Ok, went down a rabbit hole after clicking a link on the “What will cause WW III” thread and ended up reading a long but utterly fascinating article.

It contends that it is not the continued rise of China that is the real concern but the fact that it is on the verge of stagnation and decline.

A slowing economy, aggressive state intervention stifling enterprise, an aging population and an increasingly belligerent coalition of powers attempting to contain it.

Given the above and whilst it still has a chance of true global supremacy it might just throw the dice in the next decade. As Germany did in WW I and Japan did in WW II.

It’s a long but utterly fascinating read.

What are your thoughts after reading it?

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/09/24/china-great-power-united-states/

Isn’t it more likely that they will just expand in the area (as Germany and Japan did in the past), through making neighbours economically dependent on them and threatening military action, and that the world will just let them get on with it, rather than risk starting a world war.

It depends i guess.
If they go too far then the risk of massive embargoes on Chinese gods could really screw their economy depends on how they think it will play out or if they think on balance they will win

aggressive state intervention stifling enterprise

Not sure where this idea comes from, apart from possibly a right wing fiction. China’s government can make the country do whatever it wants. Their current aims seem to include becoming market leaders in EV and renewable tech. This is where state intervention makes them very strong because capitalist societies have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. US and European car makers could easily stifle demand for EVs and continue selling stuff they already know how to make by simply not making them, so noone bought them. The problem with capitalism is that if you continue doing the same thing people will continue to buy the same thing. China could ban ICE cars (for example) on a whim and there’d be no political or democratic backlash.

Our economies already depend on selling the stuff they make. This makes trade wars unlikely.

embargoes on Chinese gods

Religion is the opium of the people

If they go too far then the risk of massive embargoes on Chinese gods could really screw their economy

I thought they had limited the power of religions in th epast for precisely this reason?

Yeah yeah, stupid predictive text.
Chinese goods

aggressive state intervention stifling enterprise

Not sure where this idea comes from, apart from possibly a right wing fiction.

They’ve been implementing policies such as limiting gaming time for youngsters, blacklisting companies listed on foreign stock exchanges and hammering Alibaba with restrictions, it’s hugely affecting some of their largest companies and markets.

But what’s the effect in the longer term, and on the broader economy. They are economically far less a slave to the whims of the market than the west and the US in particular.

They’re a big country (the biggest!) on a transitioning economy. They’re not the same as Germany, or Japan, or the UK, small countries with big empires. I don’t think they’re declining, but their economy is changing and they do have a historic liking for controlling their own backyard.

I’m guessing that no ones read it yet?

It’s really worth the read as it compares China’s rise to past historical powers and their conflicts.

It’s all got less to do with China, and more to do with the US than anything. This would be the same thing if it was Africa* or any other nation that can compete or overtake the US economy.

*
If Africa was a single nation.

Doubt it, China have been investing in areas that are rich in natural resources for years and within the Chinese borders they have a huge percentage of some of the key rare earths and materials that are now the focus of the electric revolution.

In addition to EV and renewable tech they are world leaders in AI.
Their focus is on high tech but will continue churning out the high volume low tech stuff as long as it pays.
Their belt and road project hasn’t been an unqualified success but has increased their economic hold over some countries which chose to participate.
What the US does is increasingly irrelevant to China; US won’t engage in military action over South China seas and have fewer levers to pull than they ever had.
The western world has, almost wilfully, ceded control to China and have been too late in realising the significance of this.
Stealing western technology has been, effectively, state sponsored.
I have no doubt the Chinese communist party have learned the lessons of history well.
The only threat to China I see is internal economic pressure.
They have stifled and otherwise ‘managed’ all other threats over decades.

On that note they’ve been giving poor/corrupt African countries with large mining reserves (copper, coal, rare metals) lots of loans for the last 15 years. The infrastructure they build helps China obtain those resources with favourable/mates rates

Yes, I had read it. But I didn’t agree with it.

Also China is run by people who know what they are doing.

The only threat to China I see is internal economic pressure.

The communist party does not play this game.

In addition to EV and renewable tech they are world leaders in AI.

Yes, that’s because they have been preparing all this time. As for all the EV and renewable tech etc, that’s what they want you to think and do. Put all eggs in one basket comes to mine.

I read it and I’m skeptical. China’s policies will be based on how the Chinese leadership assess the situation. Unless they agree with it, it’s irrelevant. I doubt that the Chinese leadership agree with it.

All what Molgrips said.

China will be the world’s biggest economy within our life-time. It will never be a liberal democracy. To the degree ‘this’ <gestures around at the politcal-socio-economic sphere> is a race, China will ‘win’ eventually.

