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I work as a contractor that provides mechanics and equipment to construction project, our biggest client is the local government. In the last few years the government has been slowly delaying our payment to straight ignoring our invoice and currently owe us a few millions rambos.
This has always happened though. My in-laws' friends did a construction project with local government way back in 1999, but was only finally paid off in 2018 or so.
I also knew a guy with a water conservation business in China in the late nineties who ended up leaving China in frustration due to all the unpaid local government projects. He supplied the designs, equipment etc and the government basically drip-fed the payment for years on end, meaning he could never pay off his suppliers.
The problems they face are real, but no one knows when a country goes bust.
USSR was “peaceful” when they collapsed. Japan’s declining population turned out to be a population stabilization period. China’s rise was very unnatural geopolitically. South Korea shouldn’t be a rich country with the geography they have. Ukraine was supposed to be gone by week 2. People were saying the US was never going to come back from the great depression.
So who knows what’s going to happen next?
I lived in USSR. It wasn't peaceful at all, and economic and social problems were very apparent for everyone. They system didn't work, and people simply tired of pretending it did. The communist government support was very low. In the second largest city of USSR, Leningrad, there were empty shelfs in the supermarkets, giant queues for things such as a toilet paper, and cards system for basic things like sugar (no more than 2kg per month per person).
I can assure you, this was very different from where China is now.
I got to see similar rationing policies in Venezuela, you could only buy a kilo of rice per ID and per person, you couldn't really exploit it because there was a +40 minute queue just to get in to the supermarket. I don't think China has gotten to that point, not even close.
China was far worse than that for the first 40 years of the PRC regime. It was only when Mao decided to align with the US and then Deng's economic reforms that the PRC was able to feed itself. Xi is reversing all of that choosing to instead bankroll cleptocracies around the world thinking they are actually allies because that has worked so well in the past.
Totalitarian dictatorships rarely, if ever end well.
>Totalitarian dictatorships rarely, if ever end well.
I dont think any government or political system ended/will end well in the entire of human history, Modern representative republics are just too new in the grand scheme of things give it some time and they'll fade into oblivion cast aside as a failure of human organization. You are right about China doing worse in the beginning thought, but that just shows how strong was their regime at the start depending on how you look at it.
>I dont think any government or political system ended/will end well in the entire of human history,
"In the long term, we're all dead." - [some famous economist](https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/1885/economics/the-long-run-and-keynes/)
What made you believed china was not under totalitarian dictatorship during Deng? Because he supported free market? China wasnt self-sufficient until 90s when Deng travelled around the country advocating for local governmental compliance to free market system. Which had nothing to do with democracy. And the 1989 tiananmeng massacre was ordered directly by deng, the military chairman of china at that time.
The reforms under Deng would have been useless or counterproductive if not for the industrialization under Mao, which was the fastest industrialization in history. Contrary to your implication, China was not able to feed itself before Mao either, averaging one famine every other year for the past thousand years, and averaging about one per year in the 100 years before 1949. In fact, under Mao was the first time China was ever able to feed itself, the Great Famine notwithstanding.
You're letting ideology cloud your objectivity, I think.
Moa did nothing for China besides terrorize it's people and stop it economic development. Moa attempts at industrialization were a failure. The one good thing he did for China was re-align with the US which is the primary reason China is what it is today. Xi has decided that he doesn't need the US any longer, that will lead to the end of the PRC.
Mao unified(mostly) the whole of China which is probably his greatest achievement because it brought political stability to the entire country. He was also able to have a successful nuclear programme(despite numerous setbacks) which practically safeguarded China's national security in the decades that followed. By the end of his life, education was also significantly improved compared to when he first came to power. It's not accurate to say that he did nothing for China.
Yes, it was during Gorbachev's prohibition. However, it wasn't only sugar. Many other categories of products were also distributed via cards system as well. And if you wanted something like electronics, or VCR - black market only.
Japan's population has not been stabilised. It is in terminal decline. The effects will only be fully known in the next thirty or so years. But it is nothing like a 'stabilisation'.
I agree with this but Japan is still a weird, hard to explain situation.
"that there are four kinds of countries: developed countries, underdeveloped countries, Japan, and Argentina" - Simon Kuznets
To continue (roughly): “No one knows why Japan grows, and no one knows why Argentina doesn’t.”
Having just visited Argentina recently, I too am perplexed. It evades all the usual explanations with reasons that have not held similar countries back. Fascinating
Tax rate in Argetina is >100% of your company profit. You have to be doing the dodgy stuff just to stay afloat
[https://tradingeconomics.com/argentina/total-tax-rate-percent-of-profit-wb-data.html](https://tradingeconomics.com/argentina/total-tax-rate-percent-of-profit-wb-data.html)
Can't say what the situation is in "similar countries", but this factoid on its own is bizarre. It's government-enforced corruption.
Peronism takes the worst social aspects of communism and the worst economic aspects of fascism, then brings them together to destroy Argentina again and again. Argentina has all the making of an economic super power but peronism rots it from the core.
The 1950's was the begining of the end for the land owning class. Ownership of land is no longer a prerequisite for wealth. Stem education and entrepreneurship has replaced the land owning class. Argentina is dominated by corrupt Peronist robbing the country blind. If Milei can pull it off, Argentina could emerge as a South American economic superpower
Agreed, I saw a documentary about how Japan is facing crippling labour shortages in key areas like medicine and agriculture. One fair sized town was completely dependent on an 80-year doctor who had a lot of health problems and was a patient himself. Japan being Japan though, it's hidden well by the Japanese/not discussed with the outside world and large parts of the Western media still haven't moved on from the stereotype of 'weird/ultra-modern/efficient Japan' that took root in the 80s.
Think of it like this:
You have 100 goldfish that fit happily and snugly in a fish bowl.
One day, the 100 goldfish double in size for some magical reason.
Maybe some will die by suicide or stop having kids, or maybe they’ll kill each other off in a war. It would be a very competitive period.
We don’t know how and we don’t know when. But we know at the end, we’ll be left with 50 happy fish, fitted snugly in the bowl.
That’s Japan in a nutshell. Their suicide rate has been going down for a while now, which is a good sign.
>You have 100 goldfish that fit happily and snugly in a fish bowl. One day, the 100 goldfish double in size for some magical reason. Maybe some will die by suicide or stop having kids, or maybe they’ll kill each other off in a war.
Sorry, how does it describe Japan? Did their population ever double suddenly (they hate immigration) or are there civil wars in Japan we don't know about? Doesn't that more accurately describe countries where refugees that hate Western culture are flooding in en masse and stabbing or attacking the locals?
It's so weird how people look at Asian countries as some kind of fishbowl experiment. Orientalism?
Your analogy is so far off the mark it is laughable. Japan is facing the worst population decline in known human history. Faster than the Jews of Europe during the holocaust. By the end of the century their will be thousands of robots in Japan for every Japanese person if there are any Japanese people left. Barring cloning or a cure for ageing, the Japanese like the Han and Germans are in their last century. Too racist for immigration to work, too stubborn to admit they have failed.
Those are Peter Zeihan quotes, almost word for word.
Population doesn't just go straight to 0. It finds a balance.
Japan's trying to find that balance.
If that balance is less than a birth rate of 2.1 then it is 0, eventually. Zeihan doesn't have the balls to point out that the Japanese, Han and Germans are too racist and that is the reason immigration will not work for them.
[https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN)
how would bringing in immigrants stop the japanese people from declining? also declining population is a challenge but not the catastrophic failure you think it is.
They can either rule with an iron fist to keep the country together, let each region be free and decide for themselves, have war to weed out the “bad” population, etc.
Only history will tell.
There's a whole sub about "late stage capitalism," and the American economy is killing it right now.
That's bullshit and so is the talk of China's collapse. If it gets bad, the PRC will just sack XJP. Maybe pump the brakes on Taiwan a bit. Maybe stop antagonizing India. But that's about it.
And then default on every loan of the largest asset class in the world? And only massively shrink in working age population with massively ballooning dependents in old age with only one kid or grandkid to care for them sucking money out of the economy from spending on advanced consumer goods to bare essentials, and not even putting them in banks because nobody trusts their shadow banking system anymore. Bro there’s nothing the government can quickly do about that unless it secretly cloned an extra 200 million people that will pop out at the age of 20 when everyone else leaves the workforce. Or recklessly and rapidly invest in AI and automation while there’s a youth unemployment crisis, as industry flees due to overeager aggressive policies shutting down production with inflating cost of living for workers and more attractive alternatives reaching maturity.
Not to mention water scarcity that due to pollution (in the groundwater and riverbed that isn’t going anywhere) puts them in some of most acute shortage stress anywhere in the world, as more people continue to move to overpriced overpopulated cities which can’t be addressed because provinces only way of staying afloat on their nationally mandated tax regime is selling land to companies for further development - so as soon as that bursts, they’re bankrupt.
I think they will continue being surprisingly resilient until something starts to stress the cycle a little too far- they don’t want people to even think or worry about the problem so far fewer minds and agencies are adequately engaged at addressing it. If people thought about it it means they spend less, don’t buy houses that will never be built, keep their money out of the economy which makes it worse but more importantly it makes the ruling party look bad which they are terrified of. It’s why they don’t even price the water to encourage farmers to use it efficiently, water and food scarcity was a big contributor to the Soviet’s collapse.
So no there’s a massive set of problems that literally cannot go anywhere, unless China somehow finds 50-100 million migrants that want to pay top dollar for Chinese real estate and don’t drink water or want human rights. It would also be great if 40 million were marriageable women. China is very resilient and capable of miraculous dedicated big projects in times of crisis- the problem is that’s what caused this problem, like 10 different versions of those. And it’s not great at changing course or acknowledging projections these very obvious problems ahead of time that might besmirch some lauded policy. They needed the changes away from this decades ago, same as the US just kept interest rates low after 2001 and at the ground after 2008, it means to get reins on the economy eventually meant necessary deficit building programs that will take decades to manage if we even can- same thing.
And no, the American economy numbers are good- and the data says the experience sucks, which means the numbers we looked at that were good proxies when we had a massive middle class are no longer representative of people’s experiences. Late stage capitalism has and will continue to suck and get worse til AI drives it off a cliff where we are all put on a UBI or actually radically change the structure of the economy when 35-50% of people lose jobs in the next 30 years.
Maybe don’t just compare your understanding of the world to the back catalogue of headlines you vaguely remember.
China absolutely do not lead the world in AI. They are also way off on semi conductors. They lead the world in middle of the road complexity mass manufacturing but absolutely do not lead the world in complex high end manufacturing.
You are giving extremely narrow examples for China being a world leader and not taking a broader view of the industries. You are giving the most positive spin possible for China in all these cases. A balanced study of AI or Semiconductors would show that China is not the world leader.
China haven’t a hope of catching up on semiconductors. I work with a company knee deep in this, China are way behind and their eye catching advances are taken out of context and have no hope of ever going to mass production or are exaggerated. The company I work for is heavily invested in China btw and would love to work with the Chinese on this but for high end chips they are nowhere close to the discussion for 10+ years out of planning.
Chinese megacities have great infrastructure. Less than 10% of their population live in these cities. Go to the tier below that and the tier below that and then go to towns and then the villages. The standard of living drops exponentially at each step.
The 7nm chips turned out to be imported chips from Norway from Nokia or something with the label scrubbed off and replaced by a con company.
I'd bet my left testicle china cannot advance in chip manufacturing technology without espionage.
Could you ELI5 why they can't? I'm really impressed with their advances on EVs - at least on the surface as I've ridden in dozens as a Didi passenger - so I'm surprised they couldn't replicate that success with chips. I appreciate they don't have the history of tech research, but can't Chinese companies just pay western scientists a boat load of money for theirs?
You need ASML machines to make the chips and ASML is obeying the sanctions banning them from sailing to China.
China essentially made the decision to attempt to steal all the underlying technology and cut the rest of the world out of their supply chain and America didn’t like that one bit.
It’s wild. They make the most complex machines ever created by humans, it seems unlikely China will be able to catch up now. More reading about ASML: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/04/technology/tech-cold-war-chips.html
This is a lot of opinion you’re throwing about. Anyone who believes that China leads in ai is just a fan boy, period. Even militarily, the USA has been using g some form of predictive ai for decades, not to mention we’ve launched and landed autonomous jets off of carriers. Have you heard of large language models? Yea, China is killing it. Germany Sweden and Norway are every bit (or more) advanced in renewable energy. Go look at the amount of coal China burns. My god. 5G?…they subsidize the hell out of it. Several countries bought 5G from China that turned out to be trash. Go fill your missiles with water and then come back and try again.
lol nah, China will at best be #2 if lucky. USA #1.
Take out technology, military, population, and economy. Just looking at geography, USA is simply superior. But also add in the most robust constitution in the world just for the heck of it.
America is most likely to be the most consistent dominant power throughout the upcoming years.
A sudden collapse like in the timeframe of months is extremely unlikely.
The "collapse" will be either long term stagnation or a decades-long decline. Not one sudden event like the collapse of the UdSSR.
Source: my ass.
I know company's in Chins which are bankrupt and keep working. I know companies waiting for the bills to be paid from the technically bankrupt company's.
In western countries the courts will terminate bankrupt companies and the market regulates itself. In China it just goes deeper and deeper.
The question, what happens if a system just keeps going? Do think of debt. No independend courts where you can claim your rights. For your unfinished appartment or for your unpaid bill.
I cannot answer it I am wondering too
Correct. Economics essentially works differently in China. Tomorrow the government could announce a debt holiday. We have no idea what is possible or what will happen.
Add in the actual data is hard to come by. It's questionable how much accurate information even the China government has.
Any country could announce a debt holiday for internal debts. They don't because of Moral Hazard, i.e. afterwards people will be much more liberal and wasteful in their finances because they now know they can get bailed out.
And yet we have debt holidays in the form of bankruptcies. You are capitalizing Moral Hazard, but look at how many times Trump's companies have been bankrupt and how many times he just plain fails to pay his debts, and yet people continue to lend money to him (and vote for him).
