbanding the failing teams. Nepotism also destroys the investor class, the one that accumulates collective knowledge about numerous failings and rare successes of new businesses.
Nepotic economies do well in copying what worked for others because the few nephews of the top party officials provide enough of a talent pool for that, but innovation by its nature requires a talent dragnet across the entire country (YC). Failing that it's back to copying the American tech, which has an advantage (and a disadvantage) of working quite well up to a point.
> Nepotic economies do well in copying what worked for others because the few nephews of the top party officials provide enough of a talent pool for that, but innovation by its nature requires a talent dragnet across the entire country (YC).
China runs a very large free market economy. The government only steps in when a company grows large, and mandate certain amount of state control. And we all know for sure that companies worth the notice of a national government probably should be placed under some control, instead of letting them blindly chasing the profit. And at that stage, their innovative prowess probably is also dragged down by enormous internal beauracracy that the intervention actually can help them focus on long-term technical investment (thinking about the flops of the big corps, the wasted investment by IBM on what they called AI...)
Thinking about Google, they are even seriously considering bending over to CCP to enter Chinese market. Imagine Google were under CCP control, anyone who dare to speak of such idea will be punished immediately. (Not to say CCP is better in any way)
If you have a free market economy with a size of 5-6 trillions of dollar, then you can have top-tier innovation all the time. And CCP feels pretty safe as long as it controls another 10 trillions+ market...
See, that's the economy of scale.
That's why ambitious people dream of scale, and smart people instead of value freedom. When combined, the one with ambition provides the scale to tolerate the freedom of the smart. That's how China works today.
Of cuz, Xi dreams of world domination. Precisely because he dreams of world domination, he can act absolutely like a open-minded market economy advocate: there is plenty of space under his control, where anyone, ambitious or smart, will have enough space for their personal satisfaction.
Dictators were born out of lack of imagination. Trump is not enlightened to see the possibility of his power, so he inevitably behave like a dictator, but not actually able to because of the US system.
True dictator like Xi, see the possibility, and is willing to behave like appropriate for the goal of ultimate domination.
China is simply not behind in military technology. Neither are they "decades behind" in lithography, nor in launch, nor in satellites.
Their first reusable rocket is due for a test launch in a few months, their second domestic carrier is in construction, and in hypersonics they are, by the DoD's own admission, well ahead.
They have a fully domestic rocket online with a launch reliability over 94%, and their launch cost is only barely higher than that of the Falcon 9, at around 70 million dollars vs 50 million. They are also building a super-heavy, 140 000 kg LEO rocket.
In silicon tech, they have a 14nm fab online, which is hardly "decades behind".
In sat tech, they have pretty much all they could ask for.
I don't really get this viewpoint. China doesn't really advertise their capabilities, but it's clear that they aren't far behind in more than a few crucial sectors, and clearly ahead in others. At this point they are near competitors of the west.
There are more dimensions to this question than "are they behind or not?".
In most areas, western technology and capability, given the will, still leads China. However, China excels at getting capabilities fielded and generally benefits strongly from a unified desire to leap ahead. They can often accomplish things that are potent, but executed in a cruder way than would the west. No matter though, if they can field the capability and it is "good enough".
At least in the U.S., profound dysfunction and misalignment of incentives exist between high-level intent at the Secretary of Defense level and fielded capability.
A historical trope was that the Chinese are not creative problem solvers or researchers, unlike the west. Anyone paying any attention to relevant technical areas should be thoroughly disabused of such thinking. There is some impressive conceptual work China contributes to the technical literature.
Consider this: China can close their economy tomorrow and most of the world’s economies would crumble almost overnight. The supply chain of most developed and developing nations is primarily based in China. It would take decades in a developed country to build manufacturing capabilities at the scale China has currently.
Despite being the second largest economy of the world, only 4.3% of international trade happens in in the Yuan [1]. People do not want give their oil and wheat in exchange for Yuans! Countries do not see the Yuan as a valuable reserve currency, which reflects their trust in the Chinese system. Since the majority if international trade happens in US Dollars, China needs to trade with the US to get Dollars.
The US on the other hand produces much more food and energy it needs.
For now. The yuan is still a new currency in the world trade. The Chinese are just starting to push it as a global currency. This will take some time, but I imagine that 20 years from now the yuan will be a second, if not the first international currency.
What's your point? The only reason to point what would happen if China did close would be to show that they have leverage over the rest of the world. But if they can't or won't close, and everyone knows it, then they don't have leverage.
China would be severely affected by such a measure as well. This is WTO's doing, and is a big reason why there has been no world war 3. It's easy to wage war if your economy is truly sovereign, but with a nation your economy is intertwined with, it's hard to wage with. Trump's anti-China policy, while it is sensible in many ways, could have the ill effect of enabling a major war in a few years.
The difference is that mutual defense pacts (WW1 alliances) are very different from trade agreements (modern alliances).
If you have a 1-year stockpile of food, produce only enough food for 50% of your population to not go hungry, and depend on imports to make up the slack, that is a dampening force on the decision to go to war.
These agreements are now negotiated at the national level in trade agreements, and at the international level by the WTO. It's a very different system from the one that existed prior to WWI.
...
Although, that's not to say that trade did not play a role in WWI!
Incidentally, the German pre-WWI german economy was dependent on migrant labor from Poland and Russia to exercise successful harvests in Prussia. When WWI broke out, they were not able to replace these migrant laborers in the fields, and experienced crop failures.
This led to significant food shortages during the war, signaled by large increases in the price of bread, in particular.
The military elites (Luddendort, Hindenburg) of the country must have known why prices were rising (because there was a gaping hole in supply), but successfully spun the narrative for the common folk that it was merchants (price-setters) who were to blame for the war.
Needless to say, price being a function of supply and demand, and the post-zollvereini/unification interdependence of the German commodities economy was not as popularly-understood of a concept as antisemitism.
The reality was that the war was poorly-planned and poorly-executed, but this was an unconscionable admission for the Prussian elites.
This was one of the load-bearing columns for the dolchstoss myth that was weaponized to develop German anti-semitism in the interwar years.
In fairness, no country in a pact attacked another country in its pact. The issue was there were 2 competing and independent alliance groups rather than 1 (World) trade group.
Take something as simple as boots. In war, soldiers are usually doing a lot of walking and good boots prevent many injuries and improve effectivity of troops. So suddenly you decide to send millions of conscripts into war. Sadly you have outsourced the boots manufacturing industry to the country you are waging war with. Had the industry been in your country, you could have told them to retrofit their lines to manufacture your boots, but sadly all the knowledge, together with the population that is used to the repetitive nature of factory work is in a different country now.
Remember how much struggle there was distributing even simple things like masks and PPE during the COVID pandemic?
Of course you can solve the boots problem, but you'll have the same variant of problem for a lot of things. Solving all these problems all at once is an insurmountable task.
Even building a single Photolitography plant takes hundreds of millions of USD and years from start of planning to conclusion, with the involvement of a large number of companies from around the globe, each specialized to their own part of the process, and world leader in that part. So where will you manufacture your chips needed for your autonomous robot army?
I don’t think so, building effective scientific institutions is incredibly time consuming. You don’t just need a slew of fresh graduates, you need an established cadre of experienced researchers to teach them. Where does this older generation of experienced mentors come from? Where do the deep institutional values come from? It’s not at all like building a factory.