China will be the world’s biggest economy within our life-time

It always used to he. Ever since humans set up civilisations China has been the biggest economy. The Brits had a brief turn in the 19th century, then the Americans, and now China are heading g back to where they always used to be.

Since the financial crisis China has created a real estate bubble that puts Japan in the 80s and US in 2006 into the shade. There is a real risk the whole thing will pop this year.
China could be like the Soviet Union, it looks powerful from the outside but has major problems internally. It is an authoritarian state and has got away so far with locking up its dissidents but it remains to be seen whether this will continue indefinitely.
Another destabilising factor is the rise of religion particularly evangelical Christianity in China, which the government clamps down on, but continues to grow.

Our economies already depend on selling the stuff they make. This makes trade wars unlikely.

There is an active attempt to move away from that dependancy though which gives schlieffen plan scenario.

It always used to he.

Not always. You had the multiple break ups and multiple kingdoms at the same time. The claim about it being an unbroken history is rather suspect to say the least.

I think the article could have a point. It is predicting a possible outcome rather than saying it would definitely happen and several of the objections such as the current dependency on their factories underline that. Yes its currently dependent but there is some attempts to change it.
The demographics are truly messy even compared to Europe and the US as well in the medium term.

China will be the world’s biggest economy within our life-time

That’s not as certain as people assume. China has a demographic time bomb on its hands, just like Japan. The number of working-age people will plateau and decrease, while the number of retired people will increase. Taking care of those untold millions of old people will be a huge drag on the Chinese economy.

On top of that, Chinese grew massively because it had hundreds of millions of low-wage labourers and factory workers. As it keeps growing, it will run into labour shortages and will lose the advantage of low wage costs. It also has to import raw materials from countries like Australia, which are becoming much less tolerant of China’s behaviour.

Another warning sign is that there are millions of young Chinese students studying at universities in Western countries. These are the children of wealthy Chinese families, and it’s something of a vote of no-confidence in China that they are being sent abroad. Many of those young people will take jobs abroad after they graduate and will be lost to China, so China is basically paying other countries to take its smartest young people.

Of course, that doesn’t mean China won’t grow to have the largest economy, but it has about four times the population of the U.S. so just equaling the U.S. GDP still means it’s a fairly poor country. The U.S. has a much younger population and had a lot of Latino immigrants, as well as a free-trade zone with Mexico and Canada. It’s very unlikely that Chinese GDP per capital will approach the U.S. for many decades, if it ever does.

This means that the U.S. can afford to support a large high-technology military, but China still has a huge army of machine-gun fodder. They have made huge progress in modernizing, but the U.S. has had 20 years of combat practice in Iraq and Afghanistan whereas China has never fought a modern high-tech war. A naval-air battle in the South China sea would be a bloody mess and I’m sure that China could inflict heavy losses on the U.S., but it would just be one battle. The U.S. has the resources to lose a battle, regroup, and win the next battle. China only has the resources to fight one battle. Even if they win that, they can’t project power beyond the South China sea so the U.S. could just impose a submarine blockade and cut off China’s access to raw materials.

The crunch point could be climate change targets. Its hard to be the world’s factory when those industries will be constrained by international rules.

The changes that have been made by the government are shocking to many, but they have made those huge changes. Though many people don’t want to, or say they can’t, get married, I think recent changes will make the idea of marriage and family seem easier to swallow, and I’m already seeing families with 2-3 kids everywhere right now, so I’m not sure about severe population decline predictions. Perhaps thinking in Western format about these subjects means light at the end of the tunnel can’t be seen, but the drastic changes put through, and more to come, may keep them stable there.

Of course, we have to reach those target dates without any spats that lead to unfortunate actions.

The crunch point could be climate change targets. Its hard to be the world’s factory when those industries will be constrained by international rules.

The Chinese government ignores any international agreements that it finds inconvenient. What will hurt them is if they lose export markets due to non-compliance. Monitoring of compliance is an essential part of international agreements, but China tends to reject any monitoring on grounds of national security. The only way to force China to comply with agreements is to boycott Chinese goods until they agree to proper monitoring. I’m pretty sure China will reject that, so the reality would be decoupling of the Chinese economy from the democratic countries.

Perhaps thinking in Western format about these subjects means light at the end of the tunnel can’t be seen,

By the “Western format”, do you mean numbers and empirical facts? China has a looming demographic problem due to past policies. That doesn’t magically disappear by having the Emperor plead with people to make more babies. Raising and educating kids is fantastically expensive so middle-class families tend to be small by choice. An average of two children per woman is not enough for population growth, you need lots of women to have large families to make up for the ones who have no kids or only one kid. 2-3 kids is just replacement level, not population growth level.