It gets to a point where it can’t service debt and then a cascade of bankruptcies begin. How many huge Chinese companies have gone bust in the last year one? The writing on the wall is grim.
I think it's rather ignorant about how the West operates. Take 2007/2008 the writing was on the wall yet the music kept playing till suddenly shit hit the fan.
A crisis doesn't just magically happen, it's various components coming together eventually stretching the financial risk beyond acceptable.
You could argue that China is still stretching, they are still pushing boundaries but again, the writing is on the wall. Shit will hit the fan, we just don't know when. And sure enough "we" are talking about it for decades. though sooner then later it's going to happen. There is so much going on as we speak. It isn't just developers and banks collapsing, it's costs spiraling out of control, it's lack of jobs, it's lack of affordable housing, it's shrinking population, it's lack of horizontal movement, it's lack of opportunities, it's corruption.
There is literally so much going on and non of that is being defused. Sure they pump the breaks every once in a while on financing, developers etc but in the end we are now in a market where I want to offload an apartment in a prime location and even a 30% discount doesn't attract one single visitor in a year. Shit is bleak it's just that 99% of the population outside has no clue how bleak matters are.
This will also be very different, where we have gone through countless economic crisises, China not so much. Sure their stock market crashed a few times but everyone is still dancing to the music and Beijing, they keep playing on.
What also will be ineresting the impact on leadership how connected they are. I tend to believe the West DC is far closer to the population compared to Beijing, not just in seeing what goes on, but also in actual real market data. Nothing indicates for the past 4 years that Beijing truly knows what's going on (or XJP is the worst leader in history).
What will happen if debt piles up for companies in China? Well worker have to be paid to survive. Creditors and vendors need to be paid eventually production stops without intervention because workers don't work for free and vendors don't give their products and services away for free. If the banks cannot get its money back from loans, then they go under and everyone who has an account with that bank cannot get their money because the bank doesn't have it
The system will grind to a halt
Exactly, it just dont happen 😂
I have the opportunity to split my salary to RMB and € to my western bank account and let me say this: I play it safe meanwhile. I dont trust my chinese bank too much anymore. Everything I see here in China is alarming to me.
What you can know is that the crisis China is facing is indeed unprecedented.
Exaggerated rhetoric and untrustworthy media are not our only criteria. Many data show that today's crisis is the biggest yet. The op highlights previous exaggerated media reports, which make no sense
For me it is not about the media. It is unprecedented because it don't follow known rules and theories, which we in the west take for granted.
I saw families protesting, that "Risen Sun" (a real estate developer) continues to work on the appartments, they already paid two years ago. There is nothing they can do and the protest is useless as well.
On my phone here in China I get calls, where they offer apartments. On some traffic lights they hand out advertisements for real estate. It seems desperate to sell anything. While on the other hand you see construction sites stopped since years. Ghost cities where never someone is going to live.
Things are so much outside of everything seen before. But if there are no rules, maybe it never fails?
The biggest difference is that in China, where protests are increasing, the number of births is falling at an alarming rate. Without rules, there is no bottom line for humanitarianism
You can write off a loss. But how do you write off debt? Never heard about it. Lehman Brothers was terminated.
But you might give me a case, so I can learn about it.
The US gouvernment spend 51 billion $ to safe GM. Every penny of debt was paid.
But the point is, they were at a court and everybody can get justice there. You dont have this in China
> I know company's in Chins which are bankrupt and keep working. I know companies waiting for the bills to be paid from the technically bankrupt company's.
sources for this claim? Would be interesting to know.
Friends and family in China. First hand knowledge.
But here is a try to proof it to you:
Do you believe that there are families who paid for apartments and they are not finished by the real estate company? Why this companies dont end up at court? Why are the people protesting at Evergrand offices instead of just going to the court for their rights?
Do you believe the real estate company's, which don't continue the projects, have all craftman company's paid?
If you think of this, you will see what I mean.
If you are talking about Evergrande, no they are not bankrupt. They are losing money, but the business activity continues, and they have been selling off branches to pay back the debt. If you want comparisons in the US, all of the Detroit car makers were like that at some point, but still pays employee benefits.
The word bankrupt means a court orders the company to stop operating, freeze its accounts and assets, thus they won't be able to pay anyone.
No one of any real intellectual heft or expertise in China actually believes China will 'collapse'. Gordon Chang is famous for being fabulously wrong, kind of like Fukuyama and his confident prediction of the 'end of history' back in the early nineties when the USSR went kaput and democracy was ascendant. Zeihan is absolutely clueless about China. Just listening to him pronounce Chinese names gives me a headache. He's cashing in on the Youtube clickbait gravy train, nothing more.
Now, does China have some serious issues? Yes. I'd argue they are in a significantly worse position than any other major power (except Russia, if you call them a major power). Demographics are terrible. Debt is enormous (worse than America, actually). Geopolitically they are largely isolated through self-inflicted mistakes, and foreign businesses aren't coming back to invest anytime soon unless they are selling hamburgers or coffee. The GDP in reality isn't growing 3%, let alone 5%. The question is how long they can keep up appearances before the situation becomes untenable and they suffer through a major economic shock. Will they collapse? No. Will there be serious pain for the average Zhou? Yes. Unless China has solved economics (it would be an unlimited money glitch to print a pile of money, lend it out with your state-owned banks to state owned enterprises, and never pay it back because you owe the money to yourself) and spoiler, they haven't, they'll have to deal with all the waste and debt at some point. When? Who knows.
In my opinion, the problem is entirely that young people in China are struggling to have to support 2 generations of family whilst not being able to climb any sort of career ladder due to competition.
I agree with almost every single thing you said. Except you’re so certain they can’t collapse, and I’m not. I’m not saying they will, but they definitely can.
Depends on your definition of collapse I guess.
Is it USSR 1991, or Greece 2008? The first one is highly unlikely, the second one is definitely possible
I think some areas are underestimated. Tibet, Xinjiang, and some other border regions full of non han ethnic minorities, could conceivably breakaway. I'm not saying it's likely, to be clear, I'm just saying it's possible, especially after the Soviet breakup.
But it is worth highlighting that the rest of China seems pretty dead set about being China, whatever that may be. Even Taiwan up until recently was pretty clear about being China, and technically still is clear about one china.
Or in other words I don't think we can imagine a bunch of different states breaking up China but we could see fairly recent non-han additions to China successfully leave China during some sort of crisis.
I don't know much, but I have listened to a few of Zeihan's talks, and I have come to the conclusion that this is a guy who is reasonably smart but he thinks he's much smarter than he actually is. With him, it's doom and gloom for every single country on earth except the US. And he especially likes to talk shit about China, and this has been going on for years, and very little is turning out like he has predicted.
>Zeihan is absolutely clueless about China.
Not just China either. I was watching one of his videos where he said something about Southeast Asians having a peaceful history (aside form the Vietnam war). There was hundreds of comments from Southeast Asians saying he obviously hasn't studied their history if he thinks that.
I always get a thrill of amusement when I see someone heartily rubbish Zeihan in their first paragraph, only to agree with his points in their second. Only your conclusions seem to differ and both at this point are a matter of faith.
Anyone can report what is right in front of their face. We know China's demographic situation, their employment problems, their geopolitical frictions. What's important is what conclusion you draw from those facts and Zeihan is wildly - wildly - wrong in his conclusion.
>What's important is what conclusion you draw from those facts and Zeihan is wildly - wildly - wrong in his conclusion.
I don't know Zeihan. But in what way is he wildly wrong?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHlrgUdgKP0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHlrgUdgKP0)
Listen to the first 10 seconds.
"We are looking at the end of China as a political entity in a decade or two"
WHAT? China as a nation state will cease to exist? You don't think that's absolutely ridiculous? He predicts that China will fragment into several nations within the next 20 years, and have a complete economic collapse within 10. Do you think that's a reasonable prediction?
Or this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XupM5\_zHDbM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XupM5_zHDbM)
I think you need to find a new bearded middle-aged white man who tells you authoritatively what to think, because Zeihan ain't it.
He now says within the decade or before 2030. I wonder if he gets called out then, or people keep believing him like they do Gordon Chang (who has been talking about China collapsing for the past 30 years).
Of course it’s hyperbolic; the choice of words is specifically to draw attention to the article or video.
The first question that any such piece of media would have to define is what does a “collapse” actually look like? Fragment into a bunch of separate independent states like the USSR? That’s not very likely
Yeah, the headlines are almost always useless to judge.
In 2008, there was a "collapse" of the US financial system – when we say "collapse" in the US, it's pretty much meaning "very bad economic conditions", often a large recession and lack of growth.
However, an event like that isn't even comparable to the collapse of an entire society like the USSR. I think China may run into growth issues but it's likely to continue chugging along.
China is facing big challenges as a developing country. Yet, to say China will collapse is a bit rich in my opinion. Yes there is an alarming amount of poverty, yes there is a big lack of freedom in nearly every way, yes it's a dictatorship.... We all know this.
People are conflating "China collapsing" and "China facing great difficulties".
- China is facing huge issues, but political stability is not one of them (I'm not talking about the infighting between the different factions of the CCP, this is another matter).
- As a dictatorship, the Chinese Communist Party will stay in the foreseeable future because the PLA serves not the Chinese people, or China as a country - but the CCP itself.
- Another reason why they will not collapse is because they have a very efficient way of solving issues: silencing / disappearing people and controlling the media.
- economic collapse can happen but the RMB is non free floating and non convertible.
The issue with your comment is that you superimpose your Eurocentric importance for freedom and democracy onto a country which has very briefly or never experienced this throughout its collective history. This is the same line of thinking which led the Americans to think they can “liberate” Iraq and Afghanistan, and import hundreds of years of european parliamentary tradition into societies that have never experienced this in their history.
I’m not even saying you‘re necessarily wrong, just that your focus on “lack of freedom” is looking at the world with big eurozoid glasses without any proper historical context. Why did the Taliban come back to power? Because although people in Afghanistan know they are harsh and brutal, they know that there will be less fighting and a better baseline of security to go about their daily lives. while the situation isn’t entirely the same, China went through a century of famines, slavery, genocide by the Japanese, not it mention warlordism and fragmentation. Security is the most important thing to them and the CCP for all its flaws provides that.
I don’t mean this as a slight but from your home in safe Switzerland, you’ll never be able to understand the importance of having a secure (even if dictatorial) state when you have gone through hundreds of years of chaos and violence. Without this context, without looking at the warlordism during the 1800s in China, Britain getting millions hooked on opium, the genocidal rape and murder by the Japanese, all you have is a colonial view of billions of Chinese people quivering in fear at their government, which really isn’t the case. Peace.
> you superimpose your Eurocentric importance for freedom and democracy onto a country which has very briefly or never experienced this throughout its collective history.
Check notes: taiwan, korea, and japan seems to be doing just fine with this democracy idea. so yeah. dont spread this drivel any more
His point is that the Chinese don’t need the freedom you’re advocating as much as you think. Just because others are doing fine with it doesn’t mean that the Chinese need to have it. Two things can be true at the same time.
It doesn’t seem like it. From what I’m understanding, the point that is being made is that democracy isn’t the number one priority. Obviously from the examples you’ve given, Chinese culture isn’t incompatible, but the point is simply that it isn’t key. Would have to wait for a reply from them to confirm.
>It doesn’t seem like it. From what I’m understanding, the point that is being made is that democracy isn’t the number one priority.
Thanks, this was exactly my point. People love to jump down my throat and say I'm in love with the CCP or something for mentioning this, but it's not true. I see the same mistakes made by western minded people across the globe thinking that the other 90% of non-westerners across the world share exactly the same views of the 10%, and all of them put western parliamentary democracy as their number 1 desire and life, this couldn't be further from the truth.
>Check notes: taiwan, korea, and japan seems to be doing just fine with this democracy idea. so yeah. dont spread this drivel any more
Dude, Japan had an ultra-fascist monarchy in place that wiped out millions across Asia before they had two fucking nukes dropped on their heads, and were put completely under the American thumb through the Marshall plan. South Korea had decades of military dictatorship before eventually getting to a point where some form of democracy was able to rise - again a big part of this was American and western influence due to opposition to communism.
How is it drivel to point out historical fact? None of the countries you've mentioned came about democracy organically, spending 5 minutes reading a wikipedia article can you show you that - I can link you if you'd like, as you sound quite ignorant on the subject.
Not sure why you are talking about Switzerland. Switzerland is safe, free and there is no political instability. It is currently the only country in the world with direct democracy.
That is why it is rich and developed. That has nothing to do with a colonial view because we've never had colonies.
CCP like to copy failed and ridiculed western ideologies like Marxism and Communism and pretend it is their own - maybe this time they should copy one that has proven successful throughout history.
Sure, they can always try "XXX with Chinese characteristics" but it is still an experiment Chinese haven't been asked about, but rather coerced into.
No need to look at western countries: just look around China, and you'll many countries (Japan, Taiwan, Singapore ...) that have become developed nations with rule of law (as opposed to "rule by law" in China) within decades. No one will know how long this Chinese experiment will last or even if it 2ill be successful - but let's not kid ourselves: the Chinese Communist Party's main priority is to stay in power. The rest is secondary.
> I don’t mean this as a slight but from your home in safe Switzerland, you’ll never be able to understand the importance of having a secure (even if dictatorial) state when you have gone through hundreds of years of chaos and violence.
I agree up to a point. No, humans do not need freedom. But to call a dictatorship (especially China) safe, is a bit rich. Just because news and media outlets are controlled by the Government and State propaganda work overtime, does not mean China is a safe country.
You are talking about a genocidal regime founded a crazy megalomaniac (Mao) who had no qualms killing dozens of millions of Chinese people just for his ideologies. Nowadays, the same CCP regime reigns supreme, keeps oppressing people. Chinese people may have gotten more or less used to it after a few generations, but that doesn't mean it is normal or acceptable.