Modern advanced scientific methods and technologies are incredibly sophisticated and complex. In the 1940s you could churn out a dozen new aircraft carriers, squadrons of fighters for them and send them on their way. With modern electronic warfare, sensor, weaponry and avionics systems that’s just not possible, especially if you dont have three generations of experience in carrier operations to draw on. That’s why China is still struggling to get one vessel even partially operational. It’s all new Chinese aircraft, weapons, electronics and systems. They’re trying to jump from 1940 to 2020 in one leap.
I’m positing this not entirely from speculation, but from observation of how things have gone for them so far and why. They will get there, absolutely, but the cutting edge is an awful long way away from the basics. You have to go through making a crapload of mistakes and dead ends before you find the right paths. That’s the difference between following a known trail and discovering new ones un-trod by others.
In the two academic fields I've worked in, materials science and deep NLP, China already has the cadre of experienced researchers. China has some of the best research universities in the world.
I suspect you haven't traveled to China recently, if you had it'd be pretty hard to claim the things you're claiming about where China is.
Aircraft carriers are a weapons platform that requires both tech prowess and organizational culture to wield. For this reason, America has more than a single carrier task force. Russia and the handful of others could only field a single one. (Instead, Russia had focused on building up their submarine fleet). The carrier groups have allowed the US to project both military and soft power around the world.
But that is just on the surface. What may not be as well-known are asymetric weapons platforms that are cheaper to operate and have been demonstrated effectiveness against larger naval vessels, within the US's own military war game exercises. In the last one, the oppositional team had been able to use such platforms to defeat their larger opponents, to the point that the exercise was cancelled. China has definitely been developing those weapons platforms. (I think the US has been as well, but the US also need to maintain the facade that the carrier groups are the premier projection of power).
Furthermore, the cultural aspects are eroding. The US military is a voluntary service organization, which has been the leading explanation of why the US can field multiple carrier groups, and no other country could. However, training and operational fitness has been eroding. This is what lead to the several naval disasters a couple years ago. They threw the commanding officers under the bus, but the deeper causes are (1) erosion of quality training for ship handling and (2) the personnel are running ragged, where normal ship operations are being affected (let alone what that says about their ability to operate in wartime conditions). This all happened within the US 7th Fleet, that operates within China's sphere of influence.
It's just as well that US pressure on China is being exerted through a trade war instead of military positioning.
(I also have had talks with friends about space-based kinetic weapons platforms, which, if fielded, changes the game dramatically in favor of the US).
As far as China's economic and technological power in the civilian sector ... There is a lot of advantages there. Probably the biggest thing is that China has cultural unity, greater economic optimism, and a cohesive will of the populous to catch up and displace US as the leading world superpower. The US, in contrast, is wracked with a culture war, and 70 years of policing the world and 30 years of trying to maintain the post-Cold War liberal order has left a very tired, pessimistic country.
The PLA is also a voluntary service organization. Technically China still has a conscription law, but in practice they have more than enough volunteers to fill the ranks and end up turning away some applicants.
> Probably the biggest thing is that China has cultural unity
China does not have more cultural unity, it simply has more of a stomach for suppressing minority or rebellious subcultures. See: Tibetans, Mongolians, Hong Kongers, Uyghurs.
In the more than 2000 years of history, the Chinese have demonstrated a willingness to assimilate, and oppress dissenting voices. Even the Mongolians (Song dynasty) and the Manchurian (Qing dynasty) rulers adopted those methods to maintain power during the consolidation phases.
The Tibetans are a great example. Both the Mongolian and Manchurian descended rulers had left Tibet as an autonomous region primarily because the rulers themselves were Buddhist. However, the Qing dynasty had asserted state power over the theocratic rule of the Tibetan lamas, including changing how the tulkas (such as the Dalai Lama) were identified and selected. That all happened in mid-1800s.
The contemporary assimilation of Tibet comes from well-used playbook the Chinese have employed:
1. Suppression of the written language and standardizing on the same written script
2. Suppression or assimilation of cultural symbols and ideas
3. Imprisonment or subornment of cultural leaders (such as the monks and nuns, or if you read this whole drama: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorje_Shugden_controversy ... the main protest organization got shut down when allegations of funding from the Chinese intelligence apparatus came out)
3. Colonization by assimilated groups
4. Creation of economic and trade ties (such as the railway that was built all the way to Lhasa).
Every year, Tibet is less and less Tibet, and more and more Chinese.
You can actually see some of this going on, if less aggressively, in Africa. China, after all, have a rich history in developing and maintaining vassal states.
These are things the US is not willing to do. And I am not saying that it is ethical or moral. The result though is that China has far greater cultural unity than the US currently has.
US government does not need to do this explicitly.
US culture outreach is effective and efficient. Prior to 2008 financial crisis, Chinese common wisdom places US superior to Chinese in every aspects. You can put Xi in that period, and see how ineffective his ambition can be implemented.
It was only after US culture outreaches have been intoxicated by self-righteousness and a chronicle ineffectiveness, think about the Arab Spring and the 2016 election debacle, and the TikTok deal, and the disastrous Covid response.
Government directed culture assimilation is always the least effective. That's used only when the civilian system is weak. In Mao's era, they dont need this, the civilian system is so effective in assimilating proactively across the whole nation. Think about the havoc by Mao. Mao can do that, because the society is utterly centered around his ideology. Precisely that the time, it was the government that is ineffective in counteract the population's attachment to a demi-god.
I don’t disagree with you, but I would add that the historical American model has been assimilation, not multiculturalism. It’s only fairly recently that we explicitly accept new immigrants maintaining their old cultures wholesale. I wonder if we’ll see a return to an assimilation model in the future, if competition with China sparks a new Cold War.
That's a good point. I forgotten about what happened with the Natives, as well as immigrants from Europe.
However, I don't think a cohesive will in the populus will emerge anytime soon. We have at least two major factions talking past each other here in the US (along with a lot of other points of contention: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/03/06/a-quick-battle-field-g...)
An interesting period to consider is that of the Ming dynasty. They were expansionist up until a point, and then they turned inwards. Recalled their expedition fleets. Expanded the Great Wall. They were shutting down steel foundaries at a time when the European colonialism was getting started. It reminds me (at least superficially) much of US today. A narrative of why the Ming turned inward has been subject to a lot of discussion, particularly since they had the economic and technological might to preempt the industrialization of Europe.
(But I think it is also histories like this gets the Chinese thinking about their perceived rightful place as the world's leading superpower).
I'll be more precise -- the Qing dynasty (Manchurian) emperor that asserted state power over theocratic power in Tibet was himself personally a Buddhist. This was from a paper I read -- it's a book review of Forging the Golden Urn ; the book is written by Max Oidtmann, and the review was written by Matthew Mosca, published in the Journal of Chinese Studies. In the review, it talked about the Qing emperor trying to assert state power without alienating the Hans. I don't know if all of Qing were Buddhist.
I am also not saying all of the ethnic Manchurians were Buddhists. I didn't get that deeply into the history.
