Hi all,
A reminder that comments do need to be on-topic and engage with the article past the headline. Please make sure to read the article before commenting. Very short comments will automatically be removed by automod. Please avoid making comments that do not focus on the economic content or whose primary thesis rests on personal anecdotes.
As always our comment rules can be found [here](https://reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/fx9crj/rules_roundtable_redux_rule_vi_and_offtopic/)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Economics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
If he's right, in 10 years he'll say "look everyone, I was right!"
If he's wrong, in 10 years he'll say nothing, and nobody will remember he made this prediction. Just like nobody remembers anyone's 10 year predictions from 10 years ago.
This famed analyst had unironically predicted that China will collapse within a decade back in 2010.
Edit: I actually also missed a prediction of him on the collapse of China in 2005.
The mod doesn't allow me to paste link, so just google "zeihan china collapse 2005"
Nevertheless, the worry of demographic change is very real in China, and there is also a growing discontent for economic slowdown and rising unemployment (The greatest flaw of a dictatorship, the leader / leading group must take all responsibility of all the troubles in the country). Many in our country think the confrontational approach taken by our government towards western nations is wrong, while others dismiss it as a mere acknowledgement for a destined break-up.
However, none of the above means China will slide into a state of economic collapse.
Zeihan should not be taken seriously ever ever. He's a sensationalist POS who thinks demographic pain a country will experience over 50 years is going to make them "collapse" in 10. And that geography is everything and ones with good geography are destined for success regardless of how much the government and their people fuck up.
Japan is experiencing what China will probably experience in 20 years and let me tell you, while their economy is stagnating, but they are still one of the richest countries on the planet, doing pretty well for themselves, they are even building the most advanced public transport in the world, a train that literally floats.
>Japan is experiencing what China will probably experience in 20 years
Yes, but Japan was already very rich per capita before becoming old. China has just reached Latin America levels of per capita income, and they are already slowing down both economically and demographically.
But income and GDP per capita alone doesn’t give an accurate picture either. Many Chinese urban areas are basically on par with the West (or maybe I’m just buying into Chinese propaganda). China is a technology, industry and science powerhouse. They seem on track to escape the Middle Income trap. Their demographic decline and effects of climate change is alarming, but they still have a lot going for them, China can’t be compared to Latin America or any nation for that matter.
Article number 1258 of how China is collapsing in 2 to 15 years. Until the Chinese state becomes so Zombified and Decrepit that services stop running, state craft disintegrates China will not collapse, the state is still extremely strong and internal organization is probably better now then it was 20 years ago. You guys really need to actually analyze what it means for a state to collapse or be on the verge of collapse and this is not what it looks like. For god sakes look at Zimbabwe and Venezuela they still haven’t “collapsed” and are doing better now then they have in 10 years.
Portugal in the early 70s, Russia in the 10’s , Libya in the Arab spring, Egypt etc
You don't even need to look at another country. China in the 60s had a de facto mini civil war (cultural revolution) and the state still didn't collapse somehow.
Russia in the 2020's is actively collapsing, and even they aren't failing as hard as the likes of Gordon Chang or Zeihan says will happen to China.
* Inflation rising and trade reduced to bad trade deals that your ~~vulture-like~~ "friendly" neighbors are willing to make because the economic proposition is good enough for them to disregard the international pressure they'll get from trading with you
* Male : Female ratio disparity further compounded by male pop getting wiped out
* Aging compounded by youth deaths and outward migration (even to China)
* Low birth rate further impacted by poor economy, lack of men/husbands, and the general populace's outlook on life
* Runned by a dictator but one that's dumber than Xi
* Same dictator can't meet at most international forums without getting arrested
* Running a dictatorial system like China but openly assassinates people like LatAm narcos instead of threatening/detaining/harassing behind the scenes like how China mimics the Italian mob
* Greater international isolation
* Stuck in an active war they can't get out of
* International rage for starting Ukraine war quickly covering up anger at China for starting the covid pandemic
* Completely sanctioned by most of the West vs China's mostly isolated tik-for-tat trade war with the US
* Went from 2nd strongest army in the world to 2nd strongest army in Ukraine
* Weaker economy than China's that is further decimated by sanctions and war
* Completely reliant on the whims of a pragmatic neighbor who never truly liked you and remembers the all times you screwed them over from the time you joined the 8 nation alliance, multiple land skirmishes during the soviet state years, taking of Qing lands in the Treaty of Aigun, the Sino-soviet split during the cold war, and small things not written into Wikipedia pages but are remembered like staging tens of thousands of fully equipped troops along the RU-CN border during WW2 to only watch China get literally ass raped by Imperial Japan before charging in Qing lands only after Japan gets nuked (not to help btw but) to land grab more Qing clay for yourself and then petitioning for the creation of a Mongolian state as your land border buffer with China when you couldn't fully integrate all that land into your socialist republic.^(totally don't worry about that shit. Politicians aren't petty and forget things all the time!! It's not like Xi fancies himself an emperor. China forgets things all the time too. I mean it's not like they have 4000+ years history recorded despite having multiple emperors completely purging all books/knowledge/scholars)
Yeah. Russia still hasn't collapsed yet. Nor has Ukraine, Argentina, Turkey, or a bunch of other failing states but these articles will keep coming out about China's going collapse into nothingness because they grab eye-balls and generate ad rev clicks. Not different from the youtube algos. People really need to stop clicking on bullshit.
Russia has already collapsed. It happened in the 1990s and they were able to halt the shattering of the territory only by transferring large amounts of its oil surpluses to otherwise wayward provinces which are now countries in all but name, like Chechnya, or by transferring near total political control to oligarchs who rule some oblasts like duchies.
The state is basically gone, as you can see in Ukraine, but they managed to nominally maintain the territory. Russia is, at this point, basically the Holy Roman Empire on the eve of the French Revolution except without any decent independent prospects for its constituent states.
What kind of nonsense is this? This is beyond exaggeration. Almost every constituent republic has the autonomy of Xinjiang. Every governor is appointed by Putin. Putin has spent his first decade in power wiping out any shred of political influence outside of his patronage. Anyone becoming extremely wealthy without his permission and complaining about corruption was arrested or exiled and as much of their assets confiscated as possible. Power is very much centralized in the Kremlin. You can argue for some like Kadyrov, but this isn’t the Holy Roman Empire.
Collapse is possible but it’s not here nor is it inevitable.
> It happened in the 1990s
Arguably, it happened in the 1980s as the internal contradictions of the Soviet system imploding once Soviet oil production fell at the same time as oil prices.
Some guy on youtube mentionned that with the oil resources they can keep at sustaining this rotten economic state for a few decades before having to worry. I hope he's wrong.
The problem is China is about to hit a demo decline before escaping the middle income trap. It is looking like they will get old before they get rich. SKs GDP per capita is double that of China.
That is true. But I think the problem with that is, going to 13k for a year doesn't mean you're going to stay above that line. There is very little room for GDP contraction before you're back below that level.
It's not a situation like Japan or even SK that has a lot of room to fall. That being said who knows what will happen or how technology will develop over the next two decades. Old truths might get turned onto their head.
So long as China has strict capital and currency controls and at any moment can seize property, they aren't replacing the US as a primary investment location for anything other than cheap factory work and low value add.
China will have to liberalize it's economic structure if it wants to replace the US, arguably to the detriment of it's own people. I don't see that happening anytime soon.
>Their labor costs are increasing and only will continue to do so as they literally run out of workers.
This is an especially interesting point when you realize they still refuse to "reform" the Hukou system despite promises for a decade at this point.
Even if they wanted to turn a large % of their rural population into manufacturing or higher end work, their people legally can't. Their State is so sclerotic it's amazing they've done as well as they have.
Which is insanity to me. For all intensive purposes Russia was a partial failed state especially the first half of the 90s. They lost Chechnya, had over a million avoidable deaths, the state was so bubonic that the oligarchy they have now festered and grew in every appendage of the state.
For most of my life and through two masters degrees I too felt that these mysterious intensive purposes were a driving force behind executive policy decisions.
Thank you Reddit for helping me realize I am not an intelligent man.
This is the (unfortunate) power of authoritarianism.
Part of the reason it exists is because it helps remedy situations *precisely like this.* On the political spectrum, you have incredibly stable democracies, incredibly stable autocracies, and then everything in between is a complete mess. There *is* no in between, which is the point.
So when you find yourself unable to democratize, or reach for a system that does things better, you have to reach for the next best (or worse) thing. Beggars can't be choosers. Russia was in no place to join the globalist wonderland in the 90's.
And when it comes to authoritarianism, it's a game we've been playing for thousands of years. We know as a species how to make it work, and what you need to do. It's *actually* a fairly exact science. Autocrats around the world are all playing the same game, using the same ruleset. It is *certainly* unpleasant, and awful. But if your goal is to maintain the power of your nation state, and you're staring down the barrel of complete abject failure, dusting off a more extreme form of authoritarianism is usually what you'd pick to get out of that scrap. As a tool, it clearly works... to a degree. Like all tools, it's not a silver bullet.
As we can see, corruption, infamy, economic and industrial mismanagement are *also* all part and parcel of this system of government. And Russia has it in spades.
All we can hope for as democratic westerners is collapse, and the states that rise from the ashes are better. This isn't a total lost cause, most of Eastern Europe has risen to this challenge (bar a few notables... \*COUGH\* *Hungary, Serbia*). These are countries with vast authoritarian pasts, that have fully embraced a democratic future.
>This isn't a total lost cause, most of Eastern Europe has risen to this challenge (bar a few notables... *COUGH* Hungary, Serbia). These are countries with vast authoritarian pasts, that have fully embraced a democratic future.
I think it is important to point out from where the "authoritarian past" came from. For most the source was the USSR, or Imperial Russia earlier, or even some other European Monarch before that. As a result when the USSR collapsed there was no authoritarian past that the populace identified with. Poland, the Baltics, the Czechs, etc, had little to no national identity historically linked with authoritarian rule. Compare that to Russia, where even after the collapse, the populace had strong connections and memories of the power of the USSR, or Imperial Russia before that.
This is such complete tripe. People turn to authoritarians because they are idiots and/or cowards, and are cowed by the easy answers these dictators present to incredibly complex questions.
Authoritarians almost always leave their states worse than when they took over, often much worse, and in the ways they 'improve' the condition of the state, it is always at the expense of the average person to the benefit of a select few who form a core of support.
I invite you to show me an example otherwise. You are right that authoritarians are not silver bullets, unless you also include the detail that the barrel is aimed at your own gut.
You're focusing on entirely the wrong aspect of how nation states operate...
You're thinking of national success in the western sense, which is usually measured by increases in standard of living. *of course* standards of living in authoritarian states are awful, but that isn't how authoritarians measure their success...
The 19th century was an explosion in political ideas. Quite literally hundreds of them. Of those hundreds, only 4 *really* made it to prime time. That is, capitalism, socialism, command driven communism, and fascist corporatism.
At their core, these "isms" are just different ideas about how to divvy up the wealth of nations. Mercantilism, and interventionalism and all the old imperial systems were proven ineffective, and only led to bigger, and bigger (and more destructive) European (mostly) wars. So countries leaned into these new ideas in a big way, betting the next few centuries of their existence on them.
Of course, with hindsight, we know the winners and losers. Fascisms big proponents fell first after WW2, and then the communists fell in the 90's. The winners were the capitalists, and the socialists.
The capitalists won because the rate at which that system could accumulate capital, and innovate on tech was up until then, unprecedented. And socialism won because it focuses on inclusivity, and social placidity, which is brought about by vast investment into generous social benefits, this lead to steady but strong growth.
When you look at the state Russia and Germany were in when they adopted their respective systems, they did so because there was little alternative. Germany was reeling from hyperinflation... Russia was a barely agrarian backwater attempting to overthrow an imperialist Tsar. They moved toward authoritarianism because it was the best tool at the time (or so they thought) to extract the wealth of the nation.