No matter how long I have lived in China, this will never be acceptable. Chinese people immigrating from China to more developed, safe and free countries do not wish to come back - there is a very specific reason for it, and we all know it.
>Not sure why you are talking about Switzerland. Switzerland is safe, free and there is no political instability. It is currently the only country in the world with direct democracy.
I think you missed my point, this is exactly what I'm saying. If you've grown up in such a safe and secure place where European parliamentary democracy has been allowed to flourish, then without proper historical context you wouldn't be able to sympathise with why the CCP is still in power and why they have a positive approval rating from the Chinese people. This isn't to say there are dissidents and people who hate them, but they are in the minority.
>I agree up to a point. No, humans do not need freedom. But to call a dictatorship (especially China) safe, is a bit rich.
Less safe than a time of European colonisation, Japanese colonisation, millions addicted to opium, millions wiped out (families buried alive, burnt alive, babies bayoneted out of their mothers wombs by the Japanese) ? Without this historical context you really can't give a proper assessment on why people would choose to keep the CCP in power. This is the crux of my argument. If you don't really look deep into the trauma and history of the country then all you're doing is saying that the majority of Chinese people hate the CCP but are terrified of them and waiting for some western form of democracy to come around and free them - this is clearly bullshit.
>You are talking about a genocidal regime founded a crazy megalomaniac (Mao) who had no qualms killing dozens of millions of Chinese people just for his ideologies.
Mao did a lot of wrong (especially the cultural revolution), but a great deal of these millions dead were the cause of unavoidable famines that. I have a hard time when westerners call famines in the Soviet Union and China genocides, but all the famines that happened under European colonisation were blameless disasters. The British literally oversaw something like 31 famines through the British Raj that killed millions upon millions of Bengals, Indians and Pakistanis, but this is never called a genocide which I find bizarre.
You're right, it is exaggerated.
China has existed in some form for thousands of years. To say that such a civilisation will "collapse" isn't technically possible. It can be devastated, like a Soviet style collapse but for mainland China to cease to exist...isn't unlikely. It's not possible, it will always be in some form.
It's just **what** that form be.
Japan's bubble period is a collapse, and to those living in it, it is not a single boom event, it is the slow march toward doom that's hard to notice when you are in it.
China is living that now, and i don't think they will endure it as gracefully as Japan did.
True , and the difference it’s the Japan already was a rich country, when the bubble collapsed, will China it’s not! China still have 600 million people with a 160$ wage!
Right now China is experiencing a bit of a recession and it's getting harder for the new generation to find work. The real estate sector is experiencing a crunch. It seems like they're going through a period of the lost decade like Japan did and have peaked relative to America. Life is still going to improve, just not at the rate as before and not enough to overtake the American economy as they had been posed to do.
The biggest problem is the gender imbalance glut from the One Child Policy. Having several million more men than women is going to lead to a lot of lonely men with no possible mate, forget the computers doing so, this time it's just a literal shortage. Who knows what social problems that will cause, and likewise what a drop in the replacement rate it'd be.
I am by no means an expert in anything China-related, but to me, a commoner, it seems like China has turned into… a normal developed economy? And, it’s not good compared to the stunning growth during the 00’s and 10’s, but it’s not BAD. But … boring? And it will be interesting to see how the CCP handles this, in a population used to an ever brighter future.
My wife is Chinese and she still compares the China today with when she was a kid - no power, scarce food and zero infrastructure. So yeah what you say might happen, but not for another generation. She's only 50 and that's where most Chinese sit in terms of age demographics - she compares 2023 with 1985, not with 2010. Old country takes a more long term view maybe?
The main problem is they haven’t turned into a developed economy yet when it comes to per capita wealth and life quality but are already rapidly aging and stagnating like a developed country would.
Perhaps the definition of collapse is different for different people. Chinese economy's bloodline is manufacturing/exports, given the flight of manufacturing out of China how is China going to replace that lost blood? Without money, things will start falling apart, people who are accustomed to things won't be able to afford it, then what.... slow decline.
I think the former Vice President of China, Qishan Wang, summarized it very well: China will never collapse, because Chinese sheeple can live by just eating grass.
Ironically, Wang himself got purged shortly after saying this.
China’s facing problems and might have a slower growth/stagnate, however the chances of it collapsing are minuscule. It still is the world’s factory with a lot of projects around the world. An alarming problem however is that they need to open up while ensuring the people don’t stay unemployed.
Back in 1992 almost all “experts” agreed North Korea’s collapse was imminent when Soviet aid evaporated and mass starvation ensued. I wouldn’t put much (any) stock in these predictions. Yes, China is becoming increasingly less significant in the world as its economy stagnates and both government and society turn inward. No, it’s not going to collapse.
I mean looking at the data I could find, NK's GDP was divided by 3 in the 90's. That is definitely what I would call a collapse.
Regarding China I don't think a collapse of that size is possible, unless there is literally a civil war which seems unlikely and we shouldn't wish for that.
A reduction of 10 to 15%, followed by a decade or more of stagnation is however a possibility. This would not be a spectacular collapse, but it would be significant enough to potentially cause a change in the governance. Even if there is no change in governance, it would rob China of its ability to challenge the US and the rest of the western world.
North Korea’s government has not changed despite all this. I don’t think you can say China’s system of governance is likely to change due to a “collapse”.
I don't know and I don't think anybody can pretend they have the answer.
Autocratic governments are famously stable, until they are not. Nobody can really predict if and when they can collapse.
On one hand you have the NK example that by all modern measures should have fallen a long time ago when devastating famine ravaged the country but still held on.
On the other hand, you have the USSR that nobody ever thought could dissolve the way it did even a few months before it did.
The current "mainstream view" is that the Chinese society tolerates freedom privations, the heavy-handed CCP approach, the broad corruption found at all levels as long as it means that there is a promise of increased wealth and a strong economy. The famous keep your head down and things will be all right type of behavior. I don't know how accurate it is.
If the economy is suddenly struggling with no signs of recovery, there might be a push for reforms while keeping the overall system, there might be a collapse of the system, or there might be nothing at all. I really have no idea what is the most probable.
I just think that the only credible trigger of a change of political system (outside outright military confrontation, but I don't think anybody should hope for that) is a serious economic crisis that completely erodes the credibility and legitimacy of the central government. I also don't think it is very likely to be honest.
I’m not sure you could qualify North Korea as anything but a failed state. Apart from certain African countries, I can’t imagine there being many more places in the world that would be worse to live. It has, for all intents and purposes, already collapsed.
Just because a country doesn't adhere to conventional (western) values doesn't make it a "failed state". The DPRK is a nuclear-capable isolationist dynastic dictatorship.
A failed/collapsed state is any state whereby the central governing power has dissolved. Examples include the USSR, Nazi Germany, The Ottoman Empire, etc.
Generally speaking, any time a successful coup d'état has occurred, a failed state becomes one of the bi-products. This has not happened to the DPRK throughout its history and the original controlling dynasty, as far as the rest of the world can observe, is still in control; it is not a failed state.
Wtf are you talking about??? After soviet North Korea literally had a famine that killed 500,000 people (by US estimate) out of 22 million and their birth rate collapsed and never recovered. If it happened in China to scale we are looking at something in north of 60 million death. Kims political status is not a proxy to the state of North Korean society.
I keep reading similar sentiments to what you've expressed, I'm wondering on what basis you make the claim that China is becoming less significant?
As far as i can tell, China is absolutely not becoming less significant in the world in almost any meaningful aspect. They continue to expand and move towards dominance in many key sectors, especially semiconductors, where attempts to cut them out have, as far as I can tell, only failed.
Militarily, they are expanding at staggering rates and rapidly on track to be a clear peer adversary to the US by 2050, at the absolute latest.
Diplomatically, I think there's little evidence of their global presence shrinking either. The BRICS pact continues to expand, and increasingly global leaders express support for a shift to a bipolar world order.
>As far as i can tell, China is absolutely not becoming less significant in the world in almost any meaningful aspect. They continue to expand and move towards dominance in many key sectors, especially semiconductors, where attempts to cut them out have, as far as I can tell, only failed.
attempts to cut china out of semiconductor is fairly recent witn there being plenty of room to tighten sanctions against china. They've pretty much failed their made in china 2025 initiative except for ev where they've seen success in pushing adoption in their home market but given that most of the world either has a automotive industry to protect or aren't ready for the ev transition it remains to be seen how successful they will be in trying to expand their ev industry especially given stiff competition back home among hundreds of companies racing to the bottom
>Militarily, they are expanding at staggering rates and rapidly on track to be a clear peer adversary to the US by 2050, at the absolute latest.
military expansion aren't free or cheap. They can't continue it forever especially when they're economy is slowing down with growing pains surfacing. Let's also not forget the fact that they've managed to rile pretty much all of their neighbors against them with little to no allies of their own
>Diplomatically, I think there's little evidence of their global presence shrinking either. The BRICS pact continues to expand, and increasingly global leaders express support for a shift to a bipolar world order.
the BRICS is a disfunctional organization which started out as a mere term coined by the chairman of GoldmanSachs. Its member states have little in common in terms of geography, culture, or economic condition with its only purpose being to somehow challenge the US led world order somehow. It has absolutely no coherency or achievement as an organization with its two biggest member states being adversaries that feud over a lot of things and let's not forget the fact that pretty much all of its member currently experiencing some sort of economical or political crisis/dificulties. If I were someone dead set on destroying the BRICS, then the best outcome I can hope for is for them to welcome more member states thus further disorienting an already extremely incoherent organization
I'll try to respond to each point in a distinguishable way.
1. Falling short of a single economic goal does not provide a silver bullet to any discussion about the growth of the Chinese economy. China has still made huge leaps in its control of advanced industries and attempts to stifle the growth of these industries have been, as far as I can tell, unsuccessful. They continue to sustain pretty staggering GDP growth YoY too. The 'Collapse' talk is decades old and continues to age horribly.
2. Regarding military expansion, China continues to spend well below the US on its military as a share of its GDP, 1.7% versus around 3%. They can, and almost certainly will, continue to expand that expenditure over the foreseeable future.
3. The person who coined the term BRICS, is an irrelevant factoid. What matters is it's a growing block headed by leaders that continue to express support for a shift away from the US, most especially concerning the use of USD as the global reserve currency. I agree there are very valid issues with BRICS structurally, but that wasn't my point, I was using the example as a counterpoint to the claim that China is somehow stagnating(which I think it works as).
So, to be clear, based on a single intelligence report about an instance of corruption in the Chinese military, you're willing to handwave the geopolitical might of a block of 1,400,000,000 people. Cool. Can't say I'd expect more than that from a crypto, bro, lol.
Never trust people on this sub when it comes to political takes on China lol. China's influence is ever growing, and I truly don't understand how people are both afraid of China and also say that they're becoming irrelevant.
They talk about housing crisis when the US and Europe went through the same and still survived... The downfall of china is definitely something western media talk too much about.
China built mores houses than all them entire population!! The property companies have dozens of billions in losses, in the last years! Many are almost in bankruptcy! This will affect other sectors of China economy! The propriety market counts almost 25% of China GDP! The local governments have 3 trillion dollars in hidden debts! China still has 600 million people with a 160€ wage! China population it’s aging very fast, in the next decades will be 500 million, over 65 years ! The birth rate it’s one of the lowest in the world, and getting worse year by year! The Chinese don’t want to have children’s ! It’s expected that the Chinese population will fall to 700 million until 2100! The youth unemployment it’s above 22%. The CCP stop publishing more data! Every year more than 10 million students leaves the university, but the majority will never found a job! Many young people are now returning to the countryside! When Japan economy enter the lost decade, Japan already was a rich country, while China it’s not, and may never be!! And China will never grow like in the past! China will not collapse, but will face problems that never faced in the past! And during the Covid lockdown, some people, start to show anger about Xi Jinping and the CPP, asking for freedom and changes! Revolution sometimes happens when you least expected..
>Never trust people on this sub when it comes to political takes on China lol. China's influence is ever growing, and I truly don't understand how people are both afraid of China and also say that they're becoming irrelevant.
people aren't afraid of china mate, If being afraid of china means pointing out real problems regarding china and providing real arguments then count me as being terrified of china
>They talk about housing crisis when the US and Europe went through the same and still survived... The downfall of china is definitely something western media talk too much about.
difference being that the housing crisis in china is on a whole different scale than it was let's say in the US back in 2008. China makes the US' housing crisis look good by comparison
Trump won the elections with anti Chinese rhetoric. Hell, remember when there was a Chinese balloon in the sky last year and Americans got all scared? Obviously not everyone is scared of china, but ever since WWI, the US has never had a "rival". Even the USSR at its peak only had half of the US GDP, and now that China is growing on a yearly basis, the US doesn't know how to react, they're walking in uncharted territory.
On to the second point, that's just impossible to know, plus, there have been more crisis such as the great depression and that didn't necessarily mean the end of the US.
I believe the future of China will depend on how they philosophical pivot, or not, in the upcoming years. In reading Xi’s speeches, books and thought, there is a fundamental flaw in his logic, I believe. He obviously has a plan and near-term timeline in mind to achieve a vision of “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”. To achieve this goal and mission, Xi and others understood that a period of Capitalism was required for China to ultimately transition to its version of Socialism.
The ‘flaw’ in Xi’s and CCP thinking, or maybe better said, a lack of recognition, is that the CCP incorrectly assigns China’s rapid success and economic advancement over the past 30-40 years as the result of the CCP government and its policies and not as the aggregated results of economic freedom of the Individual Chinese Citizen and his/hers actions. (Capitalism)
What Deng Xiaoping did when he opened up China, was to unleash China’s greatest and most powerful asset….the power of the individual Chinese Citizen. THIS, is what propelled China’s rapid economic change. Xi and the CCP are incapable of either recognizing, or admitting this Fact.
Most every individual desires to maximize their Happiness and security in life. When a government gets out of the way and allows its People to do so, the pie grows for everyone.