I do know that the Mongolians greatly respected the tulkas of Tibet, with branches of the Tibetan Buddhis monastaries found in Mongolia. The search for reincarnations also extends out into Mongolia. The review mentioned that -- during the Song dynasty, the Mongolians let the Tibetans have enough autonomy to concern the Hans, and politically, they were seeing if the Qing emperors will do the same. The creation of the Golden Urn lottery system was a way to assert state power while also respecting the religious process in Tibet. (Whereas, in contrast, I think the Chinese selection of the Pachan Lama and control of the "tulka" was done as part of the cultural assimilation and oppression program by the Chinese). But yeah, the impetus for the Chinese conquest of Tibet in the twentieth century was centuries in the making.
Enlightening, but I glitched over "Manchurian [qua Qing] ...rulers had left Tibet as an autonomous region [but] had asserted state power over the theocratic rule," a seemingly contradictory assertion which I, as a speed reader, get mightily bogged down by. I suppose it's possible to preserve Tibetan sovereignty while also making a political declaration of state over church, but boy, it's a bit of a play action fake.
Yeah, it gets weird. The little I know about Korea and Okinawa were cultures greatly shaped by Ming dynasty practice of vassal states, and later, Japanese expansionism.
But the Han Chinese are the overwhelming majority (92%). They pay lip service to the 56 ethnic minorities but for the most part they are expected to act Chinese or are just tourist attractions. China is not going to have or allow problems like BLM to slow itself down internally.
> They have been struggling for almost a decade to get even one refurbished Russian aircraft carrier operational.
They launched their first domestic carrier last year, actually. Evidence is they are starting to get more serious about their navy. 3 more under construction.
On technology, you're just replicating wrong ideas spread in the last 20 years. China has proven itself capable of developing innovative technology and science. They have the most advanced 5G tech and already working on 6G. They are leaders in green tech. They're behind on semiconductors, but they have chosen this a top priority and I see no reason for them to have their own silicon starting on next year.
Huawei had basically cornered the 5G technology, getting all competitors out of the market, but then Trump ended it.
China is buying strategically important technology companies from around the globe, like Kuka for example, and then moves the knowledge into their country.
If this trend continues, eventually we'll be in the same situation again where we have to imitate China, not vice versa. It's only a few hundred years ago when China sold extremely expensive porcelain to europe and we reverse engineered porcelain manufacturing (check out Johann Friedrich Böttger).
Porcelain isn't what runs the world. It's like citing how Italy has an expensive luxury good that they only know how to make there and therefore they are a top nation of the world, while they haven't been since the roman empire.
It's not, I've only used it as an example. China had been the world's leading economy for a long time. They spawned many innovations like guns or even paper money. They had a bad century but it's foolish to belittle them.
IMHO a lot of Westerners are lulled into overconfidence vs. China because of racism, even if that racism is implicit or subconscious. China can't equal America or Europe because China isn't white.
There are arguments against China's continued rise that are rooted in demographics, politics, and social issues, but the Chinese are definitely capable of doing what Americans and Europeans do if all else is equal.
Racism is nonsense, and like other forms of nonsense believing it makes you gullible and foolish.
I don't see any racial disparagement of China. I see criticism of the culture that focuses on stealing, copying, and fine tuning over macro innovations. This is not based in race or genetics, but in the choice by the people how they wish to behave. This is tied in with the atrocious human rights abuse, which makes it seem the problem is undervaluing of the individual human mind, in favor of achieving national objectives at the expense of individuals. Some say this is just part of the national character, but historically it is not. There is a broad range of thought in Chinese history, and while the collectivism has become dominant, it is by no means the only nor most effective Chinese worldview.
1.China has 4 times the population of America, and 1/6 the per capita output.
Take your pick on what you think the long term per capita output ratio will be and you'll easily reach a conclusion on the relative size of the two economies.
2.
The US has a greater inclination and ability to build alliances. However, managing the divergent interests of the members in the alliances won't be easy.
3.
China does not have enough oil to sustain itself in the case of a war. So there will be a strategic competition for the South China Sea and the control of the Strait of Malacca.
4.
Taiwan will be the key trigger for a possible war.
How many TSMC foundries are in Taiwan alone? Sure, they could straight up invade Taiwan, but I'd wager that most of the affluent and the middle class (which would include a lot of TSMC engineers) will have quickly moved shop away from the island by then. So even if China took over the island, the intellect would have escaped.
I believe all of the cutting-edge process node foundries are in Taiwan. If all of those foundries were to be lost, that would be something like 50% of the entire production capacity for computers, computer peripherals, and smartphones completely axed, and it would take years for the capacity to resume.
trump is on the way out.... but 'trumpism' will be around for a while, but still in the minority and eventually fade just like the Tea Party, or Occupy wall Street
Could the US offer statehood (or less drastic protections) to Taiwan? It would allow the US to have joint ownership claim over the South China Sea and enforce that for its allies - Japan, Korea, Vietnam, et al. It would also allow missile defense systems to be installed.
China would fiercely oppose it. But what could they realistically do other than start an invasion, which would be vehemently opposed by the world and be an end to their rise?
> Some analysts think China's population is too old and that youth will peter out, whereas others think that all the CCP has to do is ask its millennials to have more babies.
I'm not sure how well "asking" will work. IIRC, they transitioned rapidly from a two-child policy to a "however many you want" policy because not enough Chinese families chose to have another kid.
Anecdotally, it's extremely expensive to have a kid in China because the culture is so cut-throat competitive and rankings-obsessed. If you don't provide your kid with a lot of (expensive) extra educational opportunities, he could fall behind. On the other hand, Chinese culture (compared to Western culture) appears to be much more comfortable with parents playing favorites with their children, but I'm not sure how much that's carried through to the one child generation.
Honestly, I don't think the 20-30 year outlook for China is all that great. Japan's bailout of its corporate sector was contingent on its corporate sector removing their supply chains from China.
A lot of natural incentives, globally, are not going China's way right now. A lot of corporations are going to repatriate or localize their supply chains, because, at long last, supply chains, and not labour, are the cost-center of most corporations. Over the next decade we're actually going to become a less globalized world from a manufacturing perspective.
Finally, while the manufacturing sector has always had more friendly relationships with China, the technology sector (particularly software) has a much more ambivalent relationship with China; and now tech makes up a huge percentage of corporate power. Given that Western domestic politics is becoming more economically nationalist and that the corporate sector of most Western countries is gaining less benefit from the labour arbitrage that China offers them, I think we'll see a significant draw down in economic power from China over the next 10-30 years. There will be sectors that stay in China, like high-tech hardware, but even they will become more regionalized as well. You'll start to see some iPhones (or whatever) get made in Western countries as hedges against the need to rapidly draw down manufacturing in China.
The Washington Consensus in the 90s thought that normalizing trade relations with China would turn them into a Democracy. No one who is serious thinks that any more, and given China's current bad bout with human rights violations there is a convenient cover for the West to take.
Hmm, really? To me it looks like a new pandemic every decade would crush the west and assure the dominance of Asian economies.
Just looking at how much better Asian countries have weathered the pandemic, it would seem that every pandemic would be a relative boon for Asia compared to the West.
China is looking to move away from export focused growth and has been developing a rich domestic market.
More broadly, the world has been stepping back a bit from China anyway, because its labor costs have risen significantly compared to other potential manufacturing centers.