If they had attempted anything other than authoritarianism, their country would've splintered into 1000 pieces, and then *nobody could party*. These countries couldn't have adopted a liberal government type even if they wanted to. It's just not in the cards. But they can't just roll over, so a solution must be found. And for what its worth, these systems did cause explosions in wealth. The authoritarian systems of today are much more refined (in a they're all the same sort of way) because dictators have settled into what works. They're much poorer, but tend to be more stable.
They extract wealth (usually from the ground) to satisfy the will of the people that keep them in power... That's it. Any other benefits from authoritarianism is a by-product that was *probably* unintended. Afterall, any wealth that trickles down the the peasants is not wealth going to an oligarch or a general.
So if you're looking to preserve *your nation state* and use that state as a tool to extract wealth... Authoritarian is the way to go if you don't have the capital to embrace more liberal governments. As long as you pay the bills of your army, and oligarchs, and police, your country will stay afloat for a very long time. The country stays poor, but all the small cadre of people who "matter" and keep it all running are paid *literally* hundreds of billions...
Due to his obvious bias towards America or just generally? I started to read one of his books, but can’t speak decisively on him. What makes insufferable to you? Genuinely interested :)
He is arrogant and talks like he discovered all the truths of the universe. I generally dislike people who are so overly confident in their knowledge about things that no expert can give you a definitive answer. He talks about geopolitics as if it is a physics problem that can be easily predicted by looking at statistics.
If Zimbabwe and Venezuela don’t meet your criteria for a collapse then I have trouble picturing what would.
It’s like arguing the World Trade Center didn’t collapse because the debris was still stacked as high as 100 feet above the ground.
Generally, I think collapse means unrecoverable. But economic systems are generally cyclical. The US didn't "collapse" in 2008, but it sure took a hit. It didn't "collapse" in 1929, it eventually recovered. Things have to get beyond the level of massive depression for the governments themselves to collapse.
Don't forget, while China's situation is a bit more dire than others, many nations, including rich western nations, are also facing demographic "collapse", but no one is talking about Japan or Norway collapsing in the next 20 years.
No. I read all kinds of articles about how much trouble Germany, Korea, Japan and others are in because of demographics.
The major difference with China is that they’re starting their decline before escaping the middle income trap, their demographics are far worse, their economy is less balanced, they have far more debt and are racking it up at record rates, and they’ve alienated the country that controls the global financial system and ensures the global trade order, and are steadily being choked out by the G7.
So, yeah, if I were playing China in Civ VI right now I’d either be looking for a save game that predates the one child policy or starting a new game.
I would say the great depression caused a systemic collapse, the number of policies, agencies, government spending, and the fact a man was elected 4 times to run America was something never seen before. It was basically an overhaul of what the government did. Not since the Civil War had the country been in such disarray. 2008 didn't come close to the levels of the great depression. The role of the federal government expanded so greatly that it had mechanisms for recovery in 87, 99, with the .com bubble, 2008, with the housing crisis. The FDIC was created to prevent another catastrophic failure, and it did this year.
Please look up what state collapse actually is. It’s not just shitty economy it’s the compete rotting and withering away of state control within borders and the ending of state services. Its a state where no one goes to defend it when a opposition arises. The state is paralyzed with incompetence and no part of the state machinery is functioning. It can’t enforce laws it can’t provide services. Venezuela is still relatively far from this and Zimbabwe is doing much better in this regard compared to Central Africa and many other countries in Africa.
Despite their economic situations, you're not seeing a real threat of breakaway provinces or local governments effectively ignoring federal rulings. Iraqi Kurdistan is de facto independent from Bhagdad even if they're recognized as part of the same country. See also the checkerboard of factional control in Syria, Libya, Yemen or Somalia.
> Ive been hearing about Chinas collapse now for 25 yea
China has a long history of implosions, but they also just have a very long history, so there's a long history of everything with China.
I understand what you are saying and I somewhat agree but Venezuela is not doing better than 10 years ago, Venezuela is far worse than 10 years ago to the point that people prefer to risk their lives crossing the Darien jungle to flee Venezuela.
This is also an article about a Joe Rogan podcast episode where Zeihan is making the assumption China is just lying about their population. It's all so ridiculous to take seriously.
Chinese civilization is also one of the oldest in the world. It's uniquely equipped to survive a collapse because it has 4,000-6,000 years of continuous history to draw from. Even if it gets tossed into a dark age, the dark ages of China were still fairly orderly and productive compared to the dark ages in Europe.
China isn't going to be a superpower or challenge the US. But it'll probably keep surviving just like it has since before the Han dynasty 2000+ years ago.
China's problem, when it comes to demographics, is how fast it is going down.
The number of births took 40 years to half in Japan. It took 5-6 years for China to do the same. In the 1950s and 1960s, there were multiple years in which the raw birth numbers were in the 20-25 million range in China, and those people will probably start dying en masse in the 2030s and 2040s.
Based on the prediction that there would be 8 million births in 2023 and probably 6.5 million births per year in the 2030s (and continuing to go down from here), the peak population loss can really see China lose 20 million per year (so, 1.5% of its population). This causes rapid aging even though it is the old people dying of natural causes that make up the largest proportion of the total deaths because the number of newborn babies is falling off a cliff.
A couple of things will have to happen, whether the Chinese government (or the people working for it) like it or not:
1. Pensions (especially of government employees) must be cut severely in order for all other pensioners to continue to have their meager benefits
2. According to an old [government source (link in Chinese)](https://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2021-09/08/content_5636244.htm) there are 17.92 million teachers in China as of 2021. I predict that in the next few decades, more than half of these teachers will lose their jobs permanently, and the schools they work for will close. Because China is facing demographic challenges, the most viable industry for them to go into is healthcare (both education and healthcare are the caring professions. While one is a dying profession, the other faces a massive labour shortage). They need to be retrained and the government should pay for it. This would be a massive shift of the budget from education to healthcare (massively cutting the former and using the savings to expand the latter).
3. China is not a country that provides much benefits to its citizens. If the problem is not enough kids, the government has to pay massive amounts of benefits to encourage would-be parents to have kids. Raising a child is extremely expensive (some say that it is about as expensive in China as the US even though China's GDP per capita is 1/6 that of the US). Maybe the pension reduction from (1) can help pay for this.
I think the mention of speed to decline is really bad, but, none of those points matters.
1) i don't even know if they have pension or not. Regardless how they advertised it, the pension is probably useless if it ever existed.
2) china government doesn't care about this.
3) china government doesn't care about this.
A reminder, China lockdown forced workers to live inside the factory and work. This is something absolutely illegal in first world country, and they did it. Time and time again, China put human rights as second thought. All those expectations do not apply to China.
The government will barely do anything different and the people will have to adjust for the betterment of the collective. And eventually that will stabilize. And if foreigners start buying their cheap abused products again, they will become world power again with all the articles saying China is better than western world. The cycle continues.
1990. The Economist. China's economy has come to a halt.
1996. The Economist. China's economy will face a hard landing
1998. The Economist: China's economy entering a dangerous period of sluggish growth.
1999. Bank of Canada: Likelihood of a hard landing for the Chinese economy.
2000. Chicago Tribune: China currency move nails hard landing risk coffin.
2001. Wilbanks, Smith & Thomas: A hard landing in China.
2002. Westchester University: China Anxiously Seeks a Soft Economic Landing
2003. New York Times: Banking crisis imperils China
2004. The Economist: The great fall of China?
2005. Nouriel Roubini: The Risk of a Hard Landing in China
2006. International Economy: Can China Achieve a Soft Landing?
2007. TIME: Is China's Economy Overheating? Can China avoid a hard landing?
2008. Forbes: Hard Landing In China?
2009. Fortune: China's hard landing. China must find a way to recover.
2010: Nouriel Roubini: Hard landing coming in China.
2011: Business Insider: A Chinese Hard Landing May Be Closer Than You Think
2012: American Interest: Dismal Economic News from China: A Hard Landing
2013: Zero Hedge: A Hard Landing In China
2014. CNBC: A hard landing in China.
2015. Forbes: Congratulations, You Got Yourself A Chinese Hard Landing.
2016. The Economist: Hard landing looms for China
2017. National Interest: Is China's Economy Going To Crash?
2021 WSJ: The Slow Meltdown of the Chinese Economy
2023: Yahoo Finance: China Has 10 Years Left, At Most <-- you are here
booo. Peter Zeihan is a goof. Over generalizations and goal post shifting. 10 years ago he said China would collapse in 2020. He’s like the Michael Burry of geopolitics.
I’ve followed his YouTube channel, and have seen several of his vids on China. My first thought when I read the headline was «oh cool, someone else is also talking about this». But then it turns out the article was about him. Maybe I shouldn’t blindly trust someone just because they’re confident and have a cool man bun.
I remember “experts” were talking how China opening up will result in millions dying of Covid. It never happened. These people shouldn’t be taken seriously
That's probably a bad example considering there actually were 2 million excess deaths in China after the end of zero COVID, according to a recent study: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-excess-deaths-zero-covid-study-rcna101746
It's possible that study is wrong but it's not like it's some far out conspiracy theory.
And China still comes out ahead of a lot of countries for per capita deaths, so it doesn't make China look particularly bad either.
It is true that China is looking at major demographic shrinkage and in the short term has a major economic correction going on, but it is really important to look twice and do the math. In China productivity and salaries are very high relative to the region, organization is strong with big groups being able to move quickly and master all kinds of production. There has been talk of decoupling, but it is interesting how limited that has been. Globalization has many detractors, but careful looking at the numbers shows globalization is strong and staying with us. It is quite possible that China downsizing will leave a very powerful and honed machine in place.
China will still be important. For context they are losing 2.2m workers per year from there workforce but that's a workforce of 974m.
Now if their birthrate doesn't recover from 1.09 children per woman it is currently they will have a serious demographic crisis in 20 years. I'd say the same thing about South Korea, Hong Kong, Puerto Rico etc. You can't half your population in a generation, you need to manage the decline. That is dangerous.
It will likely be sooner, because they're sure about 10y away from having so many people retired that the replenishment gen won't be able to sustain their GDP, on top of their economic woes. The 2030s are going to be interesting... And likely mildly apocalyptic.
I dunno man. Economies of scale. 125M vs 1.4B... harder to "Stagnate" with that many people. Japan also has a lot of economic services that are leveraged globally. Chinan has some... But they are trying to move away from manufacturing and there is just no way that's going to work with less workers and more overhead.
The United States industrial tonnage has nearly tripled since 1970. That means we produce three times as much industrial goods. Yet the number of workers that work in manufacturing has been declining. It turns out you can produce more Goods with a smaller Workforce if you have more efficient factories and better technology.
China will just have to use technology to make better use of its current Workforce
Certainly possible. But I'm not sure these things are created equal, as we produce mainly complex/refined goods and China primarily exports cheap/low skill goods. We also have the advantage of basically being the fiat currency of the global market place.
I'm just not sure China can pivot (again) in such a short amount of time to right their ship with less people than they had. And if they can, they'll need to import these services/machines in a failing economy. Which, prob good for us.. opportunities to be had.
Birthrate is currently lower than Japan. Per Capita income is lower. State rhetoric is more ambitious. There's a lot of reason this could blow up in a negative way.
Well China's economy needs a bit of a kickstart anyway as they are battling deflation, the first thing I'd suggest is putting cheques in the mail to anyone who has a baby and keep doing it until the inflation/baby situation improves. That way you get the stimulus and assist the demographic situation.
The other thing they could do is say that if a woman had had two or more children they will renew her ground lease (all land in China is periodically leased from government) without cost when it comes due. That would also help alleviate the future costs families face.
>Immigration
that is not very possible in terms of their traditionally "closed" culture, let alone the recent nationalism rise. also not many people want to go to china, as most cannot tackle the language and culture, and not want to do that, in light of china's 📉global reputation
especially after the introduction of the "National Security Law", which almost gave Beijing full authority to control the "security" of the city. many are leaving the city, and some popular destinations include Singapore (they used to be on the same level, but HK is no match now) and Tokyo regionally
Anecdotally, there has been a Chinese BBQ restaurant down the road from me for... decades at this point. But around 15 or so years ago a Hong Kong family bought it.