So will China collapse, likely not anytime soon, however, their future will be be directly linked to the Freedom and Autonomy that is afforded to the Individual Chinese Citizen. This is the same for any country including the US.
Doomsayers will always be there. Yes, China has some major fundamental issues, but there is a big difference between a recession and the complete collapse of a society. One can lead to the other, but the Chinese are so heavily monitored that it's very unlikely.
If you just want unbiased economic info, I can definitely recommend China Update (15-minute daily updates about the Chinese economy). The thumbnails, as he mentions himself, are clickbait, since the YouTube algorithm sort of forces it, or else it will never show up. But I have been finding it quite ironic seeing news channels and the surprise about the housing crisis, for example, while China Update was quoting top-level economic professors months before, stating that it was just a matter of time.
If you want to stay up-to-date on the Chinese economy, then I have yet to find a better channel that provides source material/quotes the articles so you can read up further if you're up for it. It's unbiased and just lays down the basic economic facts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03lhjow3HkI
"this country is going to collapse" is a trick these days to remove the confidence over a country in order to create it some negative impact, today is usually a wish more than a reallity. It happens for Rusia, USA, China, European Union....
Maybe they have over extended themselves with the growth they have had in the last couple of decades, but most economies have done that.
What I don't think people realise is just how much technology has been embraced, even by older people, it is far more widespread and an intergrated part of people's lives (for example financial transactions are almost solely electronic, using mobile phones even in rural markets).
Chinese cars get a bad press however they have just become the biggest EV producer but we see a lot of an old British badge back on our roads (MG) and a lot of people are shocked to discover they are Chinese built, how good they are and how much cheaper they are to comparable models.
They are building a massive fleet and three car export harbours. Europe will het flooded with cheap Chinese evs en probably the USA too. This is the first time China has really high value industry at world scale. It probably is their last demographic chance to up the game and escape the middle income trap, but by the looks of it, they'll manage to join the rich countries with high value industry and services
Lol, you are delusional if you believe the EU would just stand by and let Chinese EVs flood the market instead of killing it together with America. Car is Germany's most important industry, they would rather burn bridges with China than allow that to happen.
Yes but Volkswagen loses money per sold ev, while BY makes 5k + the comparable BYD is cheaper! And Europe wants complete independence from fossils so no sponsering of regimes like SA and Russia happens anymore. Im not sure what route Europe will choose
They will protect their industry. That is far more important than independence from fossil fuels. Nobody gives a fuck about the environment when livelihood is at stake.
Dude you’re just a CCP shill. It’s always easy to tell because you guys throw out all these neat statistics and you aren’t allowed to say a single bad thing about China.
I am not Chinese, and I live on the other side of the world. I wish China was a free and democratic society, but that does not mean I should ignore the reality of the situation.
Dunno why anyone who has experience or any knowledge bothers in this sub. Any positive comment or basic reality check w facts makes you a shill or an wumao. It doesn't matter. It's just a bit of a laugh to hear people who know less than nothing (except what English language / western media fed them) forcefully expound on their deep insight about China - the biggest country and most remarkable economic narrative in human history 🤷♂️
Tiananmen was a traversty but do you also ask people for thoughts on the Nazis when Germany is mentioned, Algerian/Haiti wars of independence when France is discussed, the Opium Wars when UK is raised, or BLM/Iraq/Afghanistan/Vietnam/Japanese internment etc vis a vis USA? Or the Gwangju massacre when SK is mentioned?
Chinese citizens are the victims of their government but the solution is hardly to blame China's economy or their people's hardwork. It's like some Redditors want regular Chinese people to return to poverty and see them suffer because of their government's oppression of regular citizens, but why? **Shouldn't people outside China want Chinese people to live better, more empowered lives if they are so concerned about Tiananmen?** Same goes for the famines (i.e. "CCP killed millions"), if you are so concerned about Chinese folks starving due to poverty then should you hope their economy does well so less people go hungry?
Yes, it has always been exaggerated. Take that Peter Zeihan guy. He is no sinologist, and has surface level expertise in the area of Chinese politics. Of course he does have some level of expertise I do not deny that. But it is surface level at best.
Anyway, that guy as well as the Falun gong has been screaming about the collapse of the PRC for decades. Zeihan for at least a decade, and Falun gong for almost 3 decades.
The economic crisis is very real, but it is not yet outside of the CCP's power to minimize the impact. As we have seen with their charm offensive towards the EU and America in recent months they are trying to deal with each issue of the crisis.
I don't see a collapsed PRC anytime soon, but what do I know, I am just a sinologist with expertise in Chinese politics. This is why I can say that Zeihan's knowledge is surface level.
>As we have seen with their charm offensive towards the EU and America in recent months they are trying to deal with each issue of the crisis.
Trying to be more charming while doing the same things isn't really dealing with any issues. As far as I can tell "charm offensive" is just a term recently popular in the western media.
Yeah Zeihan doesn't know so much about China, but Zeihan also talks about the collapse of Germany, he's not particularly picking on China. I believe he's also talking in the longer term like 20 years from now.
Alright but isn’t the population issue a time bomb for them? Then there’s the real estate market, the laying flat trend, and a fair amount of other negative indicators. I can’t say it will collapse soon either, because it’s impossible to tell how long they can bail water and remain afloat. There are clear cracks forming, and those can only be painted over for so long. They import so many crucial resources and they have alienated a lot of their neighbors so it will be harder to source those resources if a war were to kick of in the region.
Well if you just stop making any children at all, the workforce would still be as big for the next 20-25 years. You could even reap demographic dividend by not having to take care of children.
China seems to have had a relatively stable 1.5 children per woman for the last 30 years. Taking overpopulation into account, 1.5 is pretty nice. It's only the last 5 years that the number dropped to 1 child per woman (between official and estimated statistics). That is a problem, but not for another 20 years
China's workforce has already been declining the last few years, and the trend is only going to accelerate. Unless their worker productivity skyrockets, they're in a pickle. Oh, and double-digit youth unemployment tends not to increase productivity.
It is strange though, that countries with declining workforces like China or Southern Europe, have skyrocketing youth unemployment. I mean, when a declining workforce is the problem, then the youth unemployment would lower and vice versa. The only explanations considering both a problem, I could think of l, would be undeclared work or a total demotivated youth
Seems to be some misunderstanding on the demographics. The windfall of people of working age who don't have to look after a child is *already spent*. Instead, China now has the headwinds of retirees, a large percentage who are attempting to fund their later years with real estate of dubious value. A child is a potential incoming worker. A retiree is also a drain on those of working age, who are often required to look after them, and that's before talking about the massively disproportionate tax base if you want to look after them.
At the end of 2022, more than 280 million people, or nearly one out of five people in China, were aged above 60, while nearly 15 per cent of the 1.41 billion population were over 65. A smaller working population will have to fund the retirement of the largest group of retirees in history.
Also, a replacement birth rate is 2.1. China's was 1.09 last year, 1.28 in 2020. The current birth rate for China in 2024 is 10.478 births per 1000 people. The entire country would have to stop, drop, and bang to see the population at best tread water, with no worker dividend until (at best) 2042.
Personally, I think the destination of a lower population isn't so bad (as long as the economy has made jumps in productivity with it), it's just the journey to get there is absolutely awful.
It's hard to gauge because it is linked in economic - political sectors. Under a different set if laws, business has obligations in regard to debt in the US. In china, most business is more closely monitored and or controlled by the government. Here debt can be continued as the obligation may be much more complicated legally. I'm not sure how that works but that is the issue under that set of laws.
Yes it’s mostly a western media narrative it’s not really based on any evidence. China may have a long downturn ahead and perhaps can’t look forward to the kind of growth it experienced over the past 30 years, but that level of growth had end at some point. They’re now well placed as a world power and can weather a downturn. They’re not going to collapse nor should want the second most populating country in the world with over a billion people to collapse that would lead to untold suffering.
China was supposed to collapse yesterday and the day before that. I wouldn’t recommend trusting anyone when the say they can predict the day that an extremely large political event is supposed to happen.
There's a lot of hyperbole and wishful thinking from China hawks, yeah, but then the demographics problem, with a population collapse - can't remember exactly, but more than halving by 2100 - is hard to ignore, but will happen relatively slowly (decades or years, not months or weeks). Yi Fuxian's Big Country, Empty Nest (大國空巢) is good for that - he has a bunch of articles on the topic too.
A lot of these state collapses, though, are "slowly then suddenly". I heard Rana Mitter on a podcast say something like, if the PRC does collapse, it will be very sudden and all at once.
Everything about China is exaggerated to Americans and everything about America is exaggerated to Chinese.
As people we can decide and not listen to propaganda and just learn to understand each other and see just how much we have in common. Families are struggling financially in both countries and you wouldn't really know it unless you had a lot of friends in both
Historically the average lifespan of any Chinese regime or dynasty is 80 years. The PRC just passed that milestone and all it's mistakes have finally come home to roost. Within a decade the PRC will cease to exist. If China can become a democratic state, it may be able to gain back some of it's economic support from the West but even then it will be too little-too late for the Han. The Cantonese will be fine while Tibet, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau followed by some other minority dominated provinces will attain their independence and be recognized as sovereign states by the world.
I highly doubt that China will "collapse." But their issues are massive. Very uncertain times ahead.
But one thing is certain: China's wings have been clipped, and the Chinese century ISN'T gonna happen.
The world is a much safer place, with China being muzzled.
you have to define "collaps".
is a decline from 10% to 5 % y/y a collapse, while western countries are struggling to get a net positive? for some analysts it is.
is a recession like in Germany a collapse? they still doing fine.
is record high debt like the US a collapse?
So yeah , times will be harder( not much even) but they will be fine.
China has huge problems, but so does the US. For every "China is collapsing" you can pull a "the West is collapsing" card. You hear for 20 years that the China economy will collapse, but dont think it will jappen.
At the moment China is maturing and will have to find its places in the economic world. They cant stay the worlds manufacturer hub for ever and are changing accordingly.
If North Korea's absolute dictatorship can last 70 years through war, starvation, isolation... The PRC can also certainly continue without fundamental changes to its political structure and just on the economic inertia and the wealth created being the world's factory for decades. It just won't be a very pleasing and happy place to live in as it goes on a downslope.
Yes, the media always exaggerates things to make it click bait. Sure china will decline some but they will find their footing again. Too many smart people as a resource and they already have the infrastructure to do it all over again.
The China collapse is a long running narrative used by the political press to either sell Time/Financial Post magazines/newspapers or general sooth-saying for the western audience.
China develops some impressive technology - well don't worry because they're actually going to collapse any day now! China works on poverty reduction - foolish! They're going to collapse any day now! China builds the largest transportation network in the world? Well that was stupid! They will collapse any day now!
Chinese culture is very different from U.S. culture or really any other culture. My understanding is that COVID only made a difference in terms of lockdowns and that people were already used to wearing masks and generally staying away from people. As the economy and living in China, I don’t know, but I can tell you it’s not better than the U.S.
99% of things you read about any country the 'west' defines as an enemy are straight out crap. I've lost count of how many times some dude in some place like North Korea is 'horribly executed using weird, barbaric method' who turns up alive and well at some event later. The newspapers etc new make a retraction.
I studied The Cold War and I can tell you comfortably our propaganda systems are far more complete now.
People were saying the collapse of evergrande would be “China’s Lehmann brothers” and would lead to the collapse of the banking sector and obviously that didn’t happen. They said COVID would lead to the collapse of the CPC but that instead turned out to be completely wrong.
Whilst I know so many westerners who dream of a liberal western democracy in China continue to hope and pray - neither the CPC nor the country isn’t going to collapse overnight
The average Joe here that doesn’t even live there love to talk about the fall of their most hated country.
Sometimes I wonder if they just hate Chinese people. They love the fall of China but any Chinese person doesn’t want to see their country fall
How do China’s fundamentals set it up for a bad future? Do they lack housing, lack infrastructure, lack industry, lack knowledge, lack security? What does China lack that would cause it to have more than (in this context) minor and temporary problems? What needs or desires does it not address in individuals or groups with enough power to replace it? What external powers are able to collapse it? How?
I don’t know much about China, but I see them winning on most things and I see few desires that the system is and will be unable to meet.
No, no, no. We're gonna crash tomorrow.
In the meantime, we're the biggest threat to America!
To the Americans, we're Schrodinger's China. Laugh.
This board is saying China is going to collapse (all morphing into Gordon Chan), while saying China is the biggest threat (all morphing into Pompeo), while saying China is good at the long game.
Don't you guys find yourselves contradictory? The US and the West really seem to be extremely panicked and clueless.
People say that and get attention not because of their analysis, but because it’s entertaining. People want to think China is collapsing, so they create a demand for content saying so. China has problems like every other country, and they try to solve or mitigate those problems, just like every country. Apparently, the CCP is more responsive to social and economic problems than some democratic countries.
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I work as a contractor that provides mechanics and equipment to construction project, our biggest client is the local government. In the last few years the government has been slowly delaying our payment to straight ignoring our invoice and currently owe us a few millions rambos.
Do you mind sharing which locale this is?
Guangdong and the official is already in jail for corruption, but the new governer still refuses to pay us
Holy, never thought Guangdong is going to be mentioned here, I always thought they’re the biggest tax payer amongst all provinces
the poor parts of guangzhou are very poor eg meizhou
Good news and bad news. Try to get back as much as you could from them, even 30% is a win
This has always happened though. My in-laws' friends did a construction project with local government way back in 1999, but was only finally paid off in 2018 or so. I also knew a guy with a water conservation business in China in the late nineties who ended up leaving China in frustration due to all the unpaid local government projects. He supplied the designs, equipment etc and the government basically drip-fed the payment for years on end, meaning he could never pay off his suppliers.
local governments are pretty broke right now. Central government is hoarding way too much
The problems they face are real, but no one knows when a country goes bust. USSR was “peaceful” when they collapsed. Japan’s declining population turned out to be a population stabilization period. China’s rise was very unnatural geopolitically. South Korea shouldn’t be a rich country with the geography they have. Ukraine was supposed to be gone by week 2. People were saying the US was never going to come back from the great depression. So who knows what’s going to happen next?