About the demographic collapse from the One Child policy, I'm going to volunteer an alternative analysis, since you've asked for it, copied from another of my comments:
The effects of the One Child policy has actually been pretty much as intended.
There are two hidden goals of the One Child policy that aren't communicated very often in the West.
The first is proletarianization. Indeed, almost 30% of Chinese people are peasants. This is not efficient. Only around 2-5% would be sufficient; therefore 20-23% of the productive potential is wasted for the same consumption. And so, creating a situation where it would be possible to shrink the size of the peasant class would allow for the productivity per capita to rise, thus allowing for better surpluses and better living conditions.
In this view, a demographic fall is not an actual issue, because there is already 20-23% of "dead-weight" that can be eliminated.
Secondly, the issue is of human capital. This is not so well-known, but the retirement age in China is extremely low. Indeed, the average retirement age is at 58 (!). This is done on purpose so that the younger generation may enter the job market faster and learn more, reducing unrest and permitting the investment in human capital. However, this comes at the cost of enforcing early retirement, which also makes for reduced efficiency.
The solution to both of these problems can be to simply reduce the population, this will allow for a sharp decline of the peasant class and for an increase in retirement age.
In this view, the demographic effects of the One Child Policy, while they might have been disastrous for a developed, urbanized economy, actually fits into the demographic and productive plans. It is thus an incorrect to call them an error, and there will likely not be an economic collapse in response.
It’s not just through the lens of Western demographics that it has to be examined. There’s still a very real possibility of unrest as a result of the gender imbalance created by the One Child policy.
The problem with the west is that it is largely leaderless. Actions happen due to some interest group getting their way.
China on the other hand is very much lead. I think the west constantly bringing up Chinese demographic and other issues is just the west being lazy and ignoring reality. China is becoming unstoppable.
Democratic nations banding together or building new supply chains are pipe dreams.
Could you or anybody elaborate on why you think the West (US) and China are that different in the big picture?
The way I see it: in China politics/policy are largely steered by big money (companies) + the emperor. The only difference I see with the West is that the emperor of the West is less powerful than Xi.
The "nice" thing about a totalitarian king/emperor/dictator is that improvements in prosperity come quickly. The disadvantage is that the fall also comes quickly (easy example: Mao).
Aren't the root issues as simple as that? I mean this is not exactly the first time in history that we saw "The West" V.S. dictatorships. It's also not the first time that we saw a powerful Chinese totalitarian regime make the country very wealthy and then poor again. To clarify: regarding that last sentence I'm talking about the past 2500 years or so.
Don't dictatorships by their nature come with massive corruption and eventual downfall. Or is that my - just world fallacy - talking?
Not at all. The '"nice" thing about a totalitarian king/emperor/dictator is that improvements in prosperity come quickly' has historically almost never been the case.
It is actually quite anomalous for a non-democracy to see these sorts of quality of life improvements.
> easy example: Mao
Mao is not such an easy example, given that there is a continuity of government from Mao to today.
> also not the first time that we saw a powerful Chinese totalitarian regime make the country very wealthy and then unwealthy again.
??? No past Chinese regime has the numbers that the modern CCP is getting. Just look at the number in China in absolute poverty over the last 100 years.
Honestly, your comment seems remarkably ill-informed.
> Just look at the number in China in absolute poverty over the last 100 years. Honestly, your comment seems remarkably ill-reformed.
Last 100 years? I was thinking more towards the last 2500 years or so of Chinese and Western history. Will edit my previous comment to clarify.
> It is actually quite anomalous for a non-democracy to see these sorts of quality of life improvements.
Could you give some counter examples to these non-democracies that went from 0 to very powerful (in terms of geo-politics, economy and science and technology) in a matter of decades: various kingdoms before the year 0 (Syrians, Persians, Babylonians, etc), the Romans during and after Ceasar, the old world European exploring kingdoms (Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, English), old Chinese Dynasties, modern Singapore, China, USSR.
So what do you mean "The '"nice" thing about a totalitarian king/emperor/dictator is that improvements in prosperity come quickly' has historically almost never been the case."??
> Could you give some counter examples to these non-democracies
Given that outside of Greece, the Roman republic, Italian city-states, and a few other exceptions - every single one of thousands of regimes was non-democratic for thousands of years, it seems like those are anomalous and your comment is shot through with historical survivorship bias.
> Could you give some counter examples to these non-democracies that went from 0 to very powerful
I'm also just pretty unconvinced by these examples. I would have agreed if you had said, dictatorships tend to be much more militarily aggressive and expansionary, but I disagree that that results in quality of life improvement.
I don't think any of those examples lifted anywhere close to the same proportion of their population out of poverty. China lifted 880 million out of poverty.
> it seems like those are anomalous and your comment is shot through with historical survivorship bias.
Fair point. Maybe. Maybe not. What I mean is: it's hard to compare the outcome of democracies and non-democracies, because in my view the only country that has ever existed to come close to the concept of democracy in the history of humanity is Switzerland. And even that one has plenty of non-democratic aspects. Sample size: 1...
Other countries don't come close IMO. I don't agree that your examples where anything close enough to democracy. Not even Greece (where only the upper caste of society was allowed to vote, forget slaves etc).
And that's not even considering the fact that we essentially have sample size 0 if we want to compare large true democracies to large totalitarian states.
> but I disagree that that results in quality of life improvement.
Improvement compared to what? Tribal societies? Anarchy? Democracy? It is a fact that many societies that fell into dictatorship had an undeniable improvement in quality of life for the masses (compared to whatever previous society they had), but then also a massive decrease in quality of life eventually (or the other way around or in cycles, etc). And it can happen relatively quickly within years/decades. That was kind of my previous point: totalitarian regimes are efficient in ramping up, but such a system has no way to be stable, because the entire power pyramid depends on 1 person at the top (and a whoooooole lot of manipulative butt-licking corruption down the chain). Nice competent person = instant nice society. Evil/crazy/sick person (possibly the same person that started out nice) = instant hell.
> I don't think any of those examples lifted anywhere close to the same proportion of their population out of poverty. China lifted 880 million out of poverty.
China, the very same political/military system, also got those same people into poverty in the first place in a matter of years/decades (killing up to some 60 million people in the process) through Mao. Again, my point exactly: totalitarian regimes are good at ramping up quickly and messing up equally quickly.
They've quickly gone into poverty before, they can do it again. There's only 1 person between China being "great" and China being nothing in a matter of years/decades. And that's the point I was trying to make before.
I'm not going to spend an extensive amount of time responding to a dead comment chain, but just wanted to chime in and say:
> China, the very same political/military system, also got those same people into poverty in the first place in a matter of years/decades (killing up to some 60 million people in the process) through Mao
This is just very not true. You're saying there were tons of people making over $2/hr pre-CCP, they then got pushed into poverty by Mao, and all of the poverty gains since then are just raising out the people who got pushed down.
There is absolutely no empirical evidence for that assertion.
> improvements in prosperity come quickly [...] has historically almost never been the case
But I don't think the parent was far off with what they said. The advantage of the authoritarian is that there's no red tape for them, whatsoever. This power can be directed for practical reasons like building a gigantic wall around your borders, or selfish reasons like erecting gigantic pyramids to retain your wealth and status in the afterlife.
> It is actually quite anomalous for a non-democracy to see these sorts of quality of life improvements.