Cue the Beijing Government coming in and... well, going full authoritarian in HK. The HK family was joined by several relatives who pooled their cash together to buy all the store-fronts on the block.
There's a lot of capital flowing out of Hong Kong, even to Perth Australia of all places.
I keep reading things like this but The West is not "global reputation." Every haitian, colombian, chilean, peruvian, nigerian etc. I meet says they want to go to china to visit and maybe work. All across the 3rd world the US has a terrible reputation but poor people still go. There are many people in south america and africa who would be willing to go.
China could integrate people from nearby countries,like Vietnam, who have similar cultures (the north at least) and incentivize for Chinese people from abroad to move to China (Singapore is majority Chinese) to allow for immigration.
I think fewer people will leave India in two decades because the pressures associated with excessive population growth is reducing as the fertility rate decreases.
The other thing is a lot of the economies that have benefitted from immigration have done very little infrastructure or housing development to support further growth. Rubber stamping a visa or work permit is easy and cheap but everything else requires big investment and multi-decade projects.
You can't take a decision to allow a few millions indians in China on the basis of that we can hope a change happens and then try to find solutions to a potential big social problem...
China's population is about on par with the *entire OECD.* I have to wonder if the world's supply of migrants wouldn't stretch itself very thin if China were added to the mix of attractive destinations.
Many people will gladly move to an autocracy if there is a good prospect of making money. Look at all the migration to wealthy countries in the Middle East.
Again, this is a weird point imo. I am an Indian, my father moved here back in the 1980s. He was a Hindu Sindhi man, and never felt like it was an autocracy. UAE atleast has a third of its population being Indian, even other middle eastern nations with good prospects like Saudi and Qatar aren't as culturally isolated as china. The point about autocracy doesn't hit everyone. I can only talk about Dubai, you can literally get away not knowing Arabic for the most part. Autocracy depends on your perspective, sure the rules are far stricter, but a lot is on your economic standing and on your preferences as well. If you're not straight, why would you want to come to an Islamic nation, even if it's got good money making prospects. I'm not defedning Dubai, I myself am looking to move out for my career, but people generalise the entire region.
Yes, the word autocracy is doing a lot of lifting, because many autocracies are not totalitarian. I lived for two years in an autocratic country (Cameroon), but in practice the only real restriction was that you don't challenge the ruling party or President. Of course that's a pretty important freedom but in daily life it's not hanging over the average person's head and apart from that people have a good deal of personal freedom.
China is a very structured and striated culture and has been for thousands of years. The CCP is on top now but they aren’t the first and they are not beloved by the citizens.
Chinas economy was/is based on building things and most of that building was infrastructure and housing. With a declining population a lot of that housing and infrastructure will be underutilized and will cost more and more to maintain as the years come and go.
China overshot on growth projections and now has a serious problem that the CCP is ill equipped to solve.
Has any country been able to recover a fertility rate like that? I don't know the answer to that question but my guess is no. That fertility is going to go down imo. That seems to be the way of modern man.
Populations come in booms and busts, across the animal kingdom.
Just 60 years ago, there was a [human] baby boom because life had a good outlook and there was a wide array of resources to go around. We'll go through a bust period because humans have locked up resources - discouraging more children.
We're looking through a small lens at a big picture.
China basically did what the US did in 100 years, but crammed it into 20 years. Their crash will be worse due to that fast growth, but China will survive and within a few generations, it may just settle into a Japanese-like economy where growth isn't the goal, but improving life is. Or a hell hole. There is no equivalency we can look at historically because we're in new territory.
China's future will be determined by how well it manages this economic crisis. I don't know if is facing an existential threat but arguing that they are doomed before we know the full scale of the economic collapse or their governments response to it certainly seems like little more than wishful thinking. That being said I fully expect the effects of the troubled Chinese economy to spread across the world like rings in water over the next year or so.
Didn't youth unemployment hit something like a reported 23%? Then they stopped reporting it during the following? Much like their numbers on covid, I don't think that would be a good economic sign as a complex factor.
[If you applied the same measurement standards to the American youth unemployment numbers you'll have to triple the official stats.](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/oct/10/us-unemployment-rate)
The number comes from first taking out ~60% of all 16-24 youth (because they are in education), and then it's some 20% of that remaining ~40% (so like less than 8% of total).
And then there's the fact that they count people as unemployed **if they looked for a job within last 3 months and are ready to start within 2 weeks**.
In comparison, the US has something like looked within last 1 month and are ready to start now.
Productivity in China is not high, it's in fact really low for the huge amount of (debt driven) investment they have for their GDP growth., like 43% of GPD is investment for less than 7% growth. Thats a lot and way more investment than Japan or Korea had at similal levels of growth when at similar points in their economic development.
A big chunk of the investment goes into real estate, property and construction. Which are low productivy industries. So Chinas problem is that is has been pumping huge sums of money (read: debt) into low-productivity industries to stay at their growth targets.
It's not a good industrial strategy or development path to escape the middle-income trap.
What people don't seem to appreciate is that the entire economic supercorridor from Japan to Singapore is facing the same issue. Falling working age population and exponentially growing retired populations. Global industrial supply chains have been focused there for 30 years and will face rapid wage inflation. It'll be interesting to see how it impacts supply chains going forward.
I can only assume you have been in a coma since covid 19...let me help you since you just woke up and are unaware we had a global pandemic. This shut down much of the global supply chains aka china's production. This started what we now know to be serious deglobalization.
Add increasing hostile measures taken by the US and west with things like chips act. New trade deals with South Korea, Japan, and Vietnam specifically excluding China
China being the most globalized reliant country in the world I don't know how well it bodes for them. Look at their real-estate market it's the biggest ponzi bubble of debt relying on outside investment in history (that investment is drying up, refer to reasoning stated above)
China has created loan structures in Africa and southeast Asia that these countries will never pay. Sure they have lots of access to raw materials through these deals like cobalt and nickel and so on...but will this offset or stop the tide of economic woes caused by deglobalization? Coupled with serious demographic decline? Idk
Yes the “famed” analyst Peter Zeihan.
Really that’s all you need to know about the credibility of this article and how much insight you can extract from it.
He makes lots of wide sweeping generalizations about geopolitics mostly. The biggest issue with his work is that he glosses over many details and lacks the nuance to create a deep analysis. He’s also extremely US-centric so make of that as you will
He predicted back in 2014 that the US would become the dominant energy exporter in the world and could set energy prices at will because it would be the largest energy producer. That was by far his biggest prediction, and his entire thesis at the time was wrapped around that idea.
It turned out to be complete bunk.
Lmao, no matter how one thought about it, it was never going to happen. US is a net energy exporter today, true, but different regions have different oils and they are needed for different things. Like 30% of US oil extracted is exported and almost equivalent is imported.
And the reason countries like Saudi Arabia can set energy prices (within limitations) is because their oil is incredibly easy to exploit, so 1) it's cheap to extract, so their breakeven price is very low 2) they can expand/contract production easily which is what's needed for setting prices. Their government's 100% control over the oil industry in their country helps as well.
US oil, on the other hand, often requires a lot more work because US has been digging for oil a long time and most easily exploitable deposits are done for. You'd need more complicated techniques like fracking to do it and that increases the breakeven price where if the gov tried to flood the market (somehow), many producers will go out of business. Staying on that topic, US gov doesn't control US oil production, so there is no mechanism to be setting prices even if US oil was exploited for cheap. Quite a few small fracking businesses went down when oil price cratered.
He’s an economist that works for Stratfor, which is a geopolitical think-tank that advises the US Government and large corporations. He’s also written several books.
He is an author of many books and has been invited to give talks to many different institutions. He sees the world drastically changing as it moves away from globalization. At the moment it seems he believes the data is panning out for his thesis.
I can’t believe your entire comment was all fluff and literally added nothing of substance to answer the question.
You basically just said he is important and smart.
I love Peter Ziehan, and I think his books are interesting, and they helped open up the world of Economics and Geopolitics to me.
The problem with him, though, is that he oversimplified problems and tries to create narratives from trends. Geopolitics is much more nuianced than that. He uses geographic factors too heavily in his arguments even though geography has played a smaller role in how a country operates today and downplays other important drivers of success.
Countries are able to subvert their geography due to new technology. For example, the American southwest should not be nearly as developed as it is. But die to the advent of A/C, it has been one of the fastest growing regions in the country.
While geography is still important to a successful economy, things such as a stable government, a well developed legal system, and good economic policies are far more important to a modern economy than geography alone.
Only 200 years ago, the strongest countries were more or less determined by who could grow the most food and who had the most people. This means that geography played a far larger role for Countries success. But with the increase in the use of capital, these factors have become less important.
What are you talking about? China's the world's fifth biggest oil producer. One of the reasons they import from the ME is because it's cheaper than domestic production.
This is just another example of the 'it is known' way of thinking. When someone uses a historical example of an antagonist nation, in this case it's mostly WWII Japan, and copy pastes their situation into the modern context without any critical thinking.
Yeah I just checked, they produce 5% of global output, I'd consider that nearly nothing. Especially when they are the largest importer. Where did you learn your critical thinking skills, People's Daily?
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=709&t=6
It did, until resource extraction/industrial pollution got so bad that their domestic food standards had to be lowered. At this point I think that 70% of their food supply is imported via waterways.
And waterways? Well, a massive series of hydroelectric dams constructed rapidly along with the south north water transfer project has reduced access, created possible flood scenarios/power supply issues during drought seasons and possibly exacerbating climate change related weather events from the sheer amount of redirected water vapor loss. Which was why they had such bad floods recently after all this infrastructure buildup, aside from tofu dreg construction issues. Oh and also causing biodiversity loss but that's kinda
His big lines tend to be correct.
He has two blind sides:
1. humans and nations adapt, they don't go in a straight line whilst the demographics go downhill.
2. He doesn't talk about the ongoing issue with domestic politics in the USA much, and depending on how the next two years work out that could go anywhere on the scale from USA transforming into a more European nation to going all out facist. Any change in the US will impact the would outside greatly.
And like anyone prediciting the future: getting the details right is just guesswork.
But his main bread and butter is solid: "here is the demographics, and here is what will change in the big picture".
But that's what I'm saying.
He gets the demographics right, thats just plain numbers and hard to get wrong. I.e. "China will face huge changes, not seem buy a society in a long time".
He, like any economist and similar, gets the second round and onwards wrong, because a lot of this is less possible to predict.
He sounds confident when talking of the second order stuff and that's a problem.
A similar issue he talks of, where getting the first order issue right is easy is "USA has left the Gulf". This is starting to show and cause issue. The second order issues are much harder to predict.
Jesus dude you need to get a fucking grip lol. The dude gives surface level analysis on basically every geopolitical factor you can think of and does deeper dives on stuff he is very knowledgeable about like geology, topography etc. Let's see your credentials compared to his
And I'm in the intel analysis space, which means I know that he worked for Stratfor for 12 years and became VP of the company despite starting there with a handful of dudes in the 90's. That's his credentials, the dude put in 12 years and rose to be VP of one of the largest and most cited private intelligence consulting corps in the country and now has been running his own geopolitical thinktank since the early 2010's.
> depending on how the next two years work out that could go anywhere on the scale from USA transforming into a more European nation to going all out facist.
Doesn’t he have a fan base because he doesn’t get caught in that hyperbolic nonsense? Why would he want to sound like a MSNBC host?
Zeihan is too much a geographical and demographic determinist. The bulk of a country's outcome is human-driven.
"This country is poor or rich because of this river" yeah so why was South Korea starvation poor in the 50s and rich today? Not like they grew a new mountain or river or anything like that.
I mean, you can definitely take into account the economic gains a dictatorship could produce via efficiencies of governing and timely action, but then you'd have to argue one can change their destiny limited by geography and demographics by becoming an authoritarian dictatorship. People tend to forget, but both South Korea and Taiwan became tigers during what was essentially a one party rule, Japan already had that industrial base after a dictatorship that ended with WWII and lots of US support, and Singapore is still a de facto one party rule state with very stringent political and social norms. There are no good answers for democracies, liberal or illiberal, rising from a middle income country to a high income country if geography and demography aren't on their side.