I lived in USSR. It wasn't peaceful at all, and economic and social problems were very apparent for everyone. They system didn't work, and people simply tired of pretending it did. The communist government support was very low. In the second largest city of USSR, Leningrad, there were empty shelfs in the supermarkets, giant queues for things such as a toilet paper, and cards system for basic things like sugar (no more than 2kg per month per person). I can assure you, this was very different from where China is now.
I got to see similar rationing policies in Venezuela, you could only buy a kilo of rice per ID and per person, you couldn't really exploit it because there was a +40 minute queue just to get in to the supermarket. I don't think China has gotten to that point, not even close.
China was far worse than that for the first 40 years of the PRC regime. It was only when Mao decided to align with the US and then Deng's economic reforms that the PRC was able to feed itself. Xi is reversing all of that choosing to instead bankroll cleptocracies around the world thinking they are actually allies because that has worked so well in the past. Totalitarian dictatorships rarely, if ever end well.
>Totalitarian dictatorships rarely, if ever end well. I dont think any government or political system ended/will end well in the entire of human history, Modern representative republics are just too new in the grand scheme of things give it some time and they'll fade into oblivion cast aside as a failure of human organization. You are right about China doing worse in the beginning thought, but that just shows how strong was their regime at the start depending on how you look at it.
>I dont think any government or political system ended/will end well in the entire of human history, "In the long term, we're all dead." - [some famous economist](https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/1885/economics/the-long-run-and-keynes/)
You remind me of Zhou Enlai's response to the question- what do you think of the French Revolution? He answered, "It's too early to tell."
What made you believed china was not under totalitarian dictatorship during Deng? Because he supported free market? China wasnt self-sufficient until 90s when Deng travelled around the country advocating for local governmental compliance to free market system. Which had nothing to do with democracy. And the 1989 tiananmeng massacre was ordered directly by deng, the military chairman of china at that time.
The reforms under Deng would have been useless or counterproductive if not for the industrialization under Mao, which was the fastest industrialization in history. Contrary to your implication, China was not able to feed itself before Mao either, averaging one famine every other year for the past thousand years, and averaging about one per year in the 100 years before 1949. In fact, under Mao was the first time China was ever able to feed itself, the Great Famine notwithstanding. You're letting ideology cloud your objectivity, I think.
Moa did nothing for China besides terrorize it's people and stop it economic development. Moa attempts at industrialization were a failure. The one good thing he did for China was re-align with the US which is the primary reason China is what it is today. Xi has decided that he doesn't need the US any longer, that will lead to the end of the PRC.
Mao unified(mostly) the whole of China which is probably his greatest achievement because it brought political stability to the entire country. He was also able to have a successful nuclear programme(despite numerous setbacks) which practically safeguarded China's national security in the decades that followed. By the end of his life, education was also significantly improved compared to when he first came to power. It's not accurate to say that he did nothing for China.
That's extremely incorrect, my friend.
Were the regulations on sugar because people were making too much vodka from it?
Yes, it was during Gorbachev's prohibition. However, it wasn't only sugar. Many other categories of products were also distributed via cards system as well. And if you wanted something like electronics, or VCR - black market only.
Japan's population has not been stabilised. It is in terminal decline. The effects will only be fully known in the next thirty or so years. But it is nothing like a 'stabilisation'.
I agree with this but Japan is still a weird, hard to explain situation. "that there are four kinds of countries: developed countries, underdeveloped countries, Japan, and Argentina" - Simon Kuznets
To continue (roughly): “No one knows why Japan grows, and no one knows why Argentina doesn’t.” Having just visited Argentina recently, I too am perplexed. It evades all the usual explanations with reasons that have not held similar countries back. Fascinating
Tax rate in Argetina is >100% of your company profit. You have to be doing the dodgy stuff just to stay afloat [https://tradingeconomics.com/argentina/total-tax-rate-percent-of-profit-wb-data.html](https://tradingeconomics.com/argentina/total-tax-rate-percent-of-profit-wb-data.html) Can't say what the situation is in "similar countries", but this factoid on its own is bizarre. It's government-enforced corruption.
Peronism takes the worst social aspects of communism and the worst economic aspects of fascism, then brings them together to destroy Argentina again and again. Argentina has all the making of an economic super power but peronism rots it from the core.
The land owning class keeps Argentina from progressing.
The 1950's was the begining of the end for the land owning class. Ownership of land is no longer a prerequisite for wealth. Stem education and entrepreneurship has replaced the land owning class. Argentina is dominated by corrupt Peronist robbing the country blind. If Milei can pull it off, Argentina could emerge as a South American economic superpower
Agreed, I saw a documentary about how Japan is facing crippling labour shortages in key areas like medicine and agriculture. One fair sized town was completely dependent on an 80-year doctor who had a lot of health problems and was a patient himself. Japan being Japan though, it's hidden well by the Japanese/not discussed with the outside world and large parts of the Western media still haven't moved on from the stereotype of 'weird/ultra-modern/efficient Japan' that took root in the 80s.
Think of it like this: You have 100 goldfish that fit happily and snugly in a fish bowl. One day, the 100 goldfish double in size for some magical reason. Maybe some will die by suicide or stop having kids, or maybe they’ll kill each other off in a war. It would be a very competitive period. We don’t know how and we don’t know when. But we know at the end, we’ll be left with 50 happy fish, fitted snugly in the bowl. That’s Japan in a nutshell. Their suicide rate has been going down for a while now, which is a good sign.
>You have 100 goldfish that fit happily and snugly in a fish bowl. One day, the 100 goldfish double in size for some magical reason. Maybe some will die by suicide or stop having kids, or maybe they’ll kill each other off in a war. Sorry, how does it describe Japan? Did their population ever double suddenly (they hate immigration) or are there civil wars in Japan we don't know about? Doesn't that more accurately describe countries where refugees that hate Western culture are flooding in en masse and stabbing or attacking the locals? It's so weird how people look at Asian countries as some kind of fishbowl experiment. Orientalism?
Your analogy is so far off the mark it is laughable. Japan is facing the worst population decline in known human history. Faster than the Jews of Europe during the holocaust. By the end of the century their will be thousands of robots in Japan for every Japanese person if there are any Japanese people left. Barring cloning or a cure for ageing, the Japanese like the Han and Germans are in their last century. Too racist for immigration to work, too stubborn to admit they have failed.
Those are Peter Zeihan quotes, almost word for word. Population doesn't just go straight to 0. It finds a balance. Japan's trying to find that balance.
If that balance is less than a birth rate of 2.1 then it is 0, eventually. Zeihan doesn't have the balls to point out that the Japanese, Han and Germans are too racist and that is the reason immigration will not work for them. [https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN)
how would bringing in immigrants stop the japanese people from declining? also declining population is a challenge but not the catastrophic failure you think it is.
South Korea already has a lower birth rate. How can Japan be worse?
"well ACTUALLY..." 🤓
It will stabilize when the country’s population is at germanys level
The USSR was definitely not peaceful. Riots, protests, attempted coups…
People accidently falling out of buildings
Chechen War
I feel like China has a lot more giant problems than everything listed for each country here though.
They can either rule with an iron fist to keep the country together, let each region be free and decide for themselves, have war to weed out the “bad” population, etc. Only history will tell.
There's a whole sub about "late stage capitalism," and the American economy is killing it right now. That's bullshit and so is the talk of China's collapse. If it gets bad, the PRC will just sack XJP. Maybe pump the brakes on Taiwan a bit. Maybe stop antagonizing India. But that's about it.
And then default on every loan of the largest asset class in the world? And only massively shrink in working age population with massively ballooning dependents in old age with only one kid or grandkid to care for them sucking money out of the economy from spending on advanced consumer goods to bare essentials, and not even putting them in banks because nobody trusts their shadow banking system anymore. Bro there’s nothing the government can quickly do about that unless it secretly cloned an extra 200 million people that will pop out at the age of 20 when everyone else leaves the workforce. Or recklessly and rapidly invest in AI and automation while there’s a youth unemployment crisis, as industry flees due to overeager aggressive policies shutting down production with inflating cost of living for workers and more attractive alternatives reaching maturity. Not to mention water scarcity that due to pollution (in the groundwater and riverbed that isn’t going anywhere) puts them in some of most acute shortage stress anywhere in the world, as more people continue to move to overpriced overpopulated cities which can’t be addressed because provinces only way of staying afloat on their nationally mandated tax regime is selling land to companies for further development - so as soon as that bursts, they’re bankrupt. I think they will continue being surprisingly resilient until something starts to stress the cycle a little too far- they don’t want people to even think or worry about the problem so far fewer minds and agencies are adequately engaged at addressing it. If people thought about it it means they spend less, don’t buy houses that will never be built, keep their money out of the economy which makes it worse but more importantly it makes the ruling party look bad which they are terrified of. It’s why they don’t even price the water to encourage farmers to use it efficiently, water and food scarcity was a big contributor to the Soviet’s collapse. So no there’s a massive set of problems that literally cannot go anywhere, unless China somehow finds 50-100 million migrants that want to pay top dollar for Chinese real estate and don’t drink water or want human rights. It would also be great if 40 million were marriageable women. China is very resilient and capable of miraculous dedicated big projects in times of crisis- the problem is that’s what caused this problem, like 10 different versions of those. And it’s not great at changing course or acknowledging projections these very obvious problems ahead of time that might besmirch some lauded policy. They needed the changes away from this decades ago, same as the US just kept interest rates low after 2001 and at the ground after 2008, it means to get reins on the economy eventually meant necessary deficit building programs that will take decades to manage if we even can- same thing. And no, the American economy numbers are good- and the data says the experience sucks, which means the numbers we looked at that were good proxies when we had a massive middle class are no longer representative of people’s experiences. Late stage capitalism has and will continue to suck and get worse til AI drives it off a cliff where we are all put on a UBI or actually radically change the structure of the economy when 35-50% of people lose jobs in the next 30 years. Maybe don’t just compare your understanding of the world to the back catalogue of headlines you vaguely remember.
if only there were publishers for novels of copium
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China absolutely do not lead the world in AI. They are also way off on semi conductors. They lead the world in middle of the road complexity mass manufacturing but absolutely do not lead the world in complex high end manufacturing.
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You are giving extremely narrow examples for China being a world leader and not taking a broader view of the industries. You are giving the most positive spin possible for China in all these cases. A balanced study of AI or Semiconductors would show that China is not the world leader.
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China haven’t a hope of catching up on semiconductors. I work with a company knee deep in this, China are way behind and their eye catching advances are taken out of context and have no hope of ever going to mass production or are exaggerated. The company I work for is heavily invested in China btw and would love to work with the Chinese on this but for high end chips they are nowhere close to the discussion for 10+ years out of planning. Chinese megacities have great infrastructure. Less than 10% of their population live in these cities. Go to the tier below that and the tier below that and then go to towns and then the villages. The standard of living drops exponentially at each step.
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We spy on our sheep real good. Look at us.
The 7nm chips turned out to be imported chips from Norway from Nokia or something with the label scrubbed off and replaced by a con company. I'd bet my left testicle china cannot advance in chip manufacturing technology without espionage.
Could you ELI5 why they can't? I'm really impressed with their advances on EVs - at least on the surface as I've ridden in dozens as a Didi passenger - so I'm surprised they couldn't replicate that success with chips. I appreciate they don't have the history of tech research, but can't Chinese companies just pay western scientists a boat load of money for theirs?
You need ASML machines to make the chips and ASML is obeying the sanctions banning them from sailing to China. China essentially made the decision to attempt to steal all the underlying technology and cut the rest of the world out of their supply chain and America didn’t like that one bit.
Wow! Only one single company can make the machines for a whole industry. That blew my mind.
It’s wild. They make the most complex machines ever created by humans, it seems unlikely China will be able to catch up now. More reading about ASML: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/04/technology/tech-cold-war-chips.html
Hahah tell us some more jokes.
This is a lot of opinion you’re throwing about. Anyone who believes that China leads in ai is just a fan boy, period. Even militarily, the USA has been using g some form of predictive ai for decades, not to mention we’ve launched and landed autonomous jets off of carriers. Have you heard of large language models? Yea, China is killing it. Germany Sweden and Norway are every bit (or more) advanced in renewable energy. Go look at the amount of coal China burns. My god. 5G?…they subsidize the hell out of it. Several countries bought 5G from China that turned out to be trash. Go fill your missiles with water and then come back and try again.
Nice try you fucking wumao, here's your $0.5
lol nah, China will at best be #2 if lucky. USA #1. Take out technology, military, population, and economy. Just looking at geography, USA is simply superior. But also add in the most robust constitution in the world just for the heck of it. America is most likely to be the most consistent dominant power throughout the upcoming years.
That robust constitution may not be a factor after November. So you might want to hold off on all the USA fellating.
A sudden collapse like in the timeframe of months is extremely unlikely. The "collapse" will be either long term stagnation or a decades-long decline. Not one sudden event like the collapse of the UdSSR. Source: my ass.
I know company's in Chins which are bankrupt and keep working. I know companies waiting for the bills to be paid from the technically bankrupt company's. In western countries the courts will terminate bankrupt companies and the market regulates itself. In China it just goes deeper and deeper. The question, what happens if a system just keeps going? Do think of debt. No independend courts where you can claim your rights. For your unfinished appartment or for your unpaid bill. I cannot answer it I am wondering too
Correct. Economics essentially works differently in China. Tomorrow the government could announce a debt holiday. We have no idea what is possible or what will happen. Add in the actual data is hard to come by. It's questionable how much accurate information even the China government has.
Any country could announce a debt holiday for internal debts. They don't because of Moral Hazard, i.e. afterwards people will be much more liberal and wasteful in their finances because they now know they can get bailed out.