This seems like survivorship bias to me. It's easy to point to NK or the Soviet Union or China under Mao as failed authoritarian states. But these were also extremely experimental and it's not hard to imagine that the current incarnation of Chinese authoritarianism is one that has learned from the last one's mistakes. Most of the quality of life improvements that were seen in the west in the 20th century were thanks to technological improvements stemming from the industrial revolution. China is going through an industrial revolution of their own right now. So was it actually because of democracy that the west saw so much improvement last century?
> Honestly, your comment seems remarkably ill-reformed.
I think it's the other way: the strength of the West is that it's largely leaderless, and its "regional" leaders regularly gets switched out, so even a bad leader cannot leave much long-lasting harm.
China is at the mercy of bad decisions made by its single unopposed leader - in a quest to command fear, it's needlessly antagonizing pretty much all its neighbors, which seems to me like a result of flawed leadership.
> China is at the mercy of bad decisions made by its single unopposed leader
How bad a decision can Xi (just use it as an example) make?
The Chinese system is bad. But it cannot make the same mistake as what US is making right now. Even during SARS, that worse version of the Chinese system did not make things as bad as what US is currently making.
> the strength of the West is that it's largely leaderless, and its "regional" leaders regularly gets switched out, so even a bad leader cannot leave much long-lasting harm.
This is hilariously illogical thinking.
The selection of leader is through merits and competency. If the pool of candidates were bad, swapping out frequently did nothing to help the situation.
The strength of the west is that its rationale thinking and openness to debate and challenges have helped the nations to collectively think out and plot the optimal path to future.
Swapping out "bad" leaders is not even relevant in the context of open debate and collaborative thinking. In such a system, it's not possible to have "bad" leader.
Xi takes advises more openly from intellectuals than probably any world leader. Examples: Xi asked his leadership group to study Block-chain and Quantum tech [1,2]. Can you imagine Trump keep silence in such a meeting without claiming he knows the subject better than anyone else?!
> Xi asked his leadership group to study Block-chain and Quantum tech
The internet was originally a DoD project, after all. Every industrial country tries to take a slice in the next big technology, but of course the predictions are hit-and-miss.
Clearly leadership isn't sufficient. Central planning leadership under Mao led to poor results. Deng Xiaoping's reformation was to reduce centralized leadership.
Nor is central planning leadership necessary. The early United States overtook Great Britain as the largest economy with minimal central planning leadership.
> The early United States overtook Great Britain as the largest economy with minimal central planning leadership.
There is no formal central planning.
The early US presidents are very conscious of the prospect of the nation. They purposely expand the land, clear out regional security threats through wars, deliberately prioritize economical prosper over the claimed moral high grounds (slavery), foster rule by law and encourage participatory democracy.
All these polices are markedly more coherent and centralized than modern day US policies.
You should view totalitarian as a tool to achieve uniformity and consensus. But not disregard uniformity and consensus as being unnecessary foundation of strong nations.
Plus, democracy is a mechanism to reach consensus in a human way, and should always be the most effective and efficient one, if citizens are informed and capable of independent thinking. The rationale men were not only the foundation of free market, they are equally important for democracy. When US leaders purposely dumb down their citizens, they are undermining the very foundation of the strength of democracy.
I've provided historical evidence, but you've just asserted something without evidence. A mercantilist in the 1700s could have made the same argument as you, and they would have been wrong.
This is why political philosophy is important. The United States was largely an experiment in political philosophy and it succeeded... temporarily.
Unfortunately, given that the modern world is largely run by either state-managed socialism or state-managed capitalism (neo-mercantilism), there will be no evidence to evaluate your hypothesis on Earth unless there is a mass depopulation (let's hope not).
In my opinion, we will only have new political experimentation and innovation after we become a multi-planetary species. Political experimentation on Earth is too risky.
Until then, pay your taxes to appease the increasingly dystopian and insatiable "leaders".
Your characterization of the US as "centrally planned" seems incongruent enough with my starting assumptions that it's probably not worthwhile to have a conversation.
There's no private property without "central planning" (as you characterize it) of some form.
> it's probably not worthwhile to have a conversation.
Please don't combine further arguments (which suggest you want to continue the dialogue) with a poisoning of the well. I've enjoyed our mini-conversation so far; if you don't, that's fine, but there's no added value in this part of your sentence.
> Your characterization of the US as "centrally planned"
In my opinion, the key metrics of central planning are the size of government (e.g. % GDP) and volume of its regulation. The point at which these become excessively centrally planned is hard to define. In my opinion, they have been consistently growing over the past few hundred years in the U.S. and are about 50% and excessive, respectively. I doubt they will cease to stop growing until collapse or malaise.
> There's no private property without "central planning" (as you characterize it) of some form.
I did mention "minimal" central planning; however, again, you're making an assertion of political philosophy. I do not believe private property requires central planning. See: The Problem of Political Authority by Michael Huemer for example.
> Actions happen due to some interest group getting their way.
This is such a big reason. We no longer identify under a single identity. In America, that would be identifying as an American. In Europe, people still don't really identify as being European before they identify as English, French, German, etc.
Between both America and Europe, we no longer identify with being Western.
The fact that we now increasingly identify with some subgroup, means many of us focus on improving the success of the subgroup with which we align. That means that growing your piece of the pie means growing the size of the pie of your subgroup over growing the size of the pie for the larger group (European, American, Western, etc.)
In China, on the other hand, the focus is on growing the size of the pie for China. It's going to be hard to compete with this unless we adopt the same mindset.
> In Europe, people still don't really identify as being European before they identify as English, French, German, etc.
My impression is that that's a dividing line in many European countries. Some (mostly the elite) identifies as European and sees the single nations as backwards and vulgar, while others identify as their nationality and consider the EU as an elitist project to shift the power away from individual nations.
Yup, and you could say that's the strength of a well-lead homogenous country.
That's why although i'm more left-leaning, the constant focus of the left on subgroups being wronged is laughable and such a distraction from the reality of the world. China and their technological superiority and increasing economic sphere doesn't care.
I'm not even sure you need to be that well-lead when you're a homogenous country. Alignment tends to be self-evident and incentives are more likely to be shared/common. Emergent phenomena of the group aligns with the interest of the individual.
Where you need good leadership is when you have heterogenous groups that lack coherent alignment and need to be brought together to establish consensus.
Authoritarianism has been tried out around the globe in the 20th century multiple times, but each attempt failed. In fact, moth western nations were kingdoms at the start of the 20th century, and WW1 and WW2 turned most of them into republics.
If you look at the past century, democracies have been more successful, but if you look at the past millennium, dictatorships have done just fine.
The fact that Democracy has had a really good run for the past 100 years is nowhere near a guarantee that Authoritarianism won't rise again for the next 100.
I'd like to believe that Democracy has systematic benefits, but we don't have enough data points to say that for sure.
You can easily argue that the rise of Democracy in the 20th century is simply because the United States won world war 2 and the cold war, and all other countries adopted Democracy just to emulate the US.
If Germany had discovered the atomic bomb before the US (which arguably could have happened if history were just slightly, randomly different), the world could be radically different. We could all be arguing right now that Democracy is just too weak to survive.