China could ban ICE cars (for example) on a whim and there’d be no political or democratic backlash.

I’m not sure you can say that. Certainly the state could impose it, to say that there’d be no backlash is immpossible to predict.

Also China is run by people who know what they are doing.

I’d say that the overwhelming characteristic of Chinese leadership is that it is endemically and cripplingly corrupt and deeply reactionary. They may think they know what they’re doing, but only is so far that they are largely insulated from any decision that they make, and they know that as long as the deal (materialistic growth and wealth in exchange for democracy) with the chinese people is maintained, they’re relatively safe. Step outside that, and they know that the Chinese population will react, I doubt the CPC’s ability to contain it’s own population if that happens,  let alone what would happen if the leadership of China begin or try to prosecute; an unpopular foreign war.

I read @Poopscoop article, and it has some interesting ideas to say, some of the interpretations of history that it relies on are suspect…Ultimately though all it’s saying is rather than this reason we may end up in a war between the US and China, it might be for this other reason…

Another warning sign is that there are millions of young Chinese students studying at universities in Western countries.

And many times more ‘millions’ studying within China. As a proportion of the total number of students, they have similar numbers studying abroad as European countries (excluding the UK that is). There are also half a million foreign students studying in China.

Comment on some of the above comments… China is not a particularly low wage economy anymore and hasn’t been for some years. They outsource very cheap work to other countries, but still have a very competitive economy and cost model anyway.

OP – how far down the road of US stagnation/decline do you think we are? That’s far more supported by historical models

Where are T’Pau when you need them?

China is already the leading economy by some measures, second in gdp terms. By 2050 we’re projected to be 10th with US 3rd behind China & India.

I read, I think in another book on Thucydides trap by Bruno Marceas that China is equal or ahead on something like 10/15 strategic issues such as quantum, AI.

There not considered to be ahead in military strength but have a good chance of winning in the Pacific. Plus is US+ it’s allies which tips the scales against conventional war.

China does and can afford to play a longer game and see some of these issues out.

Consensus seems to be that the next ten yrs are going to be bumpy.

There are also half a million foreign students studying in China.

Wealthy American and European elites don’t send their kids to study at Chinese universities. Wealthy Chinese elites do send their kids to study in the U.S. and Europe. That’s a major vote of no-confidence by Chinese elites in their own country.

Does the same go for all the big European countries (other than the UK)? Most of the major economies have loads of students studying abroad, except the USA, UK, Australia… ie the English as a majority first language ones. Probably not a coincidence. Chinese universities are packed with students. More than any other country I suspect. The number that are also in universities abroad is mostly as a result of how big the Chinese population is.

EDIT: a quick Google suggests I’m wrong, India has more Uni students than China… 37million vs 30million.

The quality of the top research universities is important. The U.S. dominates in those. Those universities attract the very top talent so the U.S. skims off the top talent from other countries. China has a lot of universities, but most of those will be churning out technicians, not researchers. The crucial thing is that Chinese elites send their kids abroad for education. That’s an indication that educated Chinese people lack confidence in their own universities.

Well they’re sending a small % of students but c’est la vie. It doesn’t necessarily mean the downfall of China, it probably portends that they’re going to increase in power even more

Whenever I go there I always come away thinking they’re unstoppable. I wouldn’t say the same about India – their combination of democracy and corruption seems destined to hold them back.

Taking care of those untold millions of old people will be a huge drag on the Chinese economy.

Not really. In Chinese culture the old parents live with their families who takes care of them, not the state.

In Chinese culture the old parents live with their families who takes care of them, not the state.

That works fine when you have large families and daughters can take care of the old people. When most people only have one child, then each young married couple has four parents to take care of, plus their own children. In reality, it means that working age women will be expected to curtail their careers to care for the elderly. That’s a big drag on the economy.

They seem to manage, but it could come down to many in industry work form home in small cottage industry, so the caregiver is working at home beside the elderly parent.

The average number of people living in one household in China dropped from 3.5 in 1990 to 2.87 in 2011. Since 2011, the figure was relatively stable and ranged between 2.87 and 3.17 people per household. The average Chinese household still counts as rather large in comparison to other industrial countries. In 2019, an average American household consisted of only 2.52 people.

China’s demographic problem is obvious in these charts. The top one is the U.S., the middle one is China, the bottom one is India. The Chinese one is very top-heavy. In the next few decades, there will be a huge surge of retired people without a lot of working-age people to support them. The U.S. is much less top heavy. India has a huge number of young people compared with China.