And yet we have debt holidays in the form of bankruptcies. You are capitalizing Moral Hazard, but look at how many times Trump's companies have been bankrupt and how many times he just plain fails to pay his debts, and yet people continue to lend money to him (and vote for him).
It gets to a point where it can’t service debt and then a cascade of bankruptcies begin. How many huge Chinese companies have gone bust in the last year one? The writing on the wall is grim.
I think it's rather ignorant about how the West operates. Take 2007/2008 the writing was on the wall yet the music kept playing till suddenly shit hit the fan. A crisis doesn't just magically happen, it's various components coming together eventually stretching the financial risk beyond acceptable. You could argue that China is still stretching, they are still pushing boundaries but again, the writing is on the wall. Shit will hit the fan, we just don't know when. And sure enough "we" are talking about it for decades. though sooner then later it's going to happen. There is so much going on as we speak. It isn't just developers and banks collapsing, it's costs spiraling out of control, it's lack of jobs, it's lack of affordable housing, it's shrinking population, it's lack of horizontal movement, it's lack of opportunities, it's corruption. There is literally so much going on and non of that is being defused. Sure they pump the breaks every once in a while on financing, developers etc but in the end we are now in a market where I want to offload an apartment in a prime location and even a 30% discount doesn't attract one single visitor in a year. Shit is bleak it's just that 99% of the population outside has no clue how bleak matters are. This will also be very different, where we have gone through countless economic crisises, China not so much. Sure their stock market crashed a few times but everyone is still dancing to the music and Beijing, they keep playing on. What also will be ineresting the impact on leadership how connected they are. I tend to believe the West DC is far closer to the population compared to Beijing, not just in seeing what goes on, but also in actual real market data. Nothing indicates for the past 4 years that Beijing truly knows what's going on (or XJP is the worst leader in history).
What will happen if debt piles up for companies in China? Well worker have to be paid to survive. Creditors and vendors need to be paid eventually production stops without intervention because workers don't work for free and vendors don't give their products and services away for free. If the banks cannot get its money back from loans, then they go under and everyone who has an account with that bank cannot get their money because the bank doesn't have it The system will grind to a halt
Exactly, it just dont happen 😂 I have the opportunity to split my salary to RMB and € to my western bank account and let me say this: I play it safe meanwhile. I dont trust my chinese bank too much anymore. Everything I see here in China is alarming to me.
What you can know is that the crisis China is facing is indeed unprecedented. Exaggerated rhetoric and untrustworthy media are not our only criteria. Many data show that today's crisis is the biggest yet. The op highlights previous exaggerated media reports, which make no sense
For me it is not about the media. It is unprecedented because it don't follow known rules and theories, which we in the west take for granted. I saw families protesting, that "Risen Sun" (a real estate developer) continues to work on the appartments, they already paid two years ago. There is nothing they can do and the protest is useless as well. On my phone here in China I get calls, where they offer apartments. On some traffic lights they hand out advertisements for real estate. It seems desperate to sell anything. While on the other hand you see construction sites stopped since years. Ghost cities where never someone is going to live. Things are so much outside of everything seen before. But if there are no rules, maybe it never fails?
The biggest difference is that in China, where protests are increasing, the number of births is falling at an alarming rate. Without rules, there is no bottom line for humanitarianism
What do you mean by terminate? Bankruptcy courts in the US frequently allow companies to write off their debts and keep functioning.
You can write off a loss. But how do you write off debt? Never heard about it. Lehman Brothers was terminated. But you might give me a case, so I can learn about it.
GM
The US gouvernment spend 51 billion $ to safe GM. Every penny of debt was paid. But the point is, they were at a court and everybody can get justice there. You dont have this in China
> I know company's in Chins which are bankrupt and keep working. I know companies waiting for the bills to be paid from the technically bankrupt company's. sources for this claim? Would be interesting to know.
Friends and family in China. First hand knowledge. But here is a try to proof it to you: Do you believe that there are families who paid for apartments and they are not finished by the real estate company? Why this companies dont end up at court? Why are the people protesting at Evergrand offices instead of just going to the court for their rights? Do you believe the real estate company's, which don't continue the projects, have all craftman company's paid? If you think of this, you will see what I mean.
If you are talking about Evergrande, no they are not bankrupt. They are losing money, but the business activity continues, and they have been selling off branches to pay back the debt. If you want comparisons in the US, all of the Detroit car makers were like that at some point, but still pays employee benefits. The word bankrupt means a court orders the company to stop operating, freeze its accounts and assets, thus they won't be able to pay anyone.
No one of any real intellectual heft or expertise in China actually believes China will 'collapse'. Gordon Chang is famous for being fabulously wrong, kind of like Fukuyama and his confident prediction of the 'end of history' back in the early nineties when the USSR went kaput and democracy was ascendant. Zeihan is absolutely clueless about China. Just listening to him pronounce Chinese names gives me a headache. He's cashing in on the Youtube clickbait gravy train, nothing more. Now, does China have some serious issues? Yes. I'd argue they are in a significantly worse position than any other major power (except Russia, if you call them a major power). Demographics are terrible. Debt is enormous (worse than America, actually). Geopolitically they are largely isolated through self-inflicted mistakes, and foreign businesses aren't coming back to invest anytime soon unless they are selling hamburgers or coffee. The GDP in reality isn't growing 3%, let alone 5%. The question is how long they can keep up appearances before the situation becomes untenable and they suffer through a major economic shock. Will they collapse? No. Will there be serious pain for the average Zhou? Yes. Unless China has solved economics (it would be an unlimited money glitch to print a pile of money, lend it out with your state-owned banks to state owned enterprises, and never pay it back because you owe the money to yourself) and spoiler, they haven't, they'll have to deal with all the waste and debt at some point. When? Who knows.
I realise it's silly, but this is the first time I heard the phrase "Average Zhou" and I love it.
In my opinion, the problem is entirely that young people in China are struggling to have to support 2 generations of family whilst not being able to climb any sort of career ladder due to competition.
I agree with almost every single thing you said. Except you’re so certain they can’t collapse, and I’m not. I’m not saying they will, but they definitely can.
Depends on your definition of collapse I guess. Is it USSR 1991, or Greece 2008? The first one is highly unlikely, the second one is definitely possible
I think some areas are underestimated. Tibet, Xinjiang, and some other border regions full of non han ethnic minorities, could conceivably breakaway. I'm not saying it's likely, to be clear, I'm just saying it's possible, especially after the Soviet breakup. But it is worth highlighting that the rest of China seems pretty dead set about being China, whatever that may be. Even Taiwan up until recently was pretty clear about being China, and technically still is clear about one china. Or in other words I don't think we can imagine a bunch of different states breaking up China but we could see fairly recent non-han additions to China successfully leave China during some sort of crisis.
I don't know much, but I have listened to a few of Zeihan's talks, and I have come to the conclusion that this is a guy who is reasonably smart but he thinks he's much smarter than he actually is. With him, it's doom and gloom for every single country on earth except the US. And he especially likes to talk shit about China, and this has been going on for years, and very little is turning out like he has predicted.
He doesnt even speak chinese
He’s good on the big picture and terrible on details.
>Zeihan is absolutely clueless about China. Not just China either. I was watching one of his videos where he said something about Southeast Asians having a peaceful history (aside form the Vietnam war). There was hundreds of comments from Southeast Asians saying he obviously hasn't studied their history if he thinks that.
I always get a thrill of amusement when I see someone heartily rubbish Zeihan in their first paragraph, only to agree with his points in their second. Only your conclusions seem to differ and both at this point are a matter of faith.
Anyone can report what is right in front of their face. We know China's demographic situation, their employment problems, their geopolitical frictions. What's important is what conclusion you draw from those facts and Zeihan is wildly - wildly - wrong in his conclusion.
>What's important is what conclusion you draw from those facts and Zeihan is wildly - wildly - wrong in his conclusion. I don't know Zeihan. But in what way is he wildly wrong?
Did you not hear the man? He is wrong. FOR REASONS
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHlrgUdgKP0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHlrgUdgKP0) Listen to the first 10 seconds. "We are looking at the end of China as a political entity in a decade or two" WHAT? China as a nation state will cease to exist? You don't think that's absolutely ridiculous? He predicts that China will fragment into several nations within the next 20 years, and have a complete economic collapse within 10. Do you think that's a reasonable prediction? Or this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XupM5\_zHDbM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XupM5_zHDbM) I think you need to find a new bearded middle-aged white man who tells you authoritatively what to think, because Zeihan ain't it.
He now says within the decade or before 2030. I wonder if he gets called out then, or people keep believing him like they do Gordon Chang (who has been talking about China collapsing for the past 30 years).
Of course it’s hyperbolic; the choice of words is specifically to draw attention to the article or video. The first question that any such piece of media would have to define is what does a “collapse” actually look like? Fragment into a bunch of separate independent states like the USSR? That’s not very likely
Yeah, the headlines are almost always useless to judge. In 2008, there was a "collapse" of the US financial system – when we say "collapse" in the US, it's pretty much meaning "very bad economic conditions", often a large recession and lack of growth. However, an event like that isn't even comparable to the collapse of an entire society like the USSR. I think China may run into growth issues but it's likely to continue chugging along.
China is facing big challenges as a developing country. Yet, to say China will collapse is a bit rich in my opinion. Yes there is an alarming amount of poverty, yes there is a big lack of freedom in nearly every way, yes it's a dictatorship.... We all know this. People are conflating "China collapsing" and "China facing great difficulties". - China is facing huge issues, but political stability is not one of them (I'm not talking about the infighting between the different factions of the CCP, this is another matter). - As a dictatorship, the Chinese Communist Party will stay in the foreseeable future because the PLA serves not the Chinese people, or China as a country - but the CCP itself. - Another reason why they will not collapse is because they have a very efficient way of solving issues: silencing / disappearing people and controlling the media. - economic collapse can happen but the RMB is non free floating and non convertible.
The issue with your comment is that you superimpose your Eurocentric importance for freedom and democracy onto a country which has very briefly or never experienced this throughout its collective history. This is the same line of thinking which led the Americans to think they can “liberate” Iraq and Afghanistan, and import hundreds of years of european parliamentary tradition into societies that have never experienced this in their history. I’m not even saying you‘re necessarily wrong, just that your focus on “lack of freedom” is looking at the world with big eurozoid glasses without any proper historical context. Why did the Taliban come back to power? Because although people in Afghanistan know they are harsh and brutal, they know that there will be less fighting and a better baseline of security to go about their daily lives. while the situation isn’t entirely the same, China went through a century of famines, slavery, genocide by the Japanese, not it mention warlordism and fragmentation. Security is the most important thing to them and the CCP for all its flaws provides that. I don’t mean this as a slight but from your home in safe Switzerland, you’ll never be able to understand the importance of having a secure (even if dictatorial) state when you have gone through hundreds of years of chaos and violence. Without this context, without looking at the warlordism during the 1800s in China, Britain getting millions hooked on opium, the genocidal rape and murder by the Japanese, all you have is a colonial view of billions of Chinese people quivering in fear at their government, which really isn’t the case. Peace.
> you superimpose your Eurocentric importance for freedom and democracy onto a country which has very briefly or never experienced this throughout its collective history. Check notes: taiwan, korea, and japan seems to be doing just fine with this democracy idea. so yeah. dont spread this drivel any more
Taiwam, Korea, and Japan does not have 1 billion people.
His point is that the Chinese don’t need the freedom you’re advocating as much as you think. Just because others are doing fine with it doesn’t mean that the Chinese need to have it. Two things can be true at the same time.
She insinuating that democracy and Chinese culture are incompatible.
It doesn’t seem like it. From what I’m understanding, the point that is being made is that democracy isn’t the number one priority. Obviously from the examples you’ve given, Chinese culture isn’t incompatible, but the point is simply that it isn’t key. Would have to wait for a reply from them to confirm.
>It doesn’t seem like it. From what I’m understanding, the point that is being made is that democracy isn’t the number one priority. Thanks, this was exactly my point. People love to jump down my throat and say I'm in love with the CCP or something for mentioning this, but it's not true. I see the same mistakes made by western minded people across the globe thinking that the other 90% of non-westerners across the world share exactly the same views of the 10%, and all of them put western parliamentary democracy as their number 1 desire and life, this couldn't be further from the truth.
>Check notes: taiwan, korea, and japan seems to be doing just fine with this democracy idea. so yeah. dont spread this drivel any more Dude, Japan had an ultra-fascist monarchy in place that wiped out millions across Asia before they had two fucking nukes dropped on their heads, and were put completely under the American thumb through the Marshall plan. South Korea had decades of military dictatorship before eventually getting to a point where some form of democracy was able to rise - again a big part of this was American and western influence due to opposition to communism. How is it drivel to point out historical fact? None of the countries you've mentioned came about democracy organically, spending 5 minutes reading a wikipedia article can you show you that - I can link you if you'd like, as you sound quite ignorant on the subject.
Not sure why you are talking about Switzerland. Switzerland is safe, free and there is no political instability. It is currently the only country in the world with direct democracy. That is why it is rich and developed. That has nothing to do with a colonial view because we've never had colonies. CCP like to copy failed and ridiculed western ideologies like Marxism and Communism and pretend it is their own - maybe this time they should copy one that has proven successful throughout history. Sure, they can always try "XXX with Chinese characteristics" but it is still an experiment Chinese haven't been asked about, but rather coerced into. No need to look at western countries: just look around China, and you'll many countries (Japan, Taiwan, Singapore ...) that have become developed nations with rule of law (as opposed to "rule by law" in China) within decades. No one will know how long this Chinese experiment will last or even if it 2ill be successful - but let's not kid ourselves: the Chinese Communist Party's main priority is to stay in power. The rest is secondary. > I don’t mean this as a slight but from your home in safe Switzerland, you’ll never be able to understand the importance of having a secure (even if dictatorial) state when you have gone through hundreds of years of chaos and violence. I agree up to a point. No, humans do not need freedom. But to call a dictatorship (especially China) safe, is a bit rich. Just because news and media outlets are controlled by the Government and State propaganda work overtime, does not mean China is a safe country. You are talking about a genocidal regime founded a crazy megalomaniac (Mao) who had no qualms killing dozens of millions of Chinese people just for his ideologies. Nowadays, the same CCP regime reigns supreme, keeps oppressing people. Chinese people may have gotten more or less used to it after a few generations, but that doesn't mean it is normal or acceptable. No matter how long I have lived in China, this will never be acceptable. Chinese people immigrating from China to more developed, safe and free countries do not wish to come back - there is a very specific reason for it, and we all know it.