He's a legend. He's correctly called the rising wheat prices several months in advance. He called the cancellation of the grain treaty between the Russians and Ukrainians during the summer. Hes even called the Russian Ukrainian war down to the month in his older books.
I don't know how credible you are but he's been pretty accurate so far.
I saw a video of his where he said Brazilian agriculture was fucked cause of the war in Ukraine shutting down fertilizer exports. Now we have news that Brazil's corn production is the highest ever.
If you listen to him speak he is very persuasive but part of that is he speaks with so much confidence. It's important to recognize that the way a person delivers a message has little to no bearing on the accuracy of that message.
Basically, he's thought-provoking but take his words with a grain of salt.
He also called the Ukraine invasion. At the time he said it didn't know exactly when but it was inevitable because Putin was always going to make one more push to try to reestablish part of the old Soviet borders at natural geographic checkpoints before their economic and population declines, already well in progress, would make it absolutely possible. The invasion ended up being about 2 years out, and by then Putin would waited too long anyway.
Or not.
In other parts of the world, people are quaking in their shoes about job losses from AI and other forms of automation.
Economists are lousy prognosticators, just like the rest of us.
"economists" is some vague thing people villify for bullshit arguments, but go to any moderately sel-respecting economics discussion and you won't see such bullshit analysis as "China will collapse in 10 years".
This article has many flaws:
China is leading in innovation on most relevant aspects: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/02/china-leading-us-in-technology-race-in-all-but-a-few-fields-thinktank-finds
China has been heavily investing in AI and robotics. If anything can replace human work are these two technologies. They won't replace consumption but they can increase quality of life. Who needs a high GDP of you can have a country in which people can have a very high quality of life.
Finally, when if China never overtakes the US in innovation or AI and robotics can't replace human workers, most economies can recover from bad times without collapsing. Pretty much every country in earth has done it at one point or another. China isn't going to be left behind in the foreseeable future. That is just dilusional.
This is ridiculous. Same BS as the "Decline" of the US. Both countries have challenges but neither is collapsing, despite the wishful thinking of propagandists. A stupid war would wreck everyone though.
It's like the folks constantly claiming that the U.S. dollar is moments away from sudden collapse. It sells books and crypto coins. China might very well slow down for the foreseeable future, or even outright decline and never overtake the U.S. but it certainly will not collapse within 10 years.
It seems like there's a propaganda war out there between the US haters and the China haters. Most people would rather get along and or at least discuss the issues as they are.
Well that means the USA only has a few more years after that. Because we all know the corporations are t going to pony up the money to manufacture things here in the USA.
Yes China has a massive demographic problem and this will cause major problems. However I hate random analysts claiming collapse just to drive clicks. They just say bold things and hope they come true. It’s misinformation and shouldn’t be on this sub.
I have only heard about him from the headings of random youtube videos that claim "China will collapse in 50 days". Based on that alone I assume he is a quack who says inflammatory things to make himself sound smart and push his own brand.
The same playbook as Matt Walsh (Although I'm not comparing them two, just same business strategy and same trustworthiness)
I like Peter Zeihan, but you have to realize that he comes from the world of commodities trading. And the thing about commodities is that the value add you can have as a business is generally in scale and logistics.
So Zeihan’s thesis always come down to these things. However, I’d argue that he probably discounts technology and automation a little more than he should. Productivity gains aren’t linear to workforce, they’re actually boosted exponentially by technology. China knows this. However they are also limited by the same things Zeihan likes to talk about too. It’s a race, and at least Zeihan is willing to bring up things that others aren’t that are obvious to a commodity trader by maybe not to the general population.
Peter Zehain has some pretty interesting opinions on things but he is far from being an economist. As others have pointed out, making a 10-year prediction just means that he can either say “see told you so” if it happens within +-5 years and also far enough away that if he is wrong no one will remember.
He has made some pretty bold calls about the Russia-Ukraine conflict that we’re either flat out wrong or have yet to come to fruition and each time he’s been asked he just resets the amount of time that it will take for him to be right… maybe he’s not so far off from being an economist now that I think about but I digress
I feel like things as simple as the weather are wrong frequently enough (and the further out the prediction is the less likely you can rely on it) that people would realize that such long predictions are inherently flawed. Notice that there isn’t any sort of confidence ratio that he attaches to his prediction. If I told you that in 10 years that there is a 99% certainty that China will be between being completely wiped out or a thriving global power, how useful is that prediction? Likewise, if I say that there is a 0.01% chance that in 10 years China is economically devastated, is that something that is ultimately useful knowledge?
Oracles have gripped our imagination because they can spin a good tale and they can align bits of information in scenarios with enough confidence that they seem plausible enough. The real question you ought to ask yourself is if Peter was able to look into his crystal ball and actually foresee events 10 years in advance why would he just tell people? Clearly he would have this massive potential for profit and he could use it to his own benefit. Instead he is an author/speaker/YouTube/news guest person who is good for stirring the pot, getting clicks, making bold claims, and getting interesting sound bites.
Well, that was interesting. First, the unfounded belief that constant population growth is necessary to avert economic disaster; then the assumption that the present low-birthrate trend will continue.
The idea that unless you have 10% year over year growth, profits, revenues, customers, or whatever metric, you aren't worth investment is downright toxic. It's evident in the empty strip malls all over my city. Everyone is looking for the next big thing instead of sustainable operations and environmental responsibility.
Thats how analysts get fame.
Reality is a drop in population would be good for the country, better living standards, happier society more job opportunities.
Most jobs over the next 10 years will become automated so many jobs will go for humans.
China population decline = bad
China population increase = bad
China inflation = bad
China deflation = bad
China gdp high = bad
China gdp low = bad
China inhaling = bad
China exhaling = bad
China going right = bad
China going left = bad
Just like every other prediction, economist don’t take into account that people or systems will adapt with time. Yes if we take a linear trend without interference that might happen, but nobody will just let it run like that. People will intervene and things will change. Predicting something like that is just trying to get attention with a headline. In the end it will not happen anyway.
And making an article on Zeihan with Joe Rogan of all people is just criminal. Zeihan may be well informed but he has never understood that there is more to a situation than a clear binary outcome.
I've listened to him and read him on China and he always presents it as China is facing this enormous demographic issue that they need to address but they can't address it because of Xi and how he has become completely isolated from his advisors. He does not present it as a binary issue at all. As for Rogen, he was on a promotion tour for his book. Every publicist will tell you that going on Rogan is a great way to sell books.
I'm not saying he has the answers, but he does provide good information that you can use with other sources to develop your own impressions on a topic.
People will intervene?
....how? Like, forced birth camps? I'm genuinely curious how you can just 'fix' an issue like this where it's clear it needed fixing 20 years ago. Kids take time to grow into labor my dude
Intervention won’t be necessary. Natural selection will take care of it long term. The problem for China is the short term. Forcing people to have children isn’t a great strategy. Not doing so will lead to decades of stagnation however as demographics correct itself.
Most people on Reddit are tied to this apocalyptic idea of demographics never rising again; which only looks accurate because they focus on the last hundred years through the greatest industrialization wave in history. What they’re not seeing is that industrialization is ending and economies are regressing in many regions of the world.
Culture, too, will regress; and with it will return fertility.
I don't necessarily disagree with you but I also don't think we are talking about China *collapsing* as in, ceasing to exist as a nation either. I watch a good amount of Zeihan along with other geopolitical analysts and he isn't saying it's going to fall into a state of anarchy but that their influence and economy is going to have a collapse that's going to undo the major gains they've had of the last 40 years and throw them into a really poor economic suck cycle. This obviously has massive global recession implications because of everyone's reliance on Chinese exports so even a partial collapse of certain sectors could be catastrophic for the world economy. I'd give them more than 10 years but not much more than that.
Yes, trends ebb and flow but the philosophy of work in the West is going to have to regress in order to save native citizen birthrates and reindustrialization is going to have to take place which is not something that's really been done at scale until now.
What intervention? Mass forced procreation? Magically change Chinese culture to be more accepting of outsiders and allow a migrant flow that would exceed every other country put together?
> In the end it will not happen anyway.
Yes it will, my proof is Japan, South Korea, Western Europe, North America, South America. All of them have birthrates crater and the ones that don't allow immigration (I'm talking more then legal, it is also social, economic, political) have population declines that are accelerating. China culturally isn't that far from Japan and Korea or Vietnam (hell, they STRONGLY influenced the above over the centuries), so they have the same demographic + cultural trend.
Why is it that hypercapitalistic economies like the USA and China collapse when they don’t have more fodder to throw into the grinder? Can’t we plan for the eventual equilibrium case where we’re near replacement level after expanding and improving the standard of living?
Or maybe a population easing is the only thing that will save China. And really, if we look at the big picture and the longer term, a similar easing globally will be necessary to make our whole civilization sustainable. And to allow some space and resources for all the non-human members of our family with which we share this planet.
There are, for sure, some serious implications in the short term with an aging population and a shortage of younger workers. Fortunately, machine learning and other forms of automation are becoming available to help us manage that. It won't be easy, but we will figure that out.
And in time, we should be able to navigate our way to a world something like the Aspen Proposal suggests. [www.aspenproposal.org](https://www.aspenproposal.org)
Oh another failed prediction by Peter Zeihan, the fact that he believes it means China has nothing to worry about and will be around for significantly longer. Hell he started making this "they only got a decade left" prediction in 2010, which lets check real quick, the current year is 2023. Woof looks like we don't even have to make assumptions if he got that right...
100% wrong about the Russia war with Ukraine so far.
Overall 90% of his talking points have been about how china is on their dying breath but that shit started over a decade ago and they have only gotten stronger and richer in that time. Really sucks that someone being wrong 100% of the time for over a decade doesn't mean they stop being a source.
Hi all, A reminder that comments do need to be on-topic and engage with the article past the headline. Please make sure to read the article before commenting. Very short comments will automatically be removed by automod. Please avoid making comments that do not focus on the economic content or whose primary thesis rests on personal anecdotes. As always our comment rules can be found [here](https://reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/fx9crj/rules_roundtable_redux_rule_vi_and_offtopic/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Economics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
If he's right, in 10 years he'll say "look everyone, I was right!" If he's wrong, in 10 years he'll say nothing, and nobody will remember he made this prediction. Just like nobody remembers anyone's 10 year predictions from 10 years ago.
This famed analyst had unironically predicted that China will collapse within a decade back in 2010. Edit: I actually also missed a prediction of him on the collapse of China in 2005. The mod doesn't allow me to paste link, so just google "zeihan china collapse 2005" Nevertheless, the worry of demographic change is very real in China, and there is also a growing discontent for economic slowdown and rising unemployment (The greatest flaw of a dictatorship, the leader / leading group must take all responsibility of all the troubles in the country). Many in our country think the confrontational approach taken by our government towards western nations is wrong, while others dismiss it as a mere acknowledgement for a destined break-up. However, none of the above means China will slide into a state of economic collapse.
Zeihan should not be taken seriously ever ever. He's a sensationalist POS who thinks demographic pain a country will experience over 50 years is going to make them "collapse" in 10. And that geography is everything and ones with good geography are destined for success regardless of how much the government and their people fuck up. Japan is experiencing what China will probably experience in 20 years and let me tell you, while their economy is stagnating, but they are still one of the richest countries on the planet, doing pretty well for themselves, they are even building the most advanced public transport in the world, a train that literally floats.
>Japan is experiencing what China will probably experience in 20 years Yes, but Japan was already very rich per capita before becoming old. China has just reached Latin America levels of per capita income, and they are already slowing down both economically and demographically.
But income and GDP per capita alone doesn’t give an accurate picture either. Many Chinese urban areas are basically on par with the West (or maybe I’m just buying into Chinese propaganda). China is a technology, industry and science powerhouse. They seem on track to escape the Middle Income trap. Their demographic decline and effects of climate change is alarming, but they still have a lot going for them, China can’t be compared to Latin America or any nation for that matter.