Even more precisely the vast majority of Chinese people are unified. They are patriots who think China is the best country ever and all the rest are just jealous of their success. Downvote me if you want, but that’s certainly the look that CCP is happy to push.
Comparatively the People of the West are divided. Not just the US but also Europe. They are divided not just by politics, but also by their world view, and few have anything good to say about their home countries.
This right here is the biggest wedge China can exploit. If they move as one while the West gets mired in debates then China will win.
> Even more precisely the vast majority of Chinese people are unified. They are patriots who think China is the best country ever and all the rest are just jealous of their success.
That’s out group homogeneity (or maybe just propaganda-driven thinking — Western media certainly portrays China that way) and not even remotely true to anyone who can read the Chinese language to some extent. Go to allegedly tightly controlled Weibo and check out comments under most sociopolitical news — I mean actual news, not “happy 71st birthday PRC” kind of stuff, and witness the shouting match between different groups, with an astonishing amount of “unpatriotic” opinions everywhere (astonishing if you think the Chinese should have one voice, that is). There are also a substantial group of people who quite literally worship developed countries — ironically more prevalent among people who have never set foot outside the country, I’d say — and will quickly label any domestic problem as uniquely Chinese, even when they’re not. There’s even a Chinese saying about this, “the moon is rounder in foreign lands” (everything is better in foreign countries). Even different group of patriots can be seen warring against each other sometimes over political issues.
People on the opposite side of the world aren’t nearly as different once you get to know them.
Emm. As a Chinese, I disagree. Most Chinese don't think China is the best country. Just look at how many people wants to migrate to other countries. It does seem like Western media is trying to depict Chinese as patriots though.
>Democratic nations banding together or building new supply chains are pipe dreams.
New supply chains are in fact underway, even before Trump's horseshit. There was a inkling of migrating manufacturing to India and its only been accelerated further.
They began moving years ago because wages were increasing in China, same reason those jobs left the U.S. decades ago.
I'm tempted to say the process was accelerated in China, but then again the heyday of U.S. manufacturing was only 20-30 years, maybe 40-50 if you include 1920s appliances boom[1], as the shift to Japan was in full swing by the 1970s. China is at about the 30 year mark (1990-2020), so if we really wanted to take a long-term historical perspective none of the contemporary politics matters--industrialization dynamics are running their natural course and choosing our politicians based on how "tough" they are on China (regarding trade policy) is pointless.
[1] Though I don't know if the industry's share of the labor market was significant, the U.S. dominated the appliances industry in the 1920s, so much so that it significantly contributed to the Great Depression. Not only did it directly inflate investment markets, the unbalanced trade with Europe, exacerbated by the gold standard, caused monetary deflation in European economies, which contributed to labor problems (stagnant wages, increasing unemployment), which in turn ultimately crashed foreign demand for both American appliances and investments. At least that's what I remember from reading Lords of Finance.
This. I don’t have a link handy, but at present China’s superpower is effective final assembly. The common example is the iPhone, where once you subtract out the value from imported parts, China is only keeping something like $4. (From memory, so there may be some more recent and/or accurate numbers)
iPhone anecdote is unrepresentative outlier, at the time due to imported components and funny GDP accounting. IIRC Overall Chinese value capture on exports is 70% in 2016 and rises yearly especially as Chinese suppliers moves up the industrial chain for expensive components replace foreign ones, screens, ram, cpu etc. Though in terms of electronics the important figure is really patent fees: China is massive net importer: $6 in patent fees for every $1 they receive, hence the drive to build / buy domestic patent portfolio.
I think China's superpower is concentrating supply chains and specialization on a scale and to an effect / competitive advantage that's only possible when drawing from a population of 1.4 billion who speak the same language and share the same infrastructure and regulatory frame. No one else is really going to replicate that. The idea that a loose assembly of countries like ASEAN separated by geography, language, laws is going to be more efficient than China... who still has 2X more people to draw from is a nonstarter. India possibly but unlikely.
I think the future is separate assembled in Vietnam and India lines to circumvent tariffs while China gets promoted to designer + manufacturer of advanced products. Though truthfully China can choke even assembled elsewhere prospects if she ever decides to weaponize sanctions like US does. While Chinese manufacturing labour concentrated in coastal regions is has gotten expensive, China is not short of cheap labour. There's about 600M rural people whose income range from Bangladesh to Vietnam in the interior provinces. If China _really_ wanted to, they could recapture all these markets, and there's some indications things might move that way as domestic policies focus on interior development.
These factors are important, but I don't think they are as important as the people factor: Chinese people simply want to work hard to live a better life. Everyone knows education matters, so much so that you see news like this: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8296195/Chinese-gir.... Not that I personally know everyone, but I trust that what my Chinese coworkers told me had certain truth. They openly acknowledge that Chinese needed to learn from western civilization, especially STEM, and policy making, so much so that no one would mock CIT for not winning NCCA games. That's some serious respect. I mean, what kinda of sick country would openly mock their best university for sucking at basketball?
> So is China going to surpass America to become the world's #1 economy?
Well, who can comment on the World's #1 (India, after all, is a country). But exactly what mistakes will China have to make not to be bigger than the US (if they aren't already)?
They have 4 times as many people and all the indications are that they are making bigger real investments in infrastructure and industrial capacity than the US. I would wish for some of the pro-growth policies from China to come to the Western powers.
If you're interested in this question I think the recent articles by Ray Dalio might be exactly what you are looking for.
He founded and ran the world's largest hedge fund and in addition to studying the issue has had personal interaction with high level Chinese leaders going back decades, so he seems pretty well informed about both the macroeconomics in general and China specifically.
In addition the very question you're talking about seems to be currently his main point of interest and he's been writing a series of free articles about it on linked in ([1][2] and others).
The articles go very in depth and I can't do justice to them here. But I got the impression that he expects some of these things:
- China to surpass the US as the #1 economy. Beyond that, eventually become a developed country, so probably wildly surpass the US economy considering the population is 4x as large.
- Them to continuously increase in relative technological and military power relative to the US.
- For them to possibly supplant the US dollar as the world reserve currency, which could have implications on the value of the US dollar
- Not for them to give up their hierarchical government
Why care who "wins" or who's "bigger"? Our goal should be the greatest wealth for the most people for the whole Earth. This is accomplished with innovation and peaceful trade. One "side" discovers a new technology and the whole world can benefit.
The primary driver of innovation is a competitive market in which individuals innovate through the pursuit of self-interest. The 20th century was a large experiment finalizing this hypothesis, including China through Deng Xiaoping's reforms.
The incendiary thought to both "sides" is that they're both suppressing such innovation: China through explicit communist philosophy and Western countries through some sort of devolution into Crapitalism due to varied causes.
In other words, are China and Western countries qualitatively different? In my opinion, not by a magnitude, and that's the scary thing.
However, barring idiotic wars by country leaders, humans are likely to continue to innovate _despite_ the chiefs, priests, and thieves, as we have done for the last few hundred years (see Pinker, Goklany, etc.).
One reason to care which is bigger is the effect they each will have on the norms of governance around the world. Superpowers tend to nudge the rest of the world's governments to be more like them (see Britain and the US over the last 300 years). Do you want the rest of the world to be more like China or more like the West?