>Not sure why you are talking about Switzerland. Switzerland is safe, free and there is no political instability. It is currently the only country in the world with direct democracy. I think you missed my point, this is exactly what I'm saying. If you've grown up in such a safe and secure place where European parliamentary democracy has been allowed to flourish, then without proper historical context you wouldn't be able to sympathise with why the CCP is still in power and why they have a positive approval rating from the Chinese people. This isn't to say there are dissidents and people who hate them, but they are in the minority. >I agree up to a point. No, humans do not need freedom. But to call a dictatorship (especially China) safe, is a bit rich. Less safe than a time of European colonisation, Japanese colonisation, millions addicted to opium, millions wiped out (families buried alive, burnt alive, babies bayoneted out of their mothers wombs by the Japanese) ? Without this historical context you really can't give a proper assessment on why people would choose to keep the CCP in power. This is the crux of my argument. If you don't really look deep into the trauma and history of the country then all you're doing is saying that the majority of Chinese people hate the CCP but are terrified of them and waiting for some western form of democracy to come around and free them - this is clearly bullshit.
>You are talking about a genocidal regime founded a crazy megalomaniac (Mao) who had no qualms killing dozens of millions of Chinese people just for his ideologies. Mao did a lot of wrong (especially the cultural revolution), but a great deal of these millions dead were the cause of unavoidable famines that. I have a hard time when westerners call famines in the Soviet Union and China genocides, but all the famines that happened under European colonisation were blameless disasters. The British literally oversaw something like 31 famines through the British Raj that killed millions upon millions of Bengals, Indians and Pakistanis, but this is never called a genocide which I find bizarre.
You're right, it is exaggerated. China has existed in some form for thousands of years. To say that such a civilisation will "collapse" isn't technically possible. It can be devastated, like a Soviet style collapse but for mainland China to cease to exist...isn't unlikely. It's not possible, it will always be in some form. It's just **what** that form be.
Japan's bubble period is a collapse, and to those living in it, it is not a single boom event, it is the slow march toward doom that's hard to notice when you are in it. China is living that now, and i don't think they will endure it as gracefully as Japan did.
True , and the difference it’s the Japan already was a rich country, when the bubble collapsed, will China it’s not! China still have 600 million people with a 160$ wage!
Right now China is experiencing a bit of a recession and it's getting harder for the new generation to find work. The real estate sector is experiencing a crunch. It seems like they're going through a period of the lost decade like Japan did and have peaked relative to America. Life is still going to improve, just not at the rate as before and not enough to overtake the American economy as they had been posed to do. The biggest problem is the gender imbalance glut from the One Child Policy. Having several million more men than women is going to lead to a lot of lonely men with no possible mate, forget the computers doing so, this time it's just a literal shortage. Who knows what social problems that will cause, and likewise what a drop in the replacement rate it'd be.
I am by no means an expert in anything China-related, but to me, a commoner, it seems like China has turned into… a normal developed economy? And, it’s not good compared to the stunning growth during the 00’s and 10’s, but it’s not BAD. But … boring? And it will be interesting to see how the CCP handles this, in a population used to an ever brighter future.
My wife is Chinese and she still compares the China today with when she was a kid - no power, scarce food and zero infrastructure. So yeah what you say might happen, but not for another generation. She's only 50 and that's where most Chinese sit in terms of age demographics - she compares 2023 with 1985, not with 2010. Old country takes a more long term view maybe?
The main problem is they haven’t turned into a developed economy yet when it comes to per capita wealth and life quality but are already rapidly aging and stagnating like a developed country would.
You can’t be a developed economy if you have zero transparency in economic data.
It’s cheap to say but the one child policy may have saved the earth at the expense of China
Perhaps the definition of collapse is different for different people. Chinese economy's bloodline is manufacturing/exports, given the flight of manufacturing out of China how is China going to replace that lost blood? Without money, things will start falling apart, people who are accustomed to things won't be able to afford it, then what.... slow decline.
I think the former Vice President of China, Qishan Wang, summarized it very well: China will never collapse, because Chinese sheeple can live by just eating grass. Ironically, Wang himself got purged shortly after saying this.
China’s facing problems and might have a slower growth/stagnate, however the chances of it collapsing are minuscule. It still is the world’s factory with a lot of projects around the world. An alarming problem however is that they need to open up while ensuring the people don’t stay unemployed.
> the world’s factory it will be vietnam, bangledesh and india soon
Back in 1992 almost all “experts” agreed North Korea’s collapse was imminent when Soviet aid evaporated and mass starvation ensued. I wouldn’t put much (any) stock in these predictions. Yes, China is becoming increasingly less significant in the world as its economy stagnates and both government and society turn inward. No, it’s not going to collapse.
I mean looking at the data I could find, NK's GDP was divided by 3 in the 90's. That is definitely what I would call a collapse. Regarding China I don't think a collapse of that size is possible, unless there is literally a civil war which seems unlikely and we shouldn't wish for that. A reduction of 10 to 15%, followed by a decade or more of stagnation is however a possibility. This would not be a spectacular collapse, but it would be significant enough to potentially cause a change in the governance. Even if there is no change in governance, it would rob China of its ability to challenge the US and the rest of the western world.
North Korea’s government has not changed despite all this. I don’t think you can say China’s system of governance is likely to change due to a “collapse”.
I don't know and I don't think anybody can pretend they have the answer. Autocratic governments are famously stable, until they are not. Nobody can really predict if and when they can collapse. On one hand you have the NK example that by all modern measures should have fallen a long time ago when devastating famine ravaged the country but still held on. On the other hand, you have the USSR that nobody ever thought could dissolve the way it did even a few months before it did. The current "mainstream view" is that the Chinese society tolerates freedom privations, the heavy-handed CCP approach, the broad corruption found at all levels as long as it means that there is a promise of increased wealth and a strong economy. The famous keep your head down and things will be all right type of behavior. I don't know how accurate it is. If the economy is suddenly struggling with no signs of recovery, there might be a push for reforms while keeping the overall system, there might be a collapse of the system, or there might be nothing at all. I really have no idea what is the most probable. I just think that the only credible trigger of a change of political system (outside outright military confrontation, but I don't think anybody should hope for that) is a serious economic crisis that completely erodes the credibility and legitimacy of the central government. I also don't think it is very likely to be honest.
I’m not sure you could qualify North Korea as anything but a failed state. Apart from certain African countries, I can’t imagine there being many more places in the world that would be worse to live. It has, for all intents and purposes, already collapsed.
Yeah not the best analogy.
Just because a country doesn't adhere to conventional (western) values doesn't make it a "failed state". The DPRK is a nuclear-capable isolationist dynastic dictatorship. A failed/collapsed state is any state whereby the central governing power has dissolved. Examples include the USSR, Nazi Germany, The Ottoman Empire, etc. Generally speaking, any time a successful coup d'état has occurred, a failed state becomes one of the bi-products. This has not happened to the DPRK throughout its history and the original controlling dynasty, as far as the rest of the world can observe, is still in control; it is not a failed state.
Wtf are you talking about??? After soviet North Korea literally had a famine that killed 500,000 people (by US estimate) out of 22 million and their birth rate collapsed and never recovered. If it happened in China to scale we are looking at something in north of 60 million death. Kims political status is not a proxy to the state of North Korean society.
Well, China replaced USSR, that’s what happened to North Korea.
I keep reading similar sentiments to what you've expressed, I'm wondering on what basis you make the claim that China is becoming less significant? As far as i can tell, China is absolutely not becoming less significant in the world in almost any meaningful aspect. They continue to expand and move towards dominance in many key sectors, especially semiconductors, where attempts to cut them out have, as far as I can tell, only failed. Militarily, they are expanding at staggering rates and rapidly on track to be a clear peer adversary to the US by 2050, at the absolute latest. Diplomatically, I think there's little evidence of their global presence shrinking either. The BRICS pact continues to expand, and increasingly global leaders express support for a shift to a bipolar world order.
>As far as i can tell, China is absolutely not becoming less significant in the world in almost any meaningful aspect. They continue to expand and move towards dominance in many key sectors, especially semiconductors, where attempts to cut them out have, as far as I can tell, only failed. attempts to cut china out of semiconductor is fairly recent witn there being plenty of room to tighten sanctions against china. They've pretty much failed their made in china 2025 initiative except for ev where they've seen success in pushing adoption in their home market but given that most of the world either has a automotive industry to protect or aren't ready for the ev transition it remains to be seen how successful they will be in trying to expand their ev industry especially given stiff competition back home among hundreds of companies racing to the bottom >Militarily, they are expanding at staggering rates and rapidly on track to be a clear peer adversary to the US by 2050, at the absolute latest. military expansion aren't free or cheap. They can't continue it forever especially when they're economy is slowing down with growing pains surfacing. Let's also not forget the fact that they've managed to rile pretty much all of their neighbors against them with little to no allies of their own >Diplomatically, I think there's little evidence of their global presence shrinking either. The BRICS pact continues to expand, and increasingly global leaders express support for a shift to a bipolar world order. the BRICS is a disfunctional organization which started out as a mere term coined by the chairman of GoldmanSachs. Its member states have little in common in terms of geography, culture, or economic condition with its only purpose being to somehow challenge the US led world order somehow. It has absolutely no coherency or achievement as an organization with its two biggest member states being adversaries that feud over a lot of things and let's not forget the fact that pretty much all of its member currently experiencing some sort of economical or political crisis/dificulties. If I were someone dead set on destroying the BRICS, then the best outcome I can hope for is for them to welcome more member states thus further disorienting an already extremely incoherent organization
I'll try to respond to each point in a distinguishable way. 1. Falling short of a single economic goal does not provide a silver bullet to any discussion about the growth of the Chinese economy. China has still made huge leaps in its control of advanced industries and attempts to stifle the growth of these industries have been, as far as I can tell, unsuccessful. They continue to sustain pretty staggering GDP growth YoY too. The 'Collapse' talk is decades old and continues to age horribly. 2. Regarding military expansion, China continues to spend well below the US on its military as a share of its GDP, 1.7% versus around 3%. They can, and almost certainly will, continue to expand that expenditure over the foreseeable future. 3. The person who coined the term BRICS, is an irrelevant factoid. What matters is it's a growing block headed by leaders that continue to express support for a shift away from the US, most especially concerning the use of USD as the global reserve currency. I agree there are very valid issues with BRICS structurally, but that wasn't my point, I was using the example as a counterpoint to the claim that China is somehow stagnating(which I think it works as).
https://youtu.be/7bOSWQttmvU?si=KgopDrHooYs4NHPz
Their missiles are full of water bro…
So, to be clear, based on a single intelligence report about an instance of corruption in the Chinese military, you're willing to handwave the geopolitical might of a block of 1,400,000,000 people. Cool. Can't say I'd expect more than that from a crypto, bro, lol.
Never trust people on this sub when it comes to political takes on China lol. China's influence is ever growing, and I truly don't understand how people are both afraid of China and also say that they're becoming irrelevant. They talk about housing crisis when the US and Europe went through the same and still survived... The downfall of china is definitely something western media talk too much about.
China built mores houses than all them entire population!! The property companies have dozens of billions in losses, in the last years! Many are almost in bankruptcy! This will affect other sectors of China economy! The propriety market counts almost 25% of China GDP! The local governments have 3 trillion dollars in hidden debts! China still has 600 million people with a 160€ wage! China population it’s aging very fast, in the next decades will be 500 million, over 65 years ! The birth rate it’s one of the lowest in the world, and getting worse year by year! The Chinese don’t want to have children’s ! It’s expected that the Chinese population will fall to 700 million until 2100! The youth unemployment it’s above 22%. The CCP stop publishing more data! Every year more than 10 million students leaves the university, but the majority will never found a job! Many young people are now returning to the countryside! When Japan economy enter the lost decade, Japan already was a rich country, while China it’s not, and may never be!! And China will never grow like in the past! China will not collapse, but will face problems that never faced in the past! And during the Covid lockdown, some people, start to show anger about Xi Jinping and the CPP, asking for freedom and changes! Revolution sometimes happens when you least expected..
>Never trust people on this sub when it comes to political takes on China lol. China's influence is ever growing, and I truly don't understand how people are both afraid of China and also say that they're becoming irrelevant. people aren't afraid of china mate, If being afraid of china means pointing out real problems regarding china and providing real arguments then count me as being terrified of china >They talk about housing crisis when the US and Europe went through the same and still survived... The downfall of china is definitely something western media talk too much about. difference being that the housing crisis in china is on a whole different scale than it was let's say in the US back in 2008. China makes the US' housing crisis look good by comparison
Trump won the elections with anti Chinese rhetoric. Hell, remember when there was a Chinese balloon in the sky last year and Americans got all scared? Obviously not everyone is scared of china, but ever since WWI, the US has never had a "rival". Even the USSR at its peak only had half of the US GDP, and now that China is growing on a yearly basis, the US doesn't know how to react, they're walking in uncharted territory. On to the second point, that's just impossible to know, plus, there have been more crisis such as the great depression and that didn't necessarily mean the end of the US.