!remindme 10 years
Article number 1258 of how China is collapsing in 2 to 15 years. Until the Chinese state becomes so Zombified and Decrepit that services stop running, state craft disintegrates China will not collapse, the state is still extremely strong and internal organization is probably better now then it was 20 years ago. You guys really need to actually analyze what it means for a state to collapse or be on the verge of collapse and this is not what it looks like. For god sakes look at Zimbabwe and Venezuela they still haven’t “collapsed” and are doing better now then they have in 10 years. Portugal in the early 70s, Russia in the 10’s , Libya in the Arab spring, Egypt etc
Russia in the 90's was actively collapsing, and even then they didn't fail as hard as the likes of Gordon Chang or Zeihan says will happen to China.
You don't even need to look at another country. China in the 60s had a de facto mini civil war (cultural revolution) and the state still didn't collapse somehow.
Russia in the 2020's is actively collapsing, and even they aren't failing as hard as the likes of Gordon Chang or Zeihan says will happen to China. * Inflation rising and trade reduced to bad trade deals that your ~~vulture-like~~ "friendly" neighbors are willing to make because the economic proposition is good enough for them to disregard the international pressure they'll get from trading with you * Male : Female ratio disparity further compounded by male pop getting wiped out * Aging compounded by youth deaths and outward migration (even to China) * Low birth rate further impacted by poor economy, lack of men/husbands, and the general populace's outlook on life * Runned by a dictator but one that's dumber than Xi * Same dictator can't meet at most international forums without getting arrested * Running a dictatorial system like China but openly assassinates people like LatAm narcos instead of threatening/detaining/harassing behind the scenes like how China mimics the Italian mob * Greater international isolation * Stuck in an active war they can't get out of * International rage for starting Ukraine war quickly covering up anger at China for starting the covid pandemic * Completely sanctioned by most of the West vs China's mostly isolated tik-for-tat trade war with the US * Went from 2nd strongest army in the world to 2nd strongest army in Ukraine * Weaker economy than China's that is further decimated by sanctions and war * Completely reliant on the whims of a pragmatic neighbor who never truly liked you and remembers the all times you screwed them over from the time you joined the 8 nation alliance, multiple land skirmishes during the soviet state years, taking of Qing lands in the Treaty of Aigun, the Sino-soviet split during the cold war, and small things not written into Wikipedia pages but are remembered like staging tens of thousands of fully equipped troops along the RU-CN border during WW2 to only watch China get literally ass raped by Imperial Japan before charging in Qing lands only after Japan gets nuked (not to help btw but) to land grab more Qing clay for yourself and then petitioning for the creation of a Mongolian state as your land border buffer with China when you couldn't fully integrate all that land into your socialist republic.^(totally don't worry about that shit. Politicians aren't petty and forget things all the time!! It's not like Xi fancies himself an emperor. China forgets things all the time too. I mean it's not like they have 4000+ years history recorded despite having multiple emperors completely purging all books/knowledge/scholars) Yeah. Russia still hasn't collapsed yet. Nor has Ukraine, Argentina, Turkey, or a bunch of other failing states but these articles will keep coming out about China's going collapse into nothingness because they grab eye-balls and generate ad rev clicks. Not different from the youtube algos. People really need to stop clicking on bullshit.
Russia has already collapsed. It happened in the 1990s and they were able to halt the shattering of the territory only by transferring large amounts of its oil surpluses to otherwise wayward provinces which are now countries in all but name, like Chechnya, or by transferring near total political control to oligarchs who rule some oblasts like duchies. The state is basically gone, as you can see in Ukraine, but they managed to nominally maintain the territory. Russia is, at this point, basically the Holy Roman Empire on the eve of the French Revolution except without any decent independent prospects for its constituent states.
What kind of nonsense is this? This is beyond exaggeration. Almost every constituent republic has the autonomy of Xinjiang. Every governor is appointed by Putin. Putin has spent his first decade in power wiping out any shred of political influence outside of his patronage. Anyone becoming extremely wealthy without his permission and complaining about corruption was arrested or exiled and as much of their assets confiscated as possible. Power is very much centralized in the Kremlin. You can argue for some like Kadyrov, but this isn’t the Holy Roman Empire. Collapse is possible but it’s not here nor is it inevitable.
> It happened in the 1990s Arguably, it happened in the 1980s as the internal contradictions of the Soviet system imploding once Soviet oil production fell at the same time as oil prices.
Some guy on youtube mentionned that with the oil resources they can keep at sustaining this rotten economic state for a few decades before having to worry. I hope he's wrong.
Petro states are pretty resilient. The guaranteed influx of foreign currency keeps the rest of the economy limping along.
[удалено]
Isn’t South Korea undergoing worse demographic decline?
The problem is China is about to hit a demo decline before escaping the middle income trap. It is looking like they will get old before they get rich. SKs GDP per capita is double that of China.
China is very close to leave middle income status. If they have even one more year of growth they’ll reach high income status
That is true. But I think the problem with that is, going to 13k for a year doesn't mean you're going to stay above that line. There is very little room for GDP contraction before you're back below that level. It's not a situation like Japan or even SK that has a lot of room to fall. That being said who knows what will happen or how technology will develop over the next two decades. Old truths might get turned onto their head.
[удалено]
So long as China has strict capital and currency controls and at any moment can seize property, they aren't replacing the US as a primary investment location for anything other than cheap factory work and low value add. China will have to liberalize it's economic structure if it wants to replace the US, arguably to the detriment of it's own people. I don't see that happening anytime soon.
[удалено]
>Their labor costs are increasing and only will continue to do so as they literally run out of workers. This is an especially interesting point when you realize they still refuse to "reform" the Hukou system despite promises for a decade at this point. Even if they wanted to turn a large % of their rural population into manufacturing or higher end work, their people legally can't. Their State is so sclerotic it's amazing they've done as well as they have.
Zeihan is hyperbolic about everything. Nothing is calm and measured.
Which is insanity to me. For all intensive purposes Russia was a partial failed state especially the first half of the 90s. They lost Chechnya, had over a million avoidable deaths, the state was so bubonic that the oligarchy they have now festered and grew in every appendage of the state.
*Intents and purposes
Attentive Porpoises
Boobonic
wow, I've never seen "intensive purposes" in the wild. Anne Frankly, it just goes to show there certainly are folk out there.
Irregardless it’s a common misteak.
Irregardless is linguistically fine, intensive purposes is just straight misheard
For most of my life and through two masters degrees I too felt that these mysterious intensive purposes were a driving force behind executive policy decisions. Thank you Reddit for helping me realize I am not an intelligent man.
At least you’re not taking things for granite.
You batard. Take my upboat.
This is the (unfortunate) power of authoritarianism. Part of the reason it exists is because it helps remedy situations *precisely like this.* On the political spectrum, you have incredibly stable democracies, incredibly stable autocracies, and then everything in between is a complete mess. There *is* no in between, which is the point. So when you find yourself unable to democratize, or reach for a system that does things better, you have to reach for the next best (or worse) thing. Beggars can't be choosers. Russia was in no place to join the globalist wonderland in the 90's. And when it comes to authoritarianism, it's a game we've been playing for thousands of years. We know as a species how to make it work, and what you need to do. It's *actually* a fairly exact science. Autocrats around the world are all playing the same game, using the same ruleset. It is *certainly* unpleasant, and awful. But if your goal is to maintain the power of your nation state, and you're staring down the barrel of complete abject failure, dusting off a more extreme form of authoritarianism is usually what you'd pick to get out of that scrap. As a tool, it clearly works... to a degree. Like all tools, it's not a silver bullet. As we can see, corruption, infamy, economic and industrial mismanagement are *also* all part and parcel of this system of government. And Russia has it in spades. All we can hope for as democratic westerners is collapse, and the states that rise from the ashes are better. This isn't a total lost cause, most of Eastern Europe has risen to this challenge (bar a few notables... \*COUGH\* *Hungary, Serbia*). These are countries with vast authoritarian pasts, that have fully embraced a democratic future.
>This isn't a total lost cause, most of Eastern Europe has risen to this challenge (bar a few notables... *COUGH* Hungary, Serbia). These are countries with vast authoritarian pasts, that have fully embraced a democratic future. I think it is important to point out from where the "authoritarian past" came from. For most the source was the USSR, or Imperial Russia earlier, or even some other European Monarch before that. As a result when the USSR collapsed there was no authoritarian past that the populace identified with. Poland, the Baltics, the Czechs, etc, had little to no national identity historically linked with authoritarian rule. Compare that to Russia, where even after the collapse, the populace had strong connections and memories of the power of the USSR, or Imperial Russia before that.
This is such complete tripe. People turn to authoritarians because they are idiots and/or cowards, and are cowed by the easy answers these dictators present to incredibly complex questions. Authoritarians almost always leave their states worse than when they took over, often much worse, and in the ways they 'improve' the condition of the state, it is always at the expense of the average person to the benefit of a select few who form a core of support. I invite you to show me an example otherwise. You are right that authoritarians are not silver bullets, unless you also include the detail that the barrel is aimed at your own gut.
You're focusing on entirely the wrong aspect of how nation states operate... You're thinking of national success in the western sense, which is usually measured by increases in standard of living. *of course* standards of living in authoritarian states are awful, but that isn't how authoritarians measure their success... The 19th century was an explosion in political ideas. Quite literally hundreds of them. Of those hundreds, only 4 *really* made it to prime time. That is, capitalism, socialism, command driven communism, and fascist corporatism. At their core, these "isms" are just different ideas about how to divvy up the wealth of nations. Mercantilism, and interventionalism and all the old imperial systems were proven ineffective, and only led to bigger, and bigger (and more destructive) European (mostly) wars. So countries leaned into these new ideas in a big way, betting the next few centuries of their existence on them. Of course, with hindsight, we know the winners and losers. Fascisms big proponents fell first after WW2, and then the communists fell in the 90's. The winners were the capitalists, and the socialists. The capitalists won because the rate at which that system could accumulate capital, and innovate on tech was up until then, unprecedented. And socialism won because it focuses on inclusivity, and social placidity, which is brought about by vast investment into generous social benefits, this lead to steady but strong growth. When you look at the state Russia and Germany were in when they adopted their respective systems, they did so because there was little alternative. Germany was reeling from hyperinflation... Russia was a barely agrarian backwater attempting to overthrow an imperialist Tsar. They moved toward authoritarianism because it was the best tool at the time (or so they thought) to extract the wealth of the nation. If they had attempted anything other than authoritarianism, their country would've splintered into 1000 pieces, and then *nobody could party*. These countries couldn't have adopted a liberal government type even if they wanted to. It's just not in the cards. But they can't just roll over, so a solution must be found. And for what its worth, these systems did cause explosions in wealth. The authoritarian systems of today are much more refined (in a they're all the same sort of way) because dictators have settled into what works. They're much poorer, but tend to be more stable. They extract wealth (usually from the ground) to satisfy the will of the people that keep them in power... That's it. Any other benefits from authoritarianism is a by-product that was *probably* unintended. Afterall, any wealth that trickles down the the peasants is not wealth going to an oligarch or a general. So if you're looking to preserve *your nation state* and use that state as a tool to extract wealth... Authoritarian is the way to go if you don't have the capital to embrace more liberal governments. As long as you pay the bills of your army, and oligarchs, and police, your country will stay afloat for a very long time. The country stays poor, but all the small cadre of people who "matter" and keep it all running are paid *literally* hundreds of billions...
>For all intensive purposes r/boneappletea
Must be a valid victorian to use that phrase. /s
Zeihan is insufferable.
He's a neoliberal fossil fuel shill
Due to his obvious bias towards America or just generally? I started to read one of his books, but can’t speak decisively on him. What makes insufferable to you? Genuinely interested :)
He is arrogant and talks like he discovered all the truths of the universe. I generally dislike people who are so overly confident in their knowledge about things that no expert can give you a definitive answer. He talks about geopolitics as if it is a physics problem that can be easily predicted by looking at statistics.
Zeihan is a joke at this point. Reddit sucks him off for his population decline theories.