China has shown the world what it considers to be acceptable norms of governance: unrepentant, ongoing genocide against the Uigers, snuffing out liberal democracy in Hong Kong, and denying the sovereignty of a liberal neighbor in Taiwan.
I'm fully expecting plenty of whataboutism and false equivalencies in response to this comment and others making a similar point.
Believe me, I'm disappointed in the US and the rest of the West's recent slide away from liberal values, and I hope we can start doing better soon, but I encourage onlookers to ask themselves: do you really believe the there's no meaningful difference between China's vision for the future and the West's? No difference between the future each will create for you?
>unrepentant, ongoing genocide against the Uigers, snuffing out liberal democracy in Hong Kong, and denying the sovereignty of a liberal neighbor in Taiwan.
You're quoting Britain there as someone to look to, and at the same time mentioning genocide...
> I'm fully expecting plenty of whataboutism and false equivalencies in response to this comment and others making a similar point.
Please don't poison the well. If you believe I've made such an argument, please politely point that out about a specific statement and I'll try to understand my biases and correct it.
> do you really believe the there's no meaningful difference between China's vision for the future and the West's?
If we were comparing to Mao, Stalin, or Hitler, then, yes; but, modern states, no.
The U.S. imprisons millions of people for petty drug crimes and kills millions of people in imperial wars. Is that so different than the treatment of the Uigers, Taiwanese, or those in Hong Kong?
The social credit system and Great Firewall are being implemented through different means: social ostracism and social media oligopolies. I've personally experienced it.
> No difference between the future each will create for you?
I'm actually generally optimistic. If we take the evidence of the past few hundred years, we are likely to innovate and grow despite such excessive governance. It's the innovators that will make my future better. As far as the government goes, the practical difference seems minimal: I will meticulously pay my taxes and follow the laws so as not to receive the glare of either of the Saurons.
> The U.S. imprisons millions of people for petty drug crimes and kills millions of people in imperial wars. Is that so different than the treatment of the Uigers, Taiwanese, or those in Hong Kong?
Yes, because in the US, we can actually have a conversation about changing those policies. In China, they can't.
Although there are counter-examples of Snowden, Assange, and others, I do generally agree with you that there are fewer political crimes in the U.S.; however, words are cheap, it's actions that matter. My point is about the results: the government continues to grow in depth and breadth. So, yes, if you're on the socialist end of the spectrum, you may feel very free to accomplish your goals. Those on the other end do not.
As an example, how did all of our free speech help in stopping the war in Iraq based on a lie about WMDs that killed millions of people? Is anyone even arguing that China has killed millions of Uyghurs?
To be clear, I think both sides are wrong. I'm just saying they're not qualitatively different by a magnitude.
If you look at the fifty year picture, China and the US have been developing trade with each other and the rest of the world and growing in prosperity. Particularly vs important rivals from the last fifty years, such as the USSR and Japan. You can argue about the distribution of the prosperity in the US, and you can argue about the political liberalism in China, but neither country is exclusively responsible for the other countries problems in either regard.
Both countries depend on world trade and have a lot to loose from any event (like a war) that would upset trade. Neither country is really threatened by each other or any other power. It is possible that this could be a situation like the United States and Great Britain, where one country passed up another in power and wealth without a need for conflict.
Thats all that matter. It was a crucial factor in the fall of the Romans (they hadn't invented pizza yet), the Mongols, the Brits, the Soviets, the Germans etc etc.
I was just joking :) Mostly to show, the MORE complex and dynamic the system is, anyone can pick random factors and use it in analysis to say whatever they feel like.
Under XJ, China is declining. One of the big reasons for China's meteoric rise was that stupid laws weren't being enforced properly or at all, and free speech was on the rise which in turn led to more creativity and economic freedom. Under that old reality, I was worried that China would inevitably surpass the West, but Zhou Enlai & Deng Xiaoping's golden egg laying goose is dead now in exchange for more centralized power. China's destiny is now to become a giant Galapagos copy machine courtesy of the new emperor.
Who knows; maybe the new social credit system will prove me wrong?
I'll humor and agree with this take given it can take greater than 7 years for macro effects to occur stemming from policies and choices that countries make.
Example is the former One Child policy which took a long time for the effects to be seen. Another example is that pumping money into the economy doesn't have immediate effects.
The effects of the One Child policy has actually been pretty much as intended.
There are two hidden goals of the One Child policy that aren't communicated very often in the West.
The first is proletarianization. Indeed, almost 30% of Chinese people are peasants. This is not efficient. Only around 2-5% would be sufficient; therefore 20-23% of the productive potential is wasted for the same consumption. And so, creating a situation where it would be possible to shrink the size of the peasant class would allow for the productivity per capita to rise, thus allowing for better surpluses and better living conditions.
In this view, a demographic fall is not an actual issue, because there is already 20-23% of "dead-weight" that can be eliminated.
Secondly, the issue is of human capital. This is not so well-known, but the retirement age in China is extremely low. Indeed, the average retirement age is at 58 (!). This is done on purpose so that the younger generation may enter the job market faster and learn more, reducing unrest and permitting the investment in human capital. However, this comes at the cost of enforcing early retirement, which also makes for reduced efficiency.
The solution to both of these problems can be to simply reduce the population, this will allow for a sharp decline of the peasant class and for an increase in retirement age.
In this view, the demographic effects of the One Child Policy, while they might have been disastrous for a developed, urbanized economy, actually fits into the demographic and productive plans. It is thus an incorrect to call them an error, and there will likely not be an economic collapse in response.
The reasons you give might well be the intention, but it seems misconceived. There were special carve-outs in the one child policy for farmers. If their first child was a girl they could try again for a boy. Also the policy was very hard to apply consistently in the countryside because the bureaucracy is very thin there and its not at all uncommon for families to hide children with relatives. You can't get away with that in the cities.
As for the retirement age, life expectancy in China is significantly lower than in the west. In fact in 1970 is was only 59 years. It's still 6 years behind the USA and it's not uncommon for significant health problems to kick in during your 50s. On the other hand as for making way for the new generation, how are they supposed to learn from more experienced older colleagues if they all retired? Oh well, I suppose that's the problem with centrally planned economies.
It's not really that important from where the population is reduced. There is essentially no big difference between the son of a farmer and the son of a factory worker.
China's life expectancy is two 2 years under the US, not 6 years. Moreso, the most important way of learning on the job is experience, learning from a 50 year old vs a 60 year old is not that big of a difference.
I find this hard to agree with, even though I really want to agree because I want the Chinese people to have the freedom they deserve. But the facts aren't right. China in the 1980s enjoyed a similar period of increasing freedom of speech under the leadership of Zhao Ziyang. We all know what happened in 1989. But the economy kept chugging along just fine.
It sounds to me like you're making a moral argument, not an empirical one. Are you saying that China deserves to decline, because they are authoritarian, or that they actually are declining, and the numbers show this?
If China's economy is really declining, I'm curious what the evidence of that is. What are the numbers? Are they experiencing a shrinking economy, declining productivity, technological stagnation? I'm not an expert, but I would be surprised if that was true.
I'm not making a moral argument, just a long term hypothesis based on history.
No, the data doesn't currently support my case. I posit what we're seeing now is similar to what happened when John Sculley took over Apple after Jobs' ouster. What we're seeing are the fruits from Zhou Enlai & Deng Xiaoping's faction.