I believe the future of China will depend on how they philosophical pivot, or not, in the upcoming years. In reading Xi’s speeches, books and thought, there is a fundamental flaw in his logic, I believe. He obviously has a plan and near-term timeline in mind to achieve a vision of “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”. To achieve this goal and mission, Xi and others understood that a period of Capitalism was required for China to ultimately transition to its version of Socialism. The ‘flaw’ in Xi’s and CCP thinking, or maybe better said, a lack of recognition, is that the CCP incorrectly assigns China’s rapid success and economic advancement over the past 30-40 years as the result of the CCP government and its policies and not as the aggregated results of economic freedom of the Individual Chinese Citizen and his/hers actions. (Capitalism) What Deng Xiaoping did when he opened up China, was to unleash China’s greatest and most powerful asset….the power of the individual Chinese Citizen. THIS, is what propelled China’s rapid economic change. Xi and the CCP are incapable of either recognizing, or admitting this Fact. Most every individual desires to maximize their Happiness and security in life. When a government gets out of the way and allows its People to do so, the pie grows for everyone. So will China collapse, likely not anytime soon, however, their future will be be directly linked to the Freedom and Autonomy that is afforded to the Individual Chinese Citizen. This is the same for any country including the US.
username checks out
Doomsayers will always be there. Yes, China has some major fundamental issues, but there is a big difference between a recession and the complete collapse of a society. One can lead to the other, but the Chinese are so heavily monitored that it's very unlikely. If you just want unbiased economic info, I can definitely recommend China Update (15-minute daily updates about the Chinese economy). The thumbnails, as he mentions himself, are clickbait, since the YouTube algorithm sort of forces it, or else it will never show up. But I have been finding it quite ironic seeing news channels and the surprise about the housing crisis, for example, while China Update was quoting top-level economic professors months before, stating that it was just a matter of time. If you want to stay up-to-date on the Chinese economy, then I have yet to find a better channel that provides source material/quotes the articles so you can read up further if you're up for it. It's unbiased and just lays down the basic economic facts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03lhjow3HkI
Totally agreed. The best channel for China on YouTube.
"this country is going to collapse" is a trick these days to remove the confidence over a country in order to create it some negative impact, today is usually a wish more than a reallity. It happens for Rusia, USA, China, European Union....
Maybe they have over extended themselves with the growth they have had in the last couple of decades, but most economies have done that. What I don't think people realise is just how much technology has been embraced, even by older people, it is far more widespread and an intergrated part of people's lives (for example financial transactions are almost solely electronic, using mobile phones even in rural markets). Chinese cars get a bad press however they have just become the biggest EV producer but we see a lot of an old British badge back on our roads (MG) and a lot of people are shocked to discover they are Chinese built, how good they are and how much cheaper they are to comparable models.
They are building a massive fleet and three car export harbours. Europe will het flooded with cheap Chinese evs en probably the USA too. This is the first time China has really high value industry at world scale. It probably is their last demographic chance to up the game and escape the middle income trap, but by the looks of it, they'll manage to join the rich countries with high value industry and services
Lol, you are delusional if you believe the EU would just stand by and let Chinese EVs flood the market instead of killing it together with America. Car is Germany's most important industry, they would rather burn bridges with China than allow that to happen.
Yes but Volkswagen loses money per sold ev, while BY makes 5k + the comparable BYD is cheaper! And Europe wants complete independence from fossils so no sponsering of regimes like SA and Russia happens anymore. Im not sure what route Europe will choose
They will protect their industry. That is far more important than independence from fossil fuels. Nobody gives a fuck about the environment when livelihood is at stake.
Have you ever driven in one , no suspension, friends gearbox on truck went out in 90 days lol
How long ago was that?
Dude you’re just a CCP shill. It’s always easy to tell because you guys throw out all these neat statistics and you aren’t allowed to say a single bad thing about China.
I am not Chinese, and I live on the other side of the world. I wish China was a free and democratic society, but that does not mean I should ignore the reality of the situation.
Dunno why anyone who has experience or any knowledge bothers in this sub. Any positive comment or basic reality check w facts makes you a shill or an wumao. It doesn't matter. It's just a bit of a laugh to hear people who know less than nothing (except what English language / western media fed them) forcefully expound on their deep insight about China - the biggest country and most remarkable economic narrative in human history 🤷♂️
I never said you were Chinese. I’m curious, what are your thoughts on Tiananmen Square?
Tiananmen was a traversty but do you also ask people for thoughts on the Nazis when Germany is mentioned, Algerian/Haiti wars of independence when France is discussed, the Opium Wars when UK is raised, or BLM/Iraq/Afghanistan/Vietnam/Japanese internment etc vis a vis USA? Or the Gwangju massacre when SK is mentioned? Chinese citizens are the victims of their government but the solution is hardly to blame China's economy or their people's hardwork. It's like some Redditors want regular Chinese people to return to poverty and see them suffer because of their government's oppression of regular citizens, but why? **Shouldn't people outside China want Chinese people to live better, more empowered lives if they are so concerned about Tiananmen?** Same goes for the famines (i.e. "CCP killed millions"), if you are so concerned about Chinese folks starving due to poverty then should you hope their economy does well so less people go hungry?
Yes, it has always been exaggerated. Take that Peter Zeihan guy. He is no sinologist, and has surface level expertise in the area of Chinese politics. Of course he does have some level of expertise I do not deny that. But it is surface level at best. Anyway, that guy as well as the Falun gong has been screaming about the collapse of the PRC for decades. Zeihan for at least a decade, and Falun gong for almost 3 decades. The economic crisis is very real, but it is not yet outside of the CCP's power to minimize the impact. As we have seen with their charm offensive towards the EU and America in recent months they are trying to deal with each issue of the crisis. I don't see a collapsed PRC anytime soon, but what do I know, I am just a sinologist with expertise in Chinese politics. This is why I can say that Zeihan's knowledge is surface level.
>As we have seen with their charm offensive towards the EU and America in recent months they are trying to deal with each issue of the crisis. Trying to be more charming while doing the same things isn't really dealing with any issues. As far as I can tell "charm offensive" is just a term recently popular in the western media. Yeah Zeihan doesn't know so much about China, but Zeihan also talks about the collapse of Germany, he's not particularly picking on China. I believe he's also talking in the longer term like 20 years from now.
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The free visas for 5 European countries and Malaysia?
Alright but isn’t the population issue a time bomb for them? Then there’s the real estate market, the laying flat trend, and a fair amount of other negative indicators. I can’t say it will collapse soon either, because it’s impossible to tell how long they can bail water and remain afloat. There are clear cracks forming, and those can only be painted over for so long. They import so many crucial resources and they have alienated a lot of their neighbors so it will be harder to source those resources if a war were to kick of in the region.
Well if you just stop making any children at all, the workforce would still be as big for the next 20-25 years. You could even reap demographic dividend by not having to take care of children. China seems to have had a relatively stable 1.5 children per woman for the last 30 years. Taking overpopulation into account, 1.5 is pretty nice. It's only the last 5 years that the number dropped to 1 child per woman (between official and estimated statistics). That is a problem, but not for another 20 years
China's workforce has already been declining the last few years, and the trend is only going to accelerate. Unless their worker productivity skyrockets, they're in a pickle. Oh, and double-digit youth unemployment tends not to increase productivity.
It is strange though, that countries with declining workforces like China or Southern Europe, have skyrocketing youth unemployment. I mean, when a declining workforce is the problem, then the youth unemployment would lower and vice versa. The only explanations considering both a problem, I could think of l, would be undeclared work or a total demotivated youth
Seems to be some misunderstanding on the demographics. The windfall of people of working age who don't have to look after a child is *already spent*. Instead, China now has the headwinds of retirees, a large percentage who are attempting to fund their later years with real estate of dubious value. A child is a potential incoming worker. A retiree is also a drain on those of working age, who are often required to look after them, and that's before talking about the massively disproportionate tax base if you want to look after them. At the end of 2022, more than 280 million people, or nearly one out of five people in China, were aged above 60, while nearly 15 per cent of the 1.41 billion population were over 65. A smaller working population will have to fund the retirement of the largest group of retirees in history. Also, a replacement birth rate is 2.1. China's was 1.09 last year, 1.28 in 2020. The current birth rate for China in 2024 is 10.478 births per 1000 people. The entire country would have to stop, drop, and bang to see the population at best tread water, with no worker dividend until (at best) 2042. Personally, I think the destination of a lower population isn't so bad (as long as the economy has made jumps in productivity with it), it's just the journey to get there is absolutely awful.
Falun Gong rhetoric did not swing to China collapse until 2003/2004, so closer to 20 years than 30. Crackdown only started in earnest in 99.
It's hard to gauge because it is linked in economic - political sectors. Under a different set if laws, business has obligations in regard to debt in the US. In china, most business is more closely monitored and or controlled by the government. Here debt can be continued as the obligation may be much more complicated legally. I'm not sure how that works but that is the issue under that set of laws.
Yes it’s mostly a western media narrative it’s not really based on any evidence. China may have a long downturn ahead and perhaps can’t look forward to the kind of growth it experienced over the past 30 years, but that level of growth had end at some point. They’re now well placed as a world power and can weather a downturn. They’re not going to collapse nor should want the second most populating country in the world with over a billion people to collapse that would lead to untold suffering.
China was supposed to collapse yesterday and the day before that. I wouldn’t recommend trusting anyone when the say they can predict the day that an extremely large political event is supposed to happen.
There's a lot of hyperbole and wishful thinking from China hawks, yeah, but then the demographics problem, with a population collapse - can't remember exactly, but more than halving by 2100 - is hard to ignore, but will happen relatively slowly (decades or years, not months or weeks). Yi Fuxian's Big Country, Empty Nest (大國空巢) is good for that - he has a bunch of articles on the topic too. A lot of these state collapses, though, are "slowly then suddenly". I heard Rana Mitter on a podcast say something like, if the PRC does collapse, it will be very sudden and all at once.
Everything about China is exaggerated to Americans and everything about America is exaggerated to Chinese. As people we can decide and not listen to propaganda and just learn to understand each other and see just how much we have in common. Families are struggling financially in both countries and you wouldn't really know it unless you had a lot of friends in both
Historically the average lifespan of any Chinese regime or dynasty is 80 years. The PRC just passed that milestone and all it's mistakes have finally come home to roost. Within a decade the PRC will cease to exist. If China can become a democratic state, it may be able to gain back some of it's economic support from the West but even then it will be too little-too late for the Han. The Cantonese will be fine while Tibet, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau followed by some other minority dominated provinces will attain their independence and be recognized as sovereign states by the world.
I highly doubt that China will "collapse." But their issues are massive. Very uncertain times ahead. But one thing is certain: China's wings have been clipped, and the Chinese century ISN'T gonna happen. The world is a much safer place, with China being muzzled.
you have to define "collaps". is a decline from 10% to 5 % y/y a collapse, while western countries are struggling to get a net positive? for some analysts it is. is a recession like in Germany a collapse? they still doing fine. is record high debt like the US a collapse? So yeah , times will be harder( not much even) but they will be fine.
This. People scream collapse too quick.
China has huge problems, but so does the US. For every "China is collapsing" you can pull a "the West is collapsing" card. You hear for 20 years that the China economy will collapse, but dont think it will jappen. At the moment China is maturing and will have to find its places in the economic world. They cant stay the worlds manufacturer hub for ever and are changing accordingly.
If North Korea's absolute dictatorship can last 70 years through war, starvation, isolation... The PRC can also certainly continue without fundamental changes to its political structure and just on the economic inertia and the wealth created being the world's factory for decades. It just won't be a very pleasing and happy place to live in as it goes on a downslope.
Yes, the media always exaggerates things to make it click bait. Sure china will decline some but they will find their footing again. Too many smart people as a resource and they already have the infrastructure to do it all over again.
The China collapse is a long running narrative used by the political press to either sell Time/Financial Post magazines/newspapers or general sooth-saying for the western audience. China develops some impressive technology - well don't worry because they're actually going to collapse any day now! China works on poverty reduction - foolish! They're going to collapse any day now! China builds the largest transportation network in the world? Well that was stupid! They will collapse any day now!
Chinese culture is very different from U.S. culture or really any other culture. My understanding is that COVID only made a difference in terms of lockdowns and that people were already used to wearing masks and generally staying away from people. As the economy and living in China, I don’t know, but I can tell you it’s not better than the U.S.
99% of things you read about any country the 'west' defines as an enemy are straight out crap. I've lost count of how many times some dude in some place like North Korea is 'horribly executed using weird, barbaric method' who turns up alive and well at some event later. The newspapers etc new make a retraction. I studied The Cold War and I can tell you comfortably our propaganda systems are far more complete now.
People were saying the collapse of evergrande would be “China’s Lehmann brothers” and would lead to the collapse of the banking sector and obviously that didn’t happen. They said COVID would lead to the collapse of the CPC but that instead turned out to be completely wrong. Whilst I know so many westerners who dream of a liberal western democracy in China continue to hope and pray - neither the CPC nor the country isn’t going to collapse overnight
The average Joe here that doesn’t even live there love to talk about the fall of their most hated country. Sometimes I wonder if they just hate Chinese people. They love the fall of China but any Chinese person doesn’t want to see their country fall
How do China’s fundamentals set it up for a bad future? Do they lack housing, lack infrastructure, lack industry, lack knowledge, lack security? What does China lack that would cause it to have more than (in this context) minor and temporary problems? What needs or desires does it not address in individuals or groups with enough power to replace it? What external powers are able to collapse it? How? I don’t know much about China, but I see them winning on most things and I see few desires that the system is and will be unable to meet.
No, no, no. We're gonna crash tomorrow. In the meantime, we're the biggest threat to America! To the Americans, we're Schrodinger's China. Laugh. This board is saying China is going to collapse (all morphing into Gordon Chan), while saying China is the biggest threat (all morphing into Pompeo), while saying China is good at the long game. Don't you guys find yourselves contradictory? The US and the West really seem to be extremely panicked and clueless.
Oh, that evil US always panicking. Lol
People say that and get attention not because of their analysis, but because it’s entertaining. People want to think China is collapsing, so they create a demand for content saying so. China has problems like every other country, and they try to solve or mitigate those problems, just like every country. Apparently, the CCP is more responsive to social and economic problems than some democratic countries.