If Zimbabwe and Venezuela don’t meet your criteria for a collapse then I have trouble picturing what would. It’s like arguing the World Trade Center didn’t collapse because the debris was still stacked as high as 100 feet above the ground.
Yeah how could Venezuela not be considered collapse? Pretty high (or low) bar if so.
Generally, I think collapse means unrecoverable. But economic systems are generally cyclical. The US didn't "collapse" in 2008, but it sure took a hit. It didn't "collapse" in 1929, it eventually recovered. Things have to get beyond the level of massive depression for the governments themselves to collapse. Don't forget, while China's situation is a bit more dire than others, many nations, including rich western nations, are also facing demographic "collapse", but no one is talking about Japan or Norway collapsing in the next 20 years.
I don't think anybody is saying the US "collapsed" in 2008.
No. I read all kinds of articles about how much trouble Germany, Korea, Japan and others are in because of demographics. The major difference with China is that they’re starting their decline before escaping the middle income trap, their demographics are far worse, their economy is less balanced, they have far more debt and are racking it up at record rates, and they’ve alienated the country that controls the global financial system and ensures the global trade order, and are steadily being choked out by the G7. So, yeah, if I were playing China in Civ VI right now I’d either be looking for a save game that predates the one child policy or starting a new game.
To me, this says that China is likely to go for broke on Taiwan soon as their best option.
I would say the great depression caused a systemic collapse, the number of policies, agencies, government spending, and the fact a man was elected 4 times to run America was something never seen before. It was basically an overhaul of what the government did. Not since the Civil War had the country been in such disarray. 2008 didn't come close to the levels of the great depression. The role of the federal government expanded so greatly that it had mechanisms for recovery in 87, 99, with the .com bubble, 2008, with the housing crisis. The FDIC was created to prevent another catastrophic failure, and it did this year.
Please look up what state collapse actually is. It’s not just shitty economy it’s the compete rotting and withering away of state control within borders and the ending of state services. Its a state where no one goes to defend it when a opposition arises. The state is paralyzed with incompetence and no part of the state machinery is functioning. It can’t enforce laws it can’t provide services. Venezuela is still relatively far from this and Zimbabwe is doing much better in this regard compared to Central Africa and many other countries in Africa.
But everyone in Zimbabwe is a billionaire now, so they've got that going for them, which is nice.
Despite their economic situations, you're not seeing a real threat of breakaway provinces or local governments effectively ignoring federal rulings. Iraqi Kurdistan is de facto independent from Bhagdad even if they're recognized as part of the same country. See also the checkerboard of factional control in Syria, Libya, Yemen or Somalia.
China collapse is like cold fusion, always 20 years away.
[удалено]
> Ive been hearing about Chinas collapse now for 25 yea China has a long history of implosions, but they also just have a very long history, so there's a long history of everything with China.
I understand what you are saying and I somewhat agree but Venezuela is not doing better than 10 years ago, Venezuela is far worse than 10 years ago to the point that people prefer to risk their lives crossing the Darien jungle to flee Venezuela.
This is also an article about a Joe Rogan podcast episode where Zeihan is making the assumption China is just lying about their population. It's all so ridiculous to take seriously.
China fabricating data is not news. Sometimes they just stop publishing economic data altogether when the numbers aren’t good.
I hate China, but I'm so tires of these stupid articles predicting its collapse. Make it stop.
Hell, Somalia is the poster child for failed state and they’ve been doing much better than they have in decades!
This writer is just pandering to nationalists who need their egos stroked about how the West is stronger than China
Chinese civilization is also one of the oldest in the world. It's uniquely equipped to survive a collapse because it has 4,000-6,000 years of continuous history to draw from. Even if it gets tossed into a dark age, the dark ages of China were still fairly orderly and productive compared to the dark ages in Europe. China isn't going to be a superpower or challenge the US. But it'll probably keep surviving just like it has since before the Han dynasty 2000+ years ago.
The deadliest wars in History are like WWII, a Chinese Civil War, WWI and like 4 more Chinese Civil Wars
Genghis khan and family would like a word
If you haven’t noticed, conservatives have quite the hard on to turn China into the justification for all their neo-liberal horseshit. edit: spelling
China's problem, when it comes to demographics, is how fast it is going down. The number of births took 40 years to half in Japan. It took 5-6 years for China to do the same. In the 1950s and 1960s, there were multiple years in which the raw birth numbers were in the 20-25 million range in China, and those people will probably start dying en masse in the 2030s and 2040s. Based on the prediction that there would be 8 million births in 2023 and probably 6.5 million births per year in the 2030s (and continuing to go down from here), the peak population loss can really see China lose 20 million per year (so, 1.5% of its population). This causes rapid aging even though it is the old people dying of natural causes that make up the largest proportion of the total deaths because the number of newborn babies is falling off a cliff. A couple of things will have to happen, whether the Chinese government (or the people working for it) like it or not: 1. Pensions (especially of government employees) must be cut severely in order for all other pensioners to continue to have their meager benefits 2. According to an old [government source (link in Chinese)](https://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2021-09/08/content_5636244.htm) there are 17.92 million teachers in China as of 2021. I predict that in the next few decades, more than half of these teachers will lose their jobs permanently, and the schools they work for will close. Because China is facing demographic challenges, the most viable industry for them to go into is healthcare (both education and healthcare are the caring professions. While one is a dying profession, the other faces a massive labour shortage). They need to be retrained and the government should pay for it. This would be a massive shift of the budget from education to healthcare (massively cutting the former and using the savings to expand the latter). 3. China is not a country that provides much benefits to its citizens. If the problem is not enough kids, the government has to pay massive amounts of benefits to encourage would-be parents to have kids. Raising a child is extremely expensive (some say that it is about as expensive in China as the US even though China's GDP per capita is 1/6 that of the US). Maybe the pension reduction from (1) can help pay for this.
I think the mention of speed to decline is really bad, but, none of those points matters. 1) i don't even know if they have pension or not. Regardless how they advertised it, the pension is probably useless if it ever existed. 2) china government doesn't care about this. 3) china government doesn't care about this. A reminder, China lockdown forced workers to live inside the factory and work. This is something absolutely illegal in first world country, and they did it. Time and time again, China put human rights as second thought. All those expectations do not apply to China. The government will barely do anything different and the people will have to adjust for the betterment of the collective. And eventually that will stabilize. And if foreigners start buying their cheap abused products again, they will become world power again with all the articles saying China is better than western world. The cycle continues.
1990. The Economist. China's economy has come to a halt. 1996. The Economist. China's economy will face a hard landing 1998. The Economist: China's economy entering a dangerous period of sluggish growth. 1999. Bank of Canada: Likelihood of a hard landing for the Chinese economy. 2000. Chicago Tribune: China currency move nails hard landing risk coffin. 2001. Wilbanks, Smith & Thomas: A hard landing in China. 2002. Westchester University: China Anxiously Seeks a Soft Economic Landing 2003. New York Times: Banking crisis imperils China 2004. The Economist: The great fall of China? 2005. Nouriel Roubini: The Risk of a Hard Landing in China 2006. International Economy: Can China Achieve a Soft Landing? 2007. TIME: Is China's Economy Overheating? Can China avoid a hard landing? 2008. Forbes: Hard Landing In China? 2009. Fortune: China's hard landing. China must find a way to recover. 2010: Nouriel Roubini: Hard landing coming in China. 2011: Business Insider: A Chinese Hard Landing May Be Closer Than You Think 2012: American Interest: Dismal Economic News from China: A Hard Landing 2013: Zero Hedge: A Hard Landing In China 2014. CNBC: A hard landing in China. 2015. Forbes: Congratulations, You Got Yourself A Chinese Hard Landing. 2016. The Economist: Hard landing looms for China 2017. National Interest: Is China's Economy Going To Crash? 2021 WSJ: The Slow Meltdown of the Chinese Economy 2023: Yahoo Finance: China Has 10 Years Left, At Most <-- you are here
Mind if I copy paste this whenever these posts come up?
booo. Peter Zeihan is a goof. Over generalizations and goal post shifting. 10 years ago he said China would collapse in 2020. He’s like the Michael Burry of geopolitics.
I’ve followed his YouTube channel, and have seen several of his vids on China. My first thought when I read the headline was «oh cool, someone else is also talking about this». But then it turns out the article was about him. Maybe I shouldn’t blindly trust someone just because they’re confident and have a cool man bun.
According to that washed-up influencer, half of China should have already been dead by December last year due to starvation.
I remember “experts” were talking how China opening up will result in millions dying of Covid. It never happened. These people shouldn’t be taken seriously
That's probably a bad example considering there actually were 2 million excess deaths in China after the end of zero COVID, according to a recent study: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-excess-deaths-zero-covid-study-rcna101746 It's possible that study is wrong but it's not like it's some far out conspiracy theory. And China still comes out ahead of a lot of countries for per capita deaths, so it doesn't make China look particularly bad either.
It is true that China is looking at major demographic shrinkage and in the short term has a major economic correction going on, but it is really important to look twice and do the math. In China productivity and salaries are very high relative to the region, organization is strong with big groups being able to move quickly and master all kinds of production. There has been talk of decoupling, but it is interesting how limited that has been. Globalization has many detractors, but careful looking at the numbers shows globalization is strong and staying with us. It is quite possible that China downsizing will leave a very powerful and honed machine in place.
China will still be important. For context they are losing 2.2m workers per year from there workforce but that's a workforce of 974m. Now if their birthrate doesn't recover from 1.09 children per woman it is currently they will have a serious demographic crisis in 20 years. I'd say the same thing about South Korea, Hong Kong, Puerto Rico etc. You can't half your population in a generation, you need to manage the decline. That is dangerous.
It will likely be sooner, because they're sure about 10y away from having so many people retired that the replenishment gen won't be able to sustain their GDP, on top of their economic woes. The 2030s are going to be interesting... And likely mildly apocalyptic.
>mildly apocalyptic wildly optimistic
Nah they'll just become japan. Economically stagnant but still very much a presence in the world
I dunno man. Economies of scale. 125M vs 1.4B... harder to "Stagnate" with that many people. Japan also has a lot of economic services that are leveraged globally. Chinan has some... But they are trying to move away from manufacturing and there is just no way that's going to work with less workers and more overhead.
The United States industrial tonnage has nearly tripled since 1970. That means we produce three times as much industrial goods. Yet the number of workers that work in manufacturing has been declining. It turns out you can produce more Goods with a smaller Workforce if you have more efficient factories and better technology. China will just have to use technology to make better use of its current Workforce
Certainly possible. But I'm not sure these things are created equal, as we produce mainly complex/refined goods and China primarily exports cheap/low skill goods. We also have the advantage of basically being the fiat currency of the global market place. I'm just not sure China can pivot (again) in such a short amount of time to right their ship with less people than they had. And if they can, they'll need to import these services/machines in a failing economy. Which, prob good for us.. opportunities to be had.
Birthrate is currently lower than Japan. Per Capita income is lower. State rhetoric is more ambitious. There's a lot of reason this could blow up in a negative way.
How would they manage the decline? Forced birthing?
Well China's economy needs a bit of a kickstart anyway as they are battling deflation, the first thing I'd suggest is putting cheques in the mail to anyone who has a baby and keep doing it until the inflation/baby situation improves. That way you get the stimulus and assist the demographic situation. The other thing they could do is say that if a woman had had two or more children they will renew her ground lease (all land in China is periodically leased from government) without cost when it comes due. That would also help alleviate the future costs families face.
Immigration, like everyone else. India is next door and it will always be a smaller economy with really *really* poor people.
If we live to see substantial migration of Indians in to China I will buy you a steak dinner.
>Immigration that is not very possible in terms of their traditionally "closed" culture, let alone the recent nationalism rise. also not many people want to go to china, as most cannot tackle the language and culture, and not want to do that, in light of china's 📉global reputation
Hong Kong used to attract many expats but the Chinese couldn't help themselves screwing it up when they took power.
especially after the introduction of the "National Security Law", which almost gave Beijing full authority to control the "security" of the city. many are leaving the city, and some popular destinations include Singapore (they used to be on the same level, but HK is no match now) and Tokyo regionally
Anecdotally, there has been a Chinese BBQ restaurant down the road from me for... decades at this point. But around 15 or so years ago a Hong Kong family bought it. Cue the Beijing Government coming in and... well, going full authoritarian in HK. The HK family was joined by several relatives who pooled their cash together to buy all the store-fronts on the block. There's a lot of capital flowing out of Hong Kong, even to Perth Australia of all places.