I think it's really hard to have innovation without freedom of speech without relying on stealing technology.
The novel was written in traditional Chinese, with a different style and narration system.
The novel has many ancient poem mixed in the text, a major part of the plot, they were almost always vastly inferior when translated.
Lastly, even if the translation goes well, the cultural sensitivity required to appreciate the story and character is going to put you in such a disadvantage that you'll wonder why it feels so bland, even claimed one of the best...
Lying and corruption don’t exclude competence. The parent comment meant competent in the sense of whether the state can achieve its goals.
A state may lie about its goals to its public, or enrich its elite, while also being capable of meeting state goals.
US state competence has clearly declined, but it is worth making this distinction. Strictly speaking the two factors you cite aren’t necessarily linked to competence. Every politician must lie, it’s part of the job.
Two things China has in common with the West are aging demographics, and asset price bubbles.
I figure somewhere the two go hand in hand, and I will go out on a limb here and suggest that by the end of the decade, either or both lateral hemispheres will experience an asset price bubble the likes of which have never been seen before.
I think there is scope in China for heinously priced real estate in the coming years, for example.
I believe it's human-behavioural stuff like that which will confound the best laid plans of our leaders, in both east and west.
“If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking is freedom” --Eisenhower (b. 1890)
I would like to see some analysis of what a nuclearized Japan, or Australia, would do. China has emerged as the single greatest threat to democracy, human rights, prosperity, and peace around the world. They can only do this because a foreign investment. If companies like Apple etc. did not make their products in China, Then perhaps I could see a future of China rising peacefully. Otherwise they are a grave in mortal threat to the world
Prosperity and peace? I think China actually has a good track record there. Actions you might perceive as un-peaceful (building islands, modernizing military) could also be interpreted as defensive.
The world could achieve great peace and prosperity under a “Pax Sinica”, at the cost of individual liberty. That IMHO is the bigger threat: that authoritarianism will sneak in under the cover of prosperity - a Faustian bargain that too many will be willing to accept.
How is it defensive to build island military bases in places where there were barely any islands, in the international waters, in the most lucrative trade routes in the world?
How is it defensive to encroach Kashmir and provoke a conflict with India? Dispute borders with Vietnam and Bhutan?
To note, Japan is in practice a one-party state. The LDP has only ever not been in power very briefly, and even then they conserved bureaucratic power.
Yes and no. This was a big debate during the cold war. If the Russians invaded Europe, would America really nuke Russian and risk total destruction?
Many strategists considered this to be not a credible threat, on its own. This was part of the reason the US deployed so many conventional troops to Europe during the cold war. These troops couldn’t stop the russians, but their presence would force the US to act if the Russians invaded.
Hence, the US might actually irrationally nuke Russia. Hence, Russia would be deterred from invading.
This also partly explains the US presence in Japan and Korea. Apart from power projection, it is a tangible expression of US committment to potentially irrationally deploy nukes to defend those countries. However, recent US actions have greatly called into question the US’s commitment to this strategic nuclear umbrella. Hence those countries may be more interested in a deterrent they control.
Also of note: the US withdrew troops from Taiwan in 1979 when it switched diplomatic recognition to communist China. This switch was done to play China against the USSR.
China's plan is definitely to absorb countries into their growing economic sphere. Then they absorb countries into their network/techno-sphere by selling communication and surveillance equipment.
This will allow them to assist the leaders in power by swaying public opinion at a whim. Further consolidating control. This pushes out western companies and doesn't allow their capital to operate.
Eventually this "virus" will reach the main western countries and engulf them. The capitalist system will be turned against itself.
In the past, you couldn't automate the managing of perception and access like you can now with a "technosphere" of capabilities that increase by the year.
They exploit weaknesses like the "racial divide" to pit us against each other, to hasten this.
China had been the most advanced country for centuries, having lost this position during the capitalist advances in the West. This should be welcome as it returns China to its traditional position as an advanced civilization.
Paper, printing, banknotes, bombs, dental amalgam, rockets, drilling rigs, natural gas as fuel, oil refining, smallpox inoculations, land mines, grenades, seismometers and some other stuff. Admittedly mostly a while ago.
Chinese discoveries were more suited to their local needs and geographies, just as the Western ones were unique themselves. Besides, Chinese decline began way back, from the Yuan era, with a brief rise during the Ming Era, then stagnation again during the Manchurian period.
For some Chinese inventions: the meritocratic bureaucracy, which inspired the civil services in the UK, India and many other countries. Or the seismograph, block printing (which enabled a much higher literate population than the West in its time), their variant on paper, and tons of water-powered "appliances".
China might have been very different had the Ming not stagnated badly, and the Jurchens not invited to exploit the chaos.
Y'all need to stop seeing other countries through the lens of existential competition before it causes cold or hot wars and start cooperating internationally.
You need a little more realpolitik in your life. Nations are absolutely competing with each other because we live in a world of limited resources. Recognizing this fact and wanting your nation to come out on top are very normal.
Realpolitik means that we acknowledge that great power wars aren't an option while MAD exists - and that MAD isn't going anywhere for 100 years or more. That means that soft/economic power is far more important than hard power.
Anti-ICBM tech sucks balls and it only gets worse with new weapons like nuclear cruise missiles.
I don't understand why we are lusting for great power wars in the first place beyond the fact that they are so damaging as to be nearly (but not quite) unthinkable.
I am quite familiar with realpolitik, the American post-war perspective and how the idea of international cooperation was undercut and destroyed by our national bourgeoisie. The UN system was put in place for America to exert its post-war dominance. China is a complicated nation. It is constructing a parallel system to the IMF/World Bank that under-girds US hegemony. It also controls a huge fraction of world manufacturing due to the laziness and greed of the business community. However, because it is not a pure capitalist country, it doesn't have the same imperial market imperatives that western countries certainly have.
If we don't try to build a better future, we will realpolitik ourselves into a dystopian one.
Also, nations are fake creations of the elites. The working class is international in scope and we have no quarrel with one another.
Some analysts think China's population is too old and that youth will peter out, whereas others think that all the CCP has to do is ask its millennials to have more babies.
Some analysts think that democratic nations will band together and give China the cold shoulder. China could just as easily form alliances.
Others say that the West will build factories in India, Vietnam, Mexico, and Africa and stop single-sourcing the supply chain. China's also playing that game with their One Belt initiative.
The West has bountiful resources. Oil, minerals. So does China.
The West has a huge military and space program. So does China.
The West has high-paying tech jobs because of its lead in tech, but China is catching up and has more people graduating into the field. This could drive dominance (and salaries) down.
China keeps reporting growth. Others say don't trust the numbers. At the same time, look at what's happening to Western economies and national debt. Is China pulling the same levers, or are they unscathed? What, if anything, can the West do to match that growth? Or is it impossible?
What's going to happen? What's the 20 to 30 year outlook?
Really hoping for some good analysis.
(note: this story was "flagged" and I was unable to reply, but I "vouched" for it because I really value conversation and want informed input to help shape my view. Maybe I was wrong to do so, and if Dang or the mods disapprove, I'm sorry. My opinion on this whole matter is constantly in flux, and I'd really like good sources of information so I can be up to date and well informed. It feels like one of the most important topics of our generation.)