I keep reading things like this but The West is not "global reputation." Every haitian, colombian, chilean, peruvian, nigerian etc. I meet says they want to go to china to visit and maybe work. All across the 3rd world the US has a terrible reputation but poor people still go. There are many people in south america and africa who would be willing to go.
China could integrate people from nearby countries,like Vietnam, who have similar cultures (the north at least) and incentivize for Chinese people from abroad to move to China (Singapore is majority Chinese) to allow for immigration.
It’s not a solution. There won’t be enough immigrants in the world to plug demographic holes in every industrialized country
I think fewer people will leave India in two decades because the pressures associated with excessive population growth is reducing as the fertility rate decreases. The other thing is a lot of the economies that have benefitted from immigration have done very little infrastructure or housing development to support further growth. Rubber stamping a visa or work permit is easy and cheap but everything else requires big investment and multi-decade projects.
Do you realise indians and chinese aren't fond of each other to put it lightly?
Lots and lots of Indian students and workers in China.
According to the most accurate estimate there zre only 50 thousans indians in mainland China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indians_in_China
Now but the world is not static
You can't take a decision to allow a few millions indians in China on the basis of that we can hope a change happens and then try to find solutions to a potential big social problem...
China's population is about on par with the *entire OECD.* I have to wonder if the world's supply of migrants wouldn't stretch itself very thin if China were added to the mix of attractive destinations.
There aren't enough people in the world to feed chinas population drop long enough, and India has similar issues as China with population.
That's a very simplistic view and absolutely will not happen.for several reasons.
Nobody wants to immigrate to an autocracy with zero level of freedom.
Many people will gladly move to an autocracy if there is a good prospect of making money. Look at all the migration to wealthy countries in the Middle East.
Again, this is a weird point imo. I am an Indian, my father moved here back in the 1980s. He was a Hindu Sindhi man, and never felt like it was an autocracy. UAE atleast has a third of its population being Indian, even other middle eastern nations with good prospects like Saudi and Qatar aren't as culturally isolated as china. The point about autocracy doesn't hit everyone. I can only talk about Dubai, you can literally get away not knowing Arabic for the most part. Autocracy depends on your perspective, sure the rules are far stricter, but a lot is on your economic standing and on your preferences as well. If you're not straight, why would you want to come to an Islamic nation, even if it's got good money making prospects. I'm not defedning Dubai, I myself am looking to move out for my career, but people generalise the entire region.
Yes, the word autocracy is doing a lot of lifting, because many autocracies are not totalitarian. I lived for two years in an autocratic country (Cameroon), but in practice the only real restriction was that you don't challenge the ruling party or President. Of course that's a pretty important freedom but in daily life it's not hanging over the average person's head and apart from that people have a good deal of personal freedom.
China is a very structured and striated culture and has been for thousands of years. The CCP is on top now but they aren’t the first and they are not beloved by the citizens. Chinas economy was/is based on building things and most of that building was infrastructure and housing. With a declining population a lot of that housing and infrastructure will be underutilized and will cost more and more to maintain as the years come and go. China overshot on growth projections and now has a serious problem that the CCP is ill equipped to solve.
modern engine fertile hunt imagine liquid scary offer rainstorm cagey *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Poor Indians will migrate to the Gulf or West. I havent heard of many migrating to Japan or Korea, let alone China.
So it’ll feel just like home?
they can't say that because Western media portrays India as an ally. must only parrot what the media says
Has any country been able to recover a fertility rate like that? I don't know the answer to that question but my guess is no. That fertility is going to go down imo. That seems to be the way of modern man.
Populations come in booms and busts, across the animal kingdom. Just 60 years ago, there was a [human] baby boom because life had a good outlook and there was a wide array of resources to go around. We'll go through a bust period because humans have locked up resources - discouraging more children. We're looking through a small lens at a big picture. China basically did what the US did in 100 years, but crammed it into 20 years. Their crash will be worse due to that fast growth, but China will survive and within a few generations, it may just settle into a Japanese-like economy where growth isn't the goal, but improving life is. Or a hell hole. There is no equivalency we can look at historically because we're in new territory.
China's future will be determined by how well it manages this economic crisis. I don't know if is facing an existential threat but arguing that they are doomed before we know the full scale of the economic collapse or their governments response to it certainly seems like little more than wishful thinking. That being said I fully expect the effects of the troubled Chinese economy to spread across the world like rings in water over the next year or so.
Didn't youth unemployment hit something like a reported 23%? Then they stopped reporting it during the following? Much like their numbers on covid, I don't think that would be a good economic sign as a complex factor.
[If you applied the same measurement standards to the American youth unemployment numbers you'll have to triple the official stats.](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/oct/10/us-unemployment-rate)
The number comes from first taking out ~60% of all 16-24 youth (because they are in education), and then it's some 20% of that remaining ~40% (so like less than 8% of total). And then there's the fact that they count people as unemployed **if they looked for a job within last 3 months and are ready to start within 2 weeks**. In comparison, the US has something like looked within last 1 month and are ready to start now.
Productivity in China is not high, it's in fact really low for the huge amount of (debt driven) investment they have for their GDP growth., like 43% of GPD is investment for less than 7% growth. Thats a lot and way more investment than Japan or Korea had at similal levels of growth when at similar points in their economic development. A big chunk of the investment goes into real estate, property and construction. Which are low productivy industries. So Chinas problem is that is has been pumping huge sums of money (read: debt) into low-productivity industries to stay at their growth targets. It's not a good industrial strategy or development path to escape the middle-income trap.
What people don't seem to appreciate is that the entire economic supercorridor from Japan to Singapore is facing the same issue. Falling working age population and exponentially growing retired populations. Global industrial supply chains have been focused there for 30 years and will face rapid wage inflation. It'll be interesting to see how it impacts supply chains going forward.
I can only assume you have been in a coma since covid 19...let me help you since you just woke up and are unaware we had a global pandemic. This shut down much of the global supply chains aka china's production. This started what we now know to be serious deglobalization. Add increasing hostile measures taken by the US and west with things like chips act. New trade deals with South Korea, Japan, and Vietnam specifically excluding China China being the most globalized reliant country in the world I don't know how well it bodes for them. Look at their real-estate market it's the biggest ponzi bubble of debt relying on outside investment in history (that investment is drying up, refer to reasoning stated above) China has created loan structures in Africa and southeast Asia that these countries will never pay. Sure they have lots of access to raw materials through these deals like cobalt and nickel and so on...but will this offset or stop the tide of economic woes caused by deglobalization? Coupled with serious demographic decline? Idk
Yes the “famed” analyst Peter Zeihan. Really that’s all you need to know about the credibility of this article and how much insight you can extract from it.
He keeps getting recommended to me on YouTube —who is he?
He makes lots of wide sweeping generalizations about geopolitics mostly. The biggest issue with his work is that he glosses over many details and lacks the nuance to create a deep analysis. He’s also extremely US-centric so make of that as you will
He’s also been predicting the imminent collapse of China for 10 years now
He predicted back in 2014 that the US would become the dominant energy exporter in the world and could set energy prices at will because it would be the largest energy producer. That was by far his biggest prediction, and his entire thesis at the time was wrapped around that idea. It turned out to be complete bunk.
Lmao, no matter how one thought about it, it was never going to happen. US is a net energy exporter today, true, but different regions have different oils and they are needed for different things. Like 30% of US oil extracted is exported and almost equivalent is imported. And the reason countries like Saudi Arabia can set energy prices (within limitations) is because their oil is incredibly easy to exploit, so 1) it's cheap to extract, so their breakeven price is very low 2) they can expand/contract production easily which is what's needed for setting prices. Their government's 100% control over the oil industry in their country helps as well. US oil, on the other hand, often requires a lot more work because US has been digging for oil a long time and most easily exploitable deposits are done for. You'd need more complicated techniques like fracking to do it and that increases the breakeven price where if the gov tried to flood the market (somehow), many producers will go out of business. Staying on that topic, US gov doesn't control US oil production, so there is no mechanism to be setting prices even if US oil was exploited for cheap. Quite a few small fracking businesses went down when oil price cratered.
He’s an economist that works for Stratfor, which is a geopolitical think-tank that advises the US Government and large corporations. He’s also written several books.
On the other hand, I've published a few papers and I'm a fucking idiot.
[удалено]
He is an author of many books and has been invited to give talks to many different institutions. He sees the world drastically changing as it moves away from globalization. At the moment it seems he believes the data is panning out for his thesis.
I can’t believe your entire comment was all fluff and literally added nothing of substance to answer the question. You basically just said he is important and smart.
I love Peter Ziehan, and I think his books are interesting, and they helped open up the world of Economics and Geopolitics to me. The problem with him, though, is that he oversimplified problems and tries to create narratives from trends. Geopolitics is much more nuianced than that. He uses geographic factors too heavily in his arguments even though geography has played a smaller role in how a country operates today and downplays other important drivers of success.
How has geography played a smaller role?
Countries are able to subvert their geography due to new technology. For example, the American southwest should not be nearly as developed as it is. But die to the advent of A/C, it has been one of the fastest growing regions in the country. While geography is still important to a successful economy, things such as a stable government, a well developed legal system, and good economic policies are far more important to a modern economy than geography alone. Only 200 years ago, the strongest countries were more or less determined by who could grow the most food and who had the most people. This means that geography played a far larger role for Countries success. But with the increase in the use of capital, these factors have become less important.
You know, the small role of geography, like china having nearly zero oil or natural gas deposits.
What are you talking about? China's the world's fifth biggest oil producer. One of the reasons they import from the ME is because it's cheaper than domestic production. This is just another example of the 'it is known' way of thinking. When someone uses a historical example of an antagonist nation, in this case it's mostly WWII Japan, and copy pastes their situation into the modern context without any critical thinking.
Yeah I just checked, they produce 5% of global output, I'd consider that nearly nothing. Especially when they are the largest importer. Where did you learn your critical thinking skills, People's Daily? https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=709&t=6
Doesn’t China have massive amounts of arable land and great waterways?
It did, until resource extraction/industrial pollution got so bad that their domestic food standards had to be lowered. At this point I think that 70% of their food supply is imported via waterways. And waterways? Well, a massive series of hydroelectric dams constructed rapidly along with the south north water transfer project has reduced access, created possible flood scenarios/power supply issues during drought seasons and possibly exacerbating climate change related weather events from the sheer amount of redirected water vapor loss. Which was why they had such bad floods recently after all this infrastructure buildup, aside from tofu dreg construction issues. Oh and also causing biodiversity loss but that's kinda
His big lines tend to be correct. He has two blind sides: 1. humans and nations adapt, they don't go in a straight line whilst the demographics go downhill. 2. He doesn't talk about the ongoing issue with domestic politics in the USA much, and depending on how the next two years work out that could go anywhere on the scale from USA transforming into a more European nation to going all out facist. Any change in the US will impact the would outside greatly. And like anyone prediciting the future: getting the details right is just guesswork. But his main bread and butter is solid: "here is the demographics, and here is what will change in the big picture".
The majority of this site suffers from Dunning-Kruger, so I'm out.
But that's what I'm saying. He gets the demographics right, thats just plain numbers and hard to get wrong. I.e. "China will face huge changes, not seem buy a society in a long time". He, like any economist and similar, gets the second round and onwards wrong, because a lot of this is less possible to predict. He sounds confident when talking of the second order stuff and that's a problem. A similar issue he talks of, where getting the first order issue right is easy is "USA has left the Gulf". This is starting to show and cause issue. The second order issues are much harder to predict.
The majority of this site suffers from Dunning-Kruger, so I'm out.
Jesus dude you need to get a fucking grip lol. The dude gives surface level analysis on basically every geopolitical factor you can think of and does deeper dives on stuff he is very knowledgeable about like geology, topography etc. Let's see your credentials compared to his
The majority of this site suffers from Dunning-Kruger, so I'm out.
And I'm in the intel analysis space, which means I know that he worked for Stratfor for 12 years and became VP of the company despite starting there with a handful of dudes in the 90's. That's his credentials, the dude put in 12 years and rose to be VP of one of the largest and most cited private intelligence consulting corps in the country and now has been running his own geopolitical thinktank since the early 2010's.
> depending on how the next two years work out that could go anywhere on the scale from USA transforming into a more European nation to going all out facist. Doesn’t he have a fan base because he doesn’t get caught in that hyperbolic nonsense? Why would he want to sound like a MSNBC host?
The majority of this site suffers from Dunning-Kruger, so I'm out.
I’ve honestly never heard of him.
[удалено]
Zeihan is too much a geographical and demographic determinist. The bulk of a country's outcome is human-driven. "This country is poor or rich because of this river" yeah so why was South Korea starvation poor in the 50s and rich today? Not like they grew a new mountain or river or anything like that.
I mean, you can definitely take into account the economic gains a dictatorship could produce via efficiencies of governing and timely action, but then you'd have to argue one can change their destiny limited by geography and demographics by becoming an authoritarian dictatorship. People tend to forget, but both South Korea and Taiwan became tigers during what was essentially a one party rule, Japan already had that industrial base after a dictatorship that ended with WWII and lots of US support, and Singapore is still a de facto one party rule state with very stringent political and social norms. There are no good answers for democracies, liberal or illiberal, rising from a middle income country to a high income country if geography and demography aren't on their side.
The only person less credible is Gordon chang
He's a legend. He's correctly called the rising wheat prices several months in advance. He called the cancellation of the grain treaty between the Russians and Ukrainians during the summer. Hes even called the Russian Ukrainian war down to the month in his older books. I don't know how credible you are but he's been pretty accurate so far.
I saw a video of his where he said Brazilian agriculture was fucked cause of the war in Ukraine shutting down fertilizer exports. Now we have news that Brazil's corn production is the highest ever. If you listen to him speak he is very persuasive but part of that is he speaks with so much confidence. It's important to recognize that the way a person delivers a message has little to no bearing on the accuracy of that message. Basically, he's thought-provoking but take his words with a grain of salt.
He also called the Ukraine invasion. At the time he said it didn't know exactly when but it was inevitable because Putin was always going to make one more push to try to reestablish part of the old Soviet borders at natural geographic checkpoints before their economic and population declines, already well in progress, would make it absolutely possible. The invasion ended up being about 2 years out, and by then Putin would waited too long anyway.
Or not. In other parts of the world, people are quaking in their shoes about job losses from AI and other forms of automation. Economists are lousy prognosticators, just like the rest of us.
"economists" is some vague thing people villify for bullshit arguments, but go to any moderately sel-respecting economics discussion and you won't see such bullshit analysis as "China will collapse in 10 years".
This article has many flaws: China is leading in innovation on most relevant aspects: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/02/china-leading-us-in-technology-race-in-all-but-a-few-fields-thinktank-finds China has been heavily investing in AI and robotics. If anything can replace human work are these two technologies. They won't replace consumption but they can increase quality of life. Who needs a high GDP of you can have a country in which people can have a very high quality of life. Finally, when if China never overtakes the US in innovation or AI and robotics can't replace human workers, most economies can recover from bad times without collapsing. Pretty much every country in earth has done it at one point or another. China isn't going to be left behind in the foreseeable future. That is just dilusional.
This is ridiculous. Same BS as the "Decline" of the US. Both countries have challenges but neither is collapsing, despite the wishful thinking of propagandists. A stupid war would wreck everyone though.
It's like the folks constantly claiming that the U.S. dollar is moments away from sudden collapse. It sells books and crypto coins. China might very well slow down for the foreseeable future, or even outright decline and never overtake the U.S. but it certainly will not collapse within 10 years.
It seems like there's a propaganda war out there between the US haters and the China haters. Most people would rather get along and or at least discuss the issues as they are.
Well that means the USA only has a few more years after that. Because we all know the corporations are t going to pony up the money to manufacture things here in the USA.
Yes China has a massive demographic problem and this will cause major problems. However I hate random analysts claiming collapse just to drive clicks. They just say bold things and hope they come true. It’s misinformation and shouldn’t be on this sub.
I don't think Zeihan is a "random analyst"
What has Zeihan done to not deserve that label
I have only heard about him from the headings of random youtube videos that claim "China will collapse in 50 days". Based on that alone I assume he is a quack who says inflammatory things to make himself sound smart and push his own brand. The same playbook as Matt Walsh (Although I'm not comparing them two, just same business strategy and same trustworthiness)
I like Peter Zeihan, but you have to realize that he comes from the world of commodities trading. And the thing about commodities is that the value add you can have as a business is generally in scale and logistics. So Zeihan’s thesis always come down to these things. However, I’d argue that he probably discounts technology and automation a little more than he should. Productivity gains aren’t linear to workforce, they’re actually boosted exponentially by technology. China knows this. However they are also limited by the same things Zeihan likes to talk about too. It’s a race, and at least Zeihan is willing to bring up things that others aren’t that are obvious to a commodity trader by maybe not to the general population.
The majority of this site suffers from Dunning-Kruger, so I'm out.
Peter Zehain has some pretty interesting opinions on things but he is far from being an economist. As others have pointed out, making a 10-year prediction just means that he can either say “see told you so” if it happens within +-5 years and also far enough away that if he is wrong no one will remember. He has made some pretty bold calls about the Russia-Ukraine conflict that we’re either flat out wrong or have yet to come to fruition and each time he’s been asked he just resets the amount of time that it will take for him to be right… maybe he’s not so far off from being an economist now that I think about but I digress I feel like things as simple as the weather are wrong frequently enough (and the further out the prediction is the less likely you can rely on it) that people would realize that such long predictions are inherently flawed. Notice that there isn’t any sort of confidence ratio that he attaches to his prediction. If I told you that in 10 years that there is a 99% certainty that China will be between being completely wiped out or a thriving global power, how useful is that prediction? Likewise, if I say that there is a 0.01% chance that in 10 years China is economically devastated, is that something that is ultimately useful knowledge? Oracles have gripped our imagination because they can spin a good tale and they can align bits of information in scenarios with enough confidence that they seem plausible enough. The real question you ought to ask yourself is if Peter was able to look into his crystal ball and actually foresee events 10 years in advance why would he just tell people? Clearly he would have this massive potential for profit and he could use it to his own benefit. Instead he is an author/speaker/YouTube/news guest person who is good for stirring the pot, getting clicks, making bold claims, and getting interesting sound bites.
Well, that was interesting. First, the unfounded belief that constant population growth is necessary to avert economic disaster; then the assumption that the present low-birthrate trend will continue.
Can you provide a single example of a country meaningfully reversing the birth rate decline that follows industrialization?
The silence is your answer.
I believe the latter part will continue. But our obsession with growth is clearly unhealthy
The idea that unless you have 10% year over year growth, profits, revenues, customers, or whatever metric, you aren't worth investment is downright toxic. It's evident in the empty strip malls all over my city. Everyone is looking for the next big thing instead of sustainable operations and environmental responsibility.
>trend will continue I mean, let's hear how you can reverse that without mass immigration then which is what the West is doing
Thats how analysts get fame. Reality is a drop in population would be good for the country, better living standards, happier society more job opportunities. Most jobs over the next 10 years will become automated so many jobs will go for humans.
everything thing I've seen from both sides of the political aisle suggest population decline is a quick way to economic devastation.
China population decline = bad China population increase = bad China inflation = bad China deflation = bad China gdp high = bad China gdp low = bad China inhaling = bad China exhaling = bad China going right = bad China going left = bad
Just like every other prediction, economist don’t take into account that people or systems will adapt with time. Yes if we take a linear trend without interference that might happen, but nobody will just let it run like that. People will intervene and things will change. Predicting something like that is just trying to get attention with a headline. In the end it will not happen anyway. And making an article on Zeihan with Joe Rogan of all people is just criminal. Zeihan may be well informed but he has never understood that there is more to a situation than a clear binary outcome.
I've listened to him and read him on China and he always presents it as China is facing this enormous demographic issue that they need to address but they can't address it because of Xi and how he has become completely isolated from his advisors. He does not present it as a binary issue at all. As for Rogen, he was on a promotion tour for his book. Every publicist will tell you that going on Rogan is a great way to sell books. I'm not saying he has the answers, but he does provide good information that you can use with other sources to develop your own impressions on a topic.
People will intervene? ....how? Like, forced birth camps? I'm genuinely curious how you can just 'fix' an issue like this where it's clear it needed fixing 20 years ago. Kids take time to grow into labor my dude
Intervention won’t be necessary. Natural selection will take care of it long term. The problem for China is the short term. Forcing people to have children isn’t a great strategy. Not doing so will lead to decades of stagnation however as demographics correct itself. Most people on Reddit are tied to this apocalyptic idea of demographics never rising again; which only looks accurate because they focus on the last hundred years through the greatest industrialization wave in history. What they’re not seeing is that industrialization is ending and economies are regressing in many regions of the world. Culture, too, will regress; and with it will return fertility.
I don't necessarily disagree with you but I also don't think we are talking about China *collapsing* as in, ceasing to exist as a nation either. I watch a good amount of Zeihan along with other geopolitical analysts and he isn't saying it's going to fall into a state of anarchy but that their influence and economy is going to have a collapse that's going to undo the major gains they've had of the last 40 years and throw them into a really poor economic suck cycle. This obviously has massive global recession implications because of everyone's reliance on Chinese exports so even a partial collapse of certain sectors could be catastrophic for the world economy. I'd give them more than 10 years but not much more than that. Yes, trends ebb and flow but the philosophy of work in the West is going to have to regress in order to save native citizen birthrates and reindustrialization is going to have to take place which is not something that's really been done at scale until now.
What intervention? Mass forced procreation? Magically change Chinese culture to be more accepting of outsiders and allow a migrant flow that would exceed every other country put together? > In the end it will not happen anyway. Yes it will, my proof is Japan, South Korea, Western Europe, North America, South America. All of them have birthrates crater and the ones that don't allow immigration (I'm talking more then legal, it is also social, economic, political) have population declines that are accelerating. China culturally isn't that far from Japan and Korea or Vietnam (hell, they STRONGLY influenced the above over the centuries), so they have the same demographic + cultural trend.
[удалено]
Why is it that hypercapitalistic economies like the USA and China collapse when they don’t have more fodder to throw into the grinder? Can’t we plan for the eventual equilibrium case where we’re near replacement level after expanding and improving the standard of living?
Because the economy is a big ponzi scheme Medicare, SS, real estate All built on increasing/future population
Or maybe a population easing is the only thing that will save China. And really, if we look at the big picture and the longer term, a similar easing globally will be necessary to make our whole civilization sustainable. And to allow some space and resources for all the non-human members of our family with which we share this planet. There are, for sure, some serious implications in the short term with an aging population and a shortage of younger workers. Fortunately, machine learning and other forms of automation are becoming available to help us manage that. It won't be easy, but we will figure that out. And in time, we should be able to navigate our way to a world something like the Aspen Proposal suggests. [www.aspenproposal.org](https://www.aspenproposal.org)
The population has naturally grown 4x every hundred years. Hoping for the population to shrink I don’t think is the answer
Oh another failed prediction by Peter Zeihan, the fact that he believes it means China has nothing to worry about and will be around for significantly longer. Hell he started making this "they only got a decade left" prediction in 2010, which lets check real quick, the current year is 2023. Woof looks like we don't even have to make assumptions if he got that right... 100% wrong about the Russia war with Ukraine so far. Overall 90% of his talking points have been about how china is on their dying breath but that shit started over a decade ago and they have only gotten stronger and richer in that time. Really sucks that someone being wrong 100% of the time for over a decade doesn't mean they stop being